Jonathan Sadow
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RE: Future of Rice Athletics
(09-19-2017 05:45 PM)illiniowl Wrote: (09-19-2017 04:19 PM)Jonathan Sadow Wrote: (09-19-2017 12:50 PM)illiniowl Wrote: (09-19-2017 10:41 AM)Frizzy Owl Wrote: A P5 conference will not agree to carry our baseball team. They're all about football and megabucks.
So we end up with our teams scattered across various crappy conferences. How does that improve prospects?
Again, the Big 10 has Johns Hopkins as a lacrosse-only member, and there are other examples of sport-specific conference memberships. Remember, conference membership decisions are ultimately made by university presidents, not conference commissioners or athletic directors, and the JHU name carries substantial cachet with that group, as obviously would Rice. In any event, the bottom line reason JHU is in the Big 10 for lacrosse is that it gave the Big 10 an even number of lacrosse teams. Therefore, any conference that currently has an odd number of baseball teams would very likely welcome Rice to even out the scheduling logistics. The Big XII has 9 baseball teams at present. The Big 10 has 13. The Pac12 has 11. We could put our marquee sport in a premier conference and even if our other sports had to go to a "crappy" conference, hello, we're in CUSA already. Denver is nationally competitive in soccer and tennis and various other sports despite being in a "crappy" conference. For all I know we might be able to stay in CUSA without football or baseball. Invest in the program and you can make NCAA tournaments perennially in various sports no matter your conference - our baseball team proves that - and then maybe you upgrade conferences on a sport-by-sport basis later (as Denver has done with lacrosse). The point is, we need to think outside the box and explore all options.
Let me point out that Johns Hopkins is a poor example to use in this argument. The Blue Jays' presence in the Big Ten for lacrosse is in essence a historical accident. JHU is Division III for all sports except for men's lacrosse. The NCAA used to permit schools to have one sport in a different classification than the rest of its athletic program but discontinued that policy some years ago. However, schools like JHU who had taken advantage of that policy had those programs grandfathered in, so Blue Jays lacrosse can stay that way as long as it wants. So when the Big Ten admits JHU for lacrosse, the issue of where the rest of the Blue Jays' programs go is moot, because there are no other Division I programs at the school. By contrast, Rice has a full complement of Division I programs to consider.
The bottom line is fairly simple. Football provides about 85% of college athletics revenues in Division I. If you don't have football, you don't make money. Either Rice works on improving football and stays in Division I FBS, or it drops football and drops to Division III. Economically, these are the only two solutions that work.
As to your first paragraph: Apples and oranges. Nobody is talking about Rice splitting its sports between two different NCAA divisions, I am talking about Rice splitting its sports between two or more conferences, which is not restricted by the NCAA, and examples of which abound. Conferences are legal entities and can set their own requirements for membership, full or partial. Further, the reason the Big 10 admitted JHU for lacrosse is absolutely because they wanted an even number of teams as well as, if I recall correctly, the minimum number of teams to have the conference champion qualify for the NCAA tournament. If it hadn't been JHU, it would have been someone else from outside the Big 10. There have been rumors that the Big 10 might add Arizona State for hockey and start Big 10 hockey (currently Big 10 schools that have hockey are in some other hockey-specific conference).
The point that I'm making, referring to your first paragraph quoted, is that no P5 conference is going to invite any of Rice's athletic teams to participate in them if Rice isn't a full member of that conference. Johns Hopkins playing in a P5 conference in a sport is an exceptional circumstance which is not relevant to Rice's situation.
Quote:And I'm sorry, but your second paragraph makes less sense than your first. It will come as news to myriad football-less Division I schools that they can't be Division I. It will also come as news to all 300+ D-I schools that they have to "make money." Most schools spend more than their direct revenue and make up the difference with subsidies or student fees. It's essentially a loss leader for everyone except a select (albeit probably growing) number of P5 schools, but they're fine with this because athletic programs engender student engagement, alumni pride, and (hopefully) positive public goodwill, all of which redound to the university's benefit.
While it's never good to lose money, it's always better to lose less money than more money. It's been a while since I've read the Kinsey Report, but as I recall, one of its conclusions was that dropping football would in the end lose more money than it would save due to various knock-on effects. Keep in mind what I wrote previously: by far, most revenue to athletic programs comes from football, and most of the rest comes from men's basketball. Everything else, for the purpose of running an athletic program, is irrelevant. Baseball may be the marquee sport at Rice (and I'd argue that, in terms of accomplishments, in recent years it's been equaled if not surpassed by women's tennis), but the conference it and every other sport other than football or men's basketball is in, for the purpose of funding the athletic department, is meaningless.
To summarize: if Rice...
... were in a P5 conference, we'd lose money.
... were in a G5 conference, we'd lose more money.
... dropped football, we'd lose even more money no matter what conference we're in, unless it were Division III (maybe).
Quote:Also, we aren't in danger of being kicked out of FBS. The thing we got kicked out of was the P5. We can stay in the ghettoized G5 division of FBS in perpetuity as far as I can see as long as we keep trotting out a team, regardless of the number of empty seats they play before. There might be a minimum attendance requirement but that rule is in no danger of being enforced and if it were we'd just lie about the attendance or give away free tickets like we've done for decades.
I don't think the University is that concerned about "losing money." If it were, athletics would have been shut down long, long ago. They clearly are fine with spending at a certain level ($25MM/year in today's dollars) to have a Division I athletic department, just like they are fine with spending X dollars to have an English department at a certain quality level. I think arguments to get them to spend more would be heard if they could be convinced that there would be a suitable benefit to doing so, and I think an argument to get them to spend the same money but in a different way (e.g., without football) could also gain traction, but an argument that "we can't go on losing money like this" wouldn't make any sense to them because, clearly, we *can* and *have*. It is not "losing money" to them. It is an operating expense for a necessary function.
I don't know for sure, but my guess is that the English department as well as most other academic departments at the university are at least self-sustaining (if not, then why is tuition so high)? I also suspect that the administration considers the English and other departments as being core functions of the university moreso than athletics. You seem to be framing the administration's choice here as being between keeping football and dropping it to spend more on other sports, whereas the economics of the situation require that the administration's choice is actually between keeping football and dropping to Division III.
As an aside, I'll note that it is in fact possible that Rice could be kicked out of FBS, in a manner of speaking, but that's a discussion for another thread.
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