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G5 has no regrets
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Kittonhead Offline
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Post: #1
G5 has no regrets
I keep hearing about how much of a money drain it is to play in the G5.

I can't come up with an instance of all of the schools who have made the FCS to FBS migration the last decade where there is a regret about making the move.

App State for example much rather conference with the likes of Georgia St, AState and Troy than road conference games in a 7500 seat stadium. Its well worth the geography stretch to play bigger schools.

G5 has no regrets.
01-22-2018 12:07 AM
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Tom in Lazybrook Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 12:07 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  I keep hearing about how much of a money drain it is to play in the G5.

I can't come up with an instance of all of the schools who have made the FCS to FBS migration the last decade where there is a regret about making the move.

App State for example much rather conference with the likes of Georgia St, AState and Troy than road conference games in a 7500 seat stadium. Its well worth the geography stretch to play bigger schools.

G5 has no regrets.c

I think you mistake my point. It isn't that the decision to play FBS rather than FCS that schools need to seriously look at....its the decision to play football at all. There are FCS teams that have larger deficits than any G5 school, and many FCS programs have higher per student per year subsidies than G5 schools.

From a practical perspective, for a school to move down or drop football, they big wigs at the college will have to admit that spending all that money was a mistake in the first place. Kind of hard to justify if you spent tens of millions of dollars on facilities in the last decade or so.


----

And don't think that the P5 schools are exempt from football induced financial woes...Some could get caught up in it. But if the new TV deals suck for the P5 teams, their teams could be facing financial problems. I wouldn't celebrate too quickly as a G5. This might result in lower payday revenue, lower CFP payouts to G5 teams etc.

---

We're probably a 5 or 6 years in front of a crisis. Here's what a school should be doing

1) Trying to really ramp up athletic giving, but not at the expense of academic giving
2) Really focusing on costs
3) Trying to really make an effort to make that investment valuable to all students (and not just traditional students)
4) Working to make your program more cost effective
5) Not needlessly angering stakeholders with boneheaded decisions (like hiring Baylor assistants for example).
6) And while your doing all that....you'll need to be putting a credible product on the field.

There will come a time when it might not be the College President starting a movement to shut football down...but it might come from the students.

----

Its not the students that are upset about the prospect of playing Elon or Kennesaw rather than Louisiana Tech or Arkansas State that you need to be concerned about. They are interested in football. Its the students that don't care who you're playing because they couldn't care less about football period. Those are the ones you need to engage.
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 12:37 AM by Tom in Lazybrook.)
01-22-2018 12:21 AM
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Kittonhead Offline
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Post: #3
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 12:21 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 12:07 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  I keep hearing about how much of a money drain it is to play in the G5.

I can't come up with an instance of all of the schools who have made the FCS to FBS migration the last decade where there is a regret about making the move.

App State for example much rather conference with the likes of Georgia St, AState and Troy than road conference games in a 7500 seat stadium. Its well worth the geography stretch to play bigger schools.

G5 has no regrets.

I think you mistake my point. It isn't that the decision to play FBS rather than FCS that schools need to seriously look at....its the decision to play football at all. There are FCS teams that have larger deficits than any G5 school, and many FCS programs have higher per student per year subsidies than G5 schools.

The number one determining factor on whether a school is playing football or not is if it has a stadium. If it has the stadium to play in its playing football.

Football is central to student life. Homecoming wouldn't be the same without football ect. Alumni aren't coming back to campus without a football game.

student fees aren't really that large at the mid major FB schools....most are 300-400 per student for sports with football about 1/3rd of that. It doesn't compare to the rapid increases in tuition and special fees for professional majors tacked on.

Its more when a 50 million dollar stadium investment is required to stay in the game when schools decide whether or not to pull the plug. That is more than what the mid major FB schools are willing to chew off for a non-essential expenditure.
01-22-2018 12:35 AM
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McKinney Offline
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Post: #4
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 12:35 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  The number one determining factor on whether a school is playing football or not is if it has a stadium. If it has the stadium to play in its playing football.

What about Wichita State?

