(03-09-2020 01:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 10:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 10:38 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  "It helps attract and retain students," is usually the college response.

Thing is though, it really doesn't, at least not (ironically) for the schools that seem to soak their students the most. There was a study published last year that showed that truly elite performance in the major sports - like winning a BCS bowl game or making the final AP top 10, or making the Final 4 in men's hoops, did cause a non-trivial increase in student enrollment, which faded out after about 3 years.

IOW's, it really is a "Flutie Effect", you need to win a major bowl like the 1985 Cotton Bowl, and have the Heisman Trophy winner, to get the effect.

All other achievements, even in women's hoops and baseball, had zero impact. And of course 99% of all the schools soaking their students with athletic fees never attain the kind of success needed to gain these benefits.

The simple answer is that there are humans involved here and, at the end of the day, administrators that would dare downsize or eliminate an athletic department have more to lose *personally* than administrators that keep them going. (See UAB football.)

I'd compare it to pro sports stadiums. Every economic study under the sun shows that municipalities are on the losing end of public funding of pro sports stadiums.

So, why do governors and mayors still sign onto pro sports stadium deals? It's because despite all of the taxpayer watchdog group warnings, the simple fact of the matter is that governors and mayors have a history of getting voted *out* of office if they lose a pro sports team, whereas they get hailed as heroes when they get a pro sports team. Public opinion polls might even state that a majority of the people don't want to have public subsidies for pro sports stadiums. However, when a pro sports team actually carries out an act of leaving for another location, the politicians get hammered by the voters much more than if they had signed onto a new stadium deal.

Ultimately, "we" the public (and I mean the royal "we" as opposed to this board in particular) are to blame for this because we all talk both sides of our mouths on this issue (myself included). We claim that we don't want overspending on sports, whether college or pro... yet our TV viewing habits and actions support the notion that spectator sports are actually more valuable than ever. We claim that we don't want public funding for a pro sports stadium, but when our favorite team leaves for another city, we then blame the mayor. We claim that we won't want money-losing college teams, but when a school like UAB takes action to eliminate football, it becomes such a massive political mushroom cloud that they completely backtracked.

Long story short: most university presidents are only going to be at their particular jobs for a few years before moving somewhere else, so he/she doesn't want that reputation of being the person that killed Division I sports at a school. That's a scarlet letter that doesn't ever leave a resume. In contrast, it's FAR easier for those university presidents to simply tack on an additional athletic fee to student bills. There's no contest there. It looks a heck of a lot better on a resume for better jobs when university presidents figure out ways to *save* athletic departments (even if it's superficial via more student fees) as opposed to killing them.

I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

(03-09-2020 01:50 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 01:29 PM)nachoman91 Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 10:30 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  ....bury those fees in fine print or on websites because they know they are morally wrong. They are soaking regular students to pay for athletes, and money losing athletic programs that stroke admin and high-roller alumni egos.

Doesn't an athletic program act as advertising for a University? I would venture to guess that a successful athletic program actually draws in students....i.e. that schools enrollment numbers increase directly because of the athletic program. So those fees could be considered nothing more than additional advertising money.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a study published last year that showed an "advertising" impact of athletics on enrollment only when football or men's hoops achieves an elite performance outcome. Merely having such teams, even if they perform pretty well, has no such impact. And there is no impact at all for other sports even if they perform at an elite level.

That study lacks a control for no high level athletics vs high level athletics. What it is measuring is having high level athletics vs high level athletics performing at an elite level. It's apples and oranges.

I chose Georgetown over two Ivy League schools due in part to the men's bball program. I wanted to go to a school with elite academics and athletics. Similarly, a buddy of mine from high school wanted to go to the highest ranked school he could get into that played what was then the highest level of football (think P5, not G5) and went to a school in the ACC.

Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

(03-09-2020 09:14 PM)VCE Wrote:  Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

That's your opinion but ....

I would bet that at certain schools that have developed a reputation for high-level athletics, that it is a big driver of enrollment and donations, etc. I mean, it's silly to think that the Alabama or LSU or USC football programs don't drive a lot of interest in the school.

But at East Texas Panhandle State? Probably next to nothing.

(03-09-2020 09:43 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:14 PM)VCE Wrote:  Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

That's your opinion but ....

I would bet that at certain schools that have developed a reputation for high-level athletics, that it is a big driver of enrollment and donations, etc. I mean, it's silly to think that the Alabama or LSU or USC football programs don't drive a lot of interest in the school.

But at East Texas Panhandle State? Probably next to nothing.

There's surely a line, and I'd guess it's above ETPS

But is it above or below a JMU? I'm not so sure that it's above the Dukes.

and Hoya Saxa!

