(03-16-2023 03:33 PM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  

(03-16-2023 03:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(03-16-2023 02:25 PM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  What is the "losing money" part of the budget? We draw the best in all three sports. Are tix too cheap? Too many student t shirt giveaways? Too much travel and hotel expenses? Is Tennis and track and soccer and swimming killing us harder than it kills other schools? Electricity too much for the sports complexes? Where is this money coming from we aren't using intelligently?

Scholarships are the largest expense outside of staff for the department. If you consider scholarships for the football team alone you're looking at almost $1.2M...now the funds themselves are wonky in how they're reported as many who know about the system can attest. For example, technically, the AD pays the housing stipends for every student athlete, so it isn't exactly lost revenue for the University seeing as how those beds wouldn't be filled otherwise, but they're still on the hook for footing the bill.

And yes, all of the sports including football, M/W basketball and the rest of the sports in the AD run massively revenue negative. Football doesn't generate near enough (and never will) to cover the asses of the other sports like it does anywhere else. We don't draw "near the best" in the three sports, in fact, in men's basketball and football, Toledo is in the lower third of D1 schools. Women's basketball is in the Top 40, but that's due to the large amount of giveaways and free ticket programs, not paying customers. There are only like 30 athletic departments that run at a net positive and another 30 or so that run at a deficit of less than 15%. The remaining run anywhere from a 25% to 90% deficit, most of the MAC are running between 65% and 80% (UT is in the middle at a 72% deficit this past year). Problem is, you can't cut any sports here, as we are already at the minimum necessary to remain an FBS school.

From public reports, the athletic department generated only $7.2M in non-donor revenue the last year reported [FY 20 (2019-2020)] for department expenses of just over $30M. When you account for gifts that can fluctuate year to year, that revenue number jumps to $9.4M...the rest is made up through student fees (perfectly reasonable given they can go to games for free) and institutional funds used to balance the budget, both are roughly $11M a piece and straight from the University's general operating revenue and not the AD.

So who is better in the MAC? Are operating costs just lower at some schools? Akron having literally zero revenue for fb has to tank them twice as much as us. Same with the 400 fans a game for wbb. Soccer is nice and all but what do they draw?

It feels like every school should be even with us with the exception of Ohio and WMU (giant donation). NIU has to be awful with travel being much more than our central local.

"Better" is tough to assess...all of the MAC schools run similar deficits because there just isn't money in non-Power athletics (mainly due to no media revenue like the big boys have).

In the MAC, Toledo has the 3rd most expenses behind Buffalo and Miami in that order...Miami is not normally that high, but they have had two major capital investments. In terms of general operating revenue, Toledo is 5th behind Buffalo, Western and Central Michigan, and Miami...so not as great with that picture, but that's not the WHOLE picture. That number includes institutional subsidies, and most of those schools subsidize at a higher rate than Toledo does due to our ability to generate a bit more revenue than them. As a comparison, BGSU's operating expenses are roughly $10M less than UT's but they generate only $2M less in non-subsidy revenue...so yes, we are over spending in places (and getting what we pay for when it comes to on-field product). The question comes about when you ask at what point the institution's livelihood is more important than the AD's competition level, and I think we're getting close to that point.

Essentially, every MAC AD is in a terrible place financially, but most are not also tied to an institution that is in a financial situation like ours is...that's what makes UT's situation worse. Buffalo is the flagship of the SUNY system, so they get more than enough general state support to be able to float money to a loser like their AD, Miami and Ohio U have a larger enrollment, endowment, fewer academic programs that they need to support with it, and charges far more tuition than Toledo does, so they've been able to remain financially insulated from this higher education crisis that is coming. Western, as you alluded to, got a half a billion dollar gift, so they're all set for awhile. BGSU has had "increases" in enrollment, are generally a bigger school than Toledo now, and has fewer mouths to feed from the program side as well. Kent State is a far larger institution that Toledo and has been able to weather the storm somewhat by canibalizing Akron's student base.

NIU, Toledo, and Akron are all in relatively similar situations as far as enrollment and finances across the University are concerned...look up what has happened to the other two to see what is on the horizon here. That's why I think we're going to run into issues retaining good coaches the way that we have been able to in the past.

Here is a link to 21-22 numbers, I was operating under the USA Today forms which haven't been updated for my previous post, but found a more updated database: https://www.sportico.com/business/commer...234646029/