No I'm not serious. You're right, infrastructure is a big deterrent to divestment
01-22-2018 12:51 AM
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Kittonhead Offline
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Post: #5
RE: G5 has no regrets
WSU had a dump so they scrapped.

UAB was about to do the same until community outcry.
01-22-2018 01:01 AM
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Tom in Lazybrook Offline
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Post: #6
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 01:01 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  WSU had a dump so they scrapped.

UAB was about to do the same until community outcry.

The UAB situation was about more than football. It was about institutional control.
01-22-2018 01:03 AM
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Shox Offline
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Post: #7
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 01:03 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 01:01 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  WSU had a dump so they scrapped.

UAB was about to do the same until community outcry.

The UAB situation was about more than football. It was about institutional control.

For the record, that is exactly what happened at WSU as well.
01-22-2018 07:40 AM
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TrueBlueDrew Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.
01-22-2018 08:41 AM
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Carolina_Low_Country Offline
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Post: #9
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

Umm... ECU is not a peer. We are a 30,000 student school, with a Medical and several doctoral and master programs.

Our Peer institutions
Central Michigan University
East Tennessee State University
FIU
NIU
Ohio University
Old Dominion University
Southern Illinois University - Carbondale
Texas Tech University
University at Buffalo (SUNY)*
University of Louisville*
University of Missouri - Kansas City
University of Nevada - Reno
University of North Dakota
University of South Carolina - Columbia*
University of Southern Mississippi
Virginia Commonwealth University
Western Michigan University
Wright State University - Main Campus
01-22-2018 10:35 AM
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quo vadis Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

Georgia Southern just moved up to FBS so you guys are still in the Honeymoon Phase, where alumni are excited and donations are pouring in. That's good.

But it's also true that compared to 5 years ago, you guys are soaking the academic side for $10m more a year, subsidies have risen from $7m to $17m in that time, out-stripping even the growing revenue increases from licensing, donations and ticket sales.

In terms of real revenue - meaning revenue actually generated by football, such as donations and ticket sales - you guys are on a growth trajectory right now, and if the growth continues, you will be an FBS success story. But if that stagnates such that the "growth" is just robbing Peter to pay Paul (student fees/transfers), it will be another failure.

We'll see. 07-coffee3
01-22-2018 10:48 AM
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TrueBlueDrew Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 10:35 AM)Carolina_Low_Country Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

Umm... ECU is not a peer. We are a 30,000 student school, with a Medical and several doctoral and master programs.

Our Peer institutions
Central Michigan University
East Tennessee State University
FIU
NIU
Ohio University
Old Dominion University
Southern Illinois University - Carbondale
Texas Tech University
University at Buffalo (SUNY)*
University of Louisville*
University of Missouri - Kansas City
University of Nevada - Reno
University of North Dakota
University of South Carolina - Columbia*
University of Southern Mississippi
Virginia Commonwealth University
Western Michigan University
Wright State University - Main Campus

Georgia Southern is a 28,000 student school with several doctoral and masters programs as well. ECU is listed as a peer on our website. It doesn't mean ECU has to list us as one back. For example, the University of South Carolina does not consider y'all a mutual peer.

However, that's not the point of my post at all.
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 10:53 AM by TrueBlueDrew.)
01-22-2018 10:49 AM
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Tom in Lazybrook Offline
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Post: #12
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

For a school like Georgia Southern, football is a really integral part of the school's existence (at least on their main campus - I would imagine that unless they make some real efforts to integrate Armstrong's students effectively into the program, they could run into issues). If they really needed to find the money to keep the program running, they'll find it. My guess is that if the state legislature passed some percentage rule banning subsidies over a certain amount or percentage of revenue....that Georgia Southern would find the money. It would be prudent IMHO for GSU to do a better job at finding the money now, rather than later, but that might be just me.

While its more expensive, its easier for school to raise revenue as a FBS. Doesn't mean the net is a positive, but there's that.

For a school like Georgia Southern, the question isn't whether they will play football, but who will pay for it.