(03-09-2020 02:33 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Lots and lots of MAC-ish schools in VA and the Carolinas on that list. I think that is reflective of the disarray geographically in the low to mid conferences in the greater southeast. If the Sun Belt, C-USA, SoCon, and Big South were to reshuffle the deck based upon history, tradition, and geographic cohesiveness like the MAC they'd all be better off and not need to so heavily rely on student subsidies.

Just noting the article calls out the AAC’s East Carolina, and features pictures of ECU’s football crowds twice.

(03-09-2020 09:53 PM)VCE Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:43 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:14 PM)VCE Wrote:  Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

That's your opinion but ....

I would bet that at certain schools that have developed a reputation for high-level athletics, that it is a big driver of enrollment and donations, etc. I mean, it's silly to think that the Alabama or LSU or USC football programs don't drive a lot of interest in the school.

But at East Texas Panhandle State? Probably next to nothing.

There's surely a line, and I'd guess it's above ETPS

But is it above or below a JMU? I'm not so sure that it's above the Dukes.

and Hoya Saxa!

Hoya Saxa!

About this exchange, you make some interesting points. First, going back a post, I'm not sure the study I referenced didn't control for the absence of high level athletics. I haven't looked at it in a while, but it would seem easy enough to do within and without. E.g., we could look at enrollment impact at schools like ODU and USF before and after the introduction of FBS football, and we can compare enrollment at schools with FBS football (if we define FBS as "high level") with schools at FCS or D2 or D3 level, so unless that wasn't a research concern of the authors I would expect it to be done.

Second, I would bet the "cutoff line" is probably higher than you believe it to be. Probably half the FBS schools don't derive any discernible enrollment or academic donation benefit from FBS. Eastern Michigan? San Jose State? My goodness. Much less FCS - though North Dakota State is probably an exception.

E.g., since we're swapping anecdotes, ODU moved up to FBS in 2014. Their undergrad enrollment last year was around 19,100. Their undergrad enrollment in 2012, before FBS, was ... 19,600. At JMU, enrollment has grown steadily since it admitted men in the 1960s, before and after football moved from D3 to FCS in 1980.

At USF, yes, our enrollment rose significantly after we got football in 1997 and moved up to FBS in 2000, and has grown since then. Problem is, like at UCF, enrollment was growing rapidly before football too.

I was at USF during the early 1990s when establishing a football team was being debated. I don't recall any arguments being made that football was critical to growing our enrollment and stuff like that. The argument was more along the lines of "we're the largest university in the country without a football team, so why don't we have one? Florida and FSU have football teams, why not us"?

IOW's, and I suspect this has been true at many places, the establishment of "high level" (FBS) football is likely an effect of enrollment and institutional growth not a cause. A school grows to a particular size for multiple reasons, and important constituencies start to think that we should have football too, as if football is an emblem of having arrived at a certain level of size and importance. I think this has what has driven football at many of the G5 type directional schools.

Then, once you are stuck with these expensive money losing programs, it is devilishly hard to get rid of them, much like with other government programs that become entrenched.

(03-09-2020 09:02 PM)sierrajip Wrote:  I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

...but they're not getting the job fully done.

And I'll go out there that every student is probably in some way paying for athletics with their tuition and fees. It's part of the overall upkeep and operations of an institution. You can bury it, repackage, bundle, creatively budget, or pretty it up anyway you want: if it costs the school to have and staff it, students and/or taxpayers pay for it.

With the list in mind, I'm curious about James Madison and Old Dominion. Like, what kind of context is there with those fees. This version of ODU football only completed its tenth season, and stormed through a top FCS conference and into the thick of a geographically huge G5-FBS conference. Whereas JMU runs a top FCS program, and may outspend some FBS programs with their football operations. Like, how would these numbers look if ODU didn't go FBS, and JMU did?

(03-09-2020 09:02 PM)sierrajip Wrote:  I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

But ... I suspect most such alumni are interested in donating to athletics, which doesn't do any good in that regard.

E.g., in 2015, UCF's endowment was about $160 million. Today, after two undefeated football regular seasons and NY6 bowl appearances, it is $180 million, a gain entirely attributable to the rise of investment markets during that time.

(03-10-2020 10:16 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:02 PM)sierrajip Wrote:  I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

...but they're not getting the job fully done.

And I'll go out there that every student is probably in some way paying for athletics with their tuition and fees. It's part of the overall upkeep and operations of an institution. You can bury it, repackage, bundle, creatively budget, or pretty it up anyway you want: if it costs the school to have and staff it, students and/or taxpayers pay for it.

With the list in mind, I'm curious about James Madison and Old Dominion. Like, what kind of context is there with those fees. This version of ODU football only completed its tenth season, and stormed through a top FCS conference and into the thick of a geographically huge G5-FBS conference. Whereas JMU runs a top FCS program, and may outspend some FBS programs with their football operations. Like, how would these numbers look if ODU didn't go FBS