I think that for a school like Georgia Southern, reducing the 18 million dollar per year athletic department budget deficit would be a good start. And not shifting the costs of that to students that aren't on their main campus would also be a good idea. If the students at Armstrong are expected to pay an extra grand a year to subsidize athletics played an hour away as a result of the merger, they could see pushback.
01-22-2018 10:55 AM
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TrueBlueDrew Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 10:55 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

For a school like Georgia Southern, football is a really integral part of the school's existence (at least on their main campus - I would imagine that unless they make some real efforts to integrate Armstrong's students effectively into the program, they could run into issues). If they really needed to find the money to keep the program running, they'll find it. My guess is that if the state legislature passed some percentage rule banning subsidies over a certain amount or percentage of revenue....that Georgia Southern would find the money. It would be prudent IMHO for GSU to do a better job at finding the money now, rather than later, but that might be just me.

While its more expensive, its easier for school to raise revenue as a FBS. Doesn't mean the net is a positive, but there's that.

For a school like Georgia Southern, the question isn't whether they will play football, but who will pay for it.

I think that for a school like Georgia Southern, reducing the 18 million dollar per year athletic department budget deficit would be a good start. And not shifting the costs of that to students that aren't on their main campus would also be a good idea. If the students at Armstrong are expected to pay an extra grand a year to subsidize athletics played an hour away as a result of the merger, they could see pushback.

I agree. Currently the plan is to integrate Armstrong students into the campus culture of Georgia Southern. They will pay athletics fees however it’s no where near a grand. I believe the fee will be $160 (the athletic fee of main campus students is $200). Transportation will be provided to Armstrong students for each home game and their fee will cover the cost of provided transportation plus free admission to every home game. Armstrong students pushed back at first but when they saw that their student fees would largely be the same as they were when Armstrong was D2 school, they settled down.

The state also has passed legislation that prohibits Georgia Southern and Georgia State from having athletic budgets that are over 65% subsidized by student fees. That legislation was more for State than for us as we’ve never been over 60% subsidized.
01-22-2018 11:11 AM
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Tom in Lazybrook Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 11:11 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 10:55 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

For a school like Georgia Southern, football is a really integral part of the school's existence (at least on their main campus - I would imagine that unless they make some real efforts to integrate Armstrong's students effectively into the program, they could run into issues). If they really needed to find the money to keep the program running, they'll find it. My guess is that if the state legislature passed some percentage rule banning subsidies over a certain amount or percentage of revenue....that Georgia Southern would find the money. It would be prudent IMHO for GSU to do a better job at finding the money now, rather than later, but that might be just me.

While its more expensive, its easier for school to raise revenue as a FBS. Doesn't mean the net is a positive, but there's that.

For a school like Georgia Southern, the question isn't whether they will play football, but who will pay for it.

I think that for a school like Georgia Southern, reducing the 18 million dollar per year athletic department budget deficit would be a good start. And not shifting the costs of that to students that aren't on their main campus would also be a good idea. If the students at Armstrong are expected to pay an extra grand a year to subsidize athletics played an hour away as a result of the merger, they could see pushback.

I agree. Currently the plan is to integrate Armstrong students into the campus culture of Georgia Southern. They will pay athletics fees however it’s no where near a grand. I believe the fee will be $160 (the athletic fee of main campus students is $200). Transportation will be provided to Armstrong students for each home game and their fee will cover the cost of provided transportation plus free admission to every home game. Armstrong students pushed back at first but when they saw that their student fees would largely be the same as they were when Armstrong was D2 school, they settled down.

The state also has passed legislation that prohibits Georgia Southern and Georgia State from having athletic budgets that are over 65% subsidized by student fees. That legislation was more for State than for us as we’ve never been over 60% subsidized.

The subsidy for athletics at Georgia Southern is probably a lot more than 200 a year. If the athletic revenue - expenses calculation for Georgia Southern is correct at -18,000,000 per year, and the school is only getting around 5 million from the students, then 13 million is coming from somewhere. Whether that amount is built into other charges or not, that's just accounting. The 18 million that Georgia Southern spends over and above revenue has to come from somewhere. Generally, foundations only spend 5 percent of the principal in any given year, so for Georgia Southern's athletic foundation to cover the 13 million hole not covered by revenue or stated student fees, that foundation would need to have $260,000,000 in it (or 5 times the general academic endowment fund). It probably doesn't. If the school is simply spending athletic department donations to cover operating expenses, that could be a recipe for disaster (you have a few bad years, one large donor dies, tax laws change, there's a recession, there's a scandal, etc.). But it is possible that Georgia Southern, unlike other schools, actually could raise 13 million a year in athletic department giving.

That being said, Georgia Southern is probably able to manage FBS, given its culture (and relatively lower cost structure) better than other schools.

----

I'm really concerned for many of our institutions if the new CFP and TV deals cut even more from G5 teams. Or if they get cut for P5 teams, and then our teams can't get as much for payday games because the P5 teams can't afford to pay us as much as previously.

EDIT. I actually found the fee structure. Kudos to Georgia Southern for breaking out the fee. http://finserv.georgiasouthern.edu/bursa...-and-fees/

Stated fees, solely for the benefit of athletics are $509 per student per year. Plus an institutional fee of 580 per student per year (no idea what that goes to - but it appears to be discretionary).

At 500 bucks a year per student (or 2 grand for a degree), Georgia Southern would be relatively inexpensive (but not cheap).
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 12:26 PM by Tom in Lazybrook.)
01-22-2018 12:05 PM
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oliveandblue Offline
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Post: #15
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 12:05 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 11:11 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 10:55 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

For a school like Georgia Southern, football is a really integral part of the school's existence (at least on their main campus - I would imagine that unless they make some real efforts to integrate Armstrong's students effectively into the program, they could run into issues). If they really needed to find the money to keep the program running, they'll find it. My guess is that if the state legislature passed some percentage rule banning subsidies over a certain amount or percentage of revenue....that Georgia Southern would find the money. It would be prudent IMHO for GSU to do a better job at finding the money now, rather than later, but that might be just me.

While its more expensive, its easier for school to raise revenue as a FBS. Doesn't mean the net is a positive, but there's that.

For a school like Georgia Southern, the question isn't whether they will play football, but who will pay for it.

I think that for a school like Georgia Southern, reducing the 18 million dollar per year athletic department budget deficit would be a good start. And not shifting the costs of that to students that aren't on their main campus would also be a good idea. If the students at Armstrong are expected to pay an extra grand a year to subsidize athletics played an hour away as a result of the merger, they could see pushback.

I agree. Currently the plan is to integrate Armstrong students into the campus culture of Georgia Southern. They will pay athletics fees however it’s no where near a grand. I believe the fee will be $160 (the athletic fee of main campus students is $200). Transportation will be provided to Armstrong students for each home game and their fee will cover the cost of provided transportation plus free admission to every home game. Armstrong students pushed back at first but when they saw that their student fees would largely be the same as they were when Armstrong was D2 school, they settled down.

The state also has passed legislation that prohibits Georgia Southern and Georgia State from having athletic budgets that are over 65% subsidized by student fees. That legislation was more for State than for us as we’ve never been over 60% subsidized.

The subsidy for athletics at Georgia Southern is probably a lot more than 200 a year. If the athletic revenue - expenses calculation for Georgia Southern is correct at -18,000,000 per year, and the school is only getting around 5 million from the students, then 13 million is coming from somewhere. Whether that amount is built into other charges or not, that's just accounting. The 18 million that Georgia Southern spends over and above revenue has to come from somewhere. Generally, foundations only spend 5 percent of the principal in any given year, so for Georgia Southern's athletic foundation to cover the 13 million hole not covered by revenue or stated student fees, that foundation would need to have $260,000,000 in it (or 5 times the general academic endowment fund). It probably doesn't. If the school is simply spending athletic department donations to cover operating expenses, that could be a recipe for disaster (you have a few bad years, one large donor dies, tax laws change, there's a recession, there's a scandal, etc.). But it is possible that Georgia Southern, unlike other schools, actually could raise 13 million a year in athletic department giving.

That being said, Georgia Southern is probably able to manage FBS, given its culture (and relatively lower cost structure) better than other schools.

----

I'm really concerned for many of our institutions if the new CFP and TV deals cut even more from G5 teams. Or if they get cut for P5 teams, and then our teams can't get as much for payday games because the P5 teams can't afford to pay us as much as previously.

There are some G5 teams that are actively moving away from those types of games. The 2 for 1 is becoming popular since it keeps the buy cost minimal, and the smaller program gets a high dollar home game. It's a win-win.

Personally, I would like a permanent ban on all buy games.
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 12:17 PM by oliveandblue.)
01-22-2018 12:16 PM
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Post: #16
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 10:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

Georgia Southern just moved up to FBS so you guys are still in the Honeymoon Phase, where alumni are excited and donations are pouring in. That's good.

But it's also true that compared to 5 years ago, you guys are soaking the academic side for $10m more a year, subsidies have risen from $7m to $17m in that time, out-stripping even the growing revenue increases from licensing, donations and ticket sales.

In terms of real revenue - meaning revenue actually generated by football, such as donations and ticket sales - you guys are on a growth trajectory right now, and if the growth continues, you will be an FBS success story. But if that stagnates such that the "growth" is just robbing Peter to pay Paul (student fees/transfers), it will be another failure.

We'll see. 07-coffee3

Georgia Southern is one of the few recent moveups that I thought made sense. They don't have pro competition. They are a decent sized school in a good sized growing state. They had success at FCS. There's nobody else in the southern half of the state. They are in a really good area for talent. And there is really only one other school that is competition for fans in their area-UGA. Georgia Tech's appeal is fairly limited since it is much smaller and historically used to be pretty much just an engineering school.
01-22-2018 12:51 PM
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TrueBlueDrew Offline
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RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 10:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

Georgia Southern just moved up to FBS so you guys are still in the Honeymoon Phase, where alumni are excited and donations are pouring in. That's good.

But it's also true that compared to 5 years ago, you guys are soaking the academic side for $10m more a year, subsidies have risen from $7m to $17m in that time, out-stripping even the growing revenue increases from licensing, donations and ticket sales.

In terms of real revenue - meaning revenue actually generated by football, such as donations and ticket sales - you guys are on a growth trajectory right now, and if the growth continues, you will be an FBS success story. But if that stagnates such that the "growth" is just robbing Peter to pay Paul (student fees/transfers), it will be another failure.

We'll see. 07-coffee3

While it's true that students have incurred extra fees during our move-up, it's nothing that the students themselves didn't vote for. There was a campus wide vote of students and faculty to approve the move to FBS that needed a 60% majority to pass. The subsequent FBS fee and stadium expansion fee that were added on top of the athletic fee were approved by student council.

Even though the expenses of athletics have risen since the move up, our academics haven't suffered at all. They've honestly gotten better since. We've raised our academic requirements and and began expanding our academic facilities investing over 150M in the last few years on new buildings and equipment that has turned GSU into the only public research hub south of Atlanta. We haven't even begun the South Campus expansion which will almost double the size of our main campus.

Like Bullet said, it helps a lot being the only big school in our region and having good D1 athletics has served as a great front porch for our university. The more people that see your front porch, the more people will be interested to see what's going on inside your house.
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 01:25 PM by TrueBlueDrew.)
01-22-2018 01:24 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #18
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 01:24 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 10:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

Georgia Southern just moved up to FBS so you guys are still in the Honeymoon Phase, where alumni are excited and donations are pouring in. That's good.

But it's also true that compared to 5 years ago, you guys are soaking the academic side for $10m more a year, subsidies have risen from $7m to $17m in that time, out-stripping even the growing revenue increases from licensing, donations and ticket sales.

In terms of real revenue - meaning revenue actually generated by football, such as donations and ticket sales - you guys are on a growth trajectory right now, and if the growth continues, you will be an FBS success story. But if that stagnates such that the "growth" is just robbing Peter to pay Paul (student fees/transfers), it will be another failure.

We'll see. 07-coffee3

While it's true that students have incurred extra fees during our move-up, it's nothing that the students themselves didn't vote for. There was a campus wide vote of students and faculty to approve the move to FBS that needed a 60% majority to pass. The subsequent FBS fee and stadium expansion fee that were added on top of the athletic fee were approved by student council.

Even though the expenses of athletics have risen since the move up, our academics haven't suffered at all. They've honestly gotten better since. We've raised our academic requirements and and began expanding our academic facilities investing over 150M in the last few years on new buildings and equipment that has turned GSU into the only public research hub south of Atlanta. We haven't even begun the South Campus expansion which will almost double the size of our main campus.

Student votes on these fees are, IMO, problematic for a number of reasons. One is that a significant portion of students might still end up paying for something that they don't want to, and since the program in question isn't about the academic mission, shouldn't have to. E.g., the vote to pass the fee is 60% in favor, 40% against, but the fee is imposed on 100% of students. Much better if those who want a football program pay for it, those who don't, don't.

Second, in a lot of cases these votes have kangaroo qualities. They might be non-binding, meaning the admins will do what they want anyway, or else if the admins lose a vote, then they just keep scheduling them until them until they pass. The pro-fee side gets do-overs.

Third, a lot of times these votes are like votes in communist countries - one person, one vote, one time, because once we win the vote, there won't be any more after that. Once the fee is passed, students may never get a chance vote on it again, or maybe not for many years later, meaning the fee doesn't have a mandate among current students, but it is imposed anyway.

Finally, students are often voting for fees they won't personally have to pay, or at least not much. E.g., seniors and even juniors with just a semester or two left on campus can feel freer to vote for a fee that is going to be imposed until once they are gone, or almost gone. They pass the real costs on to the students who come after. I recall something like that when I was USF. There was an expansion of a student center or something that the admins wanted to build, and they wanted student government to kick in money via a fee. I was an upper-classman with bills to pay and didn't think the expansion was needed, but when i found out the fee would go into effect after i graduated, it was like "Sure, why not"?

Also, it's great news that GS's research capabilities are improving, thanks to big capital expenditures. But whatever the money spent, there would be $10m more of it without the big ramp-up in FBS related fees and transfers. That's not chump change. Enrollment doesn't seem to have grown since the move to FBS, but maybe it will.

Like i said, IMO the jury is out on the move to FBS. It's too soon to tell. Hopefully, it works out well for you. 04-cheers
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2018 02:18 PM by quo vadis.)
01-22-2018 02:12 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #19
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 12:51 PM)bullet Wrote:  Georgia Southern is one of the few recent moveups that I thought made sense. They don't have pro competition. They are a decent sized school in a good sized growing state. They had success at FCS. There's nobody else in the southern half of the state. They are in a really good area for talent. And there is really only one other school that is competition for fans in their area-UGA. Georgia Tech's appeal is fairly limited since it is much smaller and historically used to be pretty much just an engineering school.

All the rest sounds good, except for the bolded part. That's like me being locked in a cage with a 900-pound gorilla, and someone on the outside saying "well, you should be optimistic, because there really is only one other creature in that cage you have to compete with to get out" ... 07-coffee3
01-22-2018 02:20 PM
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Steve1981 Offline
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Post: #20
RE: G5 has no regrets
(01-22-2018 08:41 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Almost everyone who plays in the Sun Belt and CUSA moved up from the FCS and I don’t think a single school except for Idaho obviously would entertain going back.

From a Georgia Southern perspective, we only entered the FBS a few years ago, but our athletic budget has doubled, we’ve added almost 10k seats to our stadium and fill it regularly, and we get more national recognition now than we did even when playing FCS National Championship games.

However, we didn’t move up for that. We moved up to be in the same subdivision as our peer schools. ECU, App State, MTSU, Troy, Texas State, Southern Miss, etc are all listed as our peer institutions and almost all of them are schools we used to play at the D1-AA level before they moved up. That left us as a large public school with 21k (soon to be 28k) students playing in a subdivision dominated by small private colleges with 4-5k students. It was a no brainer to make the decision to move up with our peer schools and I’m glad we did.

That is it on a nail head. We consider ourselves a national research institution and aspire to be AAU. We've been a top 30 public research university for the past 4 years. Almost everybody in that club is FBS. You can argue all you want about who our peers are, but we moved up to be like our peers.
01-22-2018 03:21 PM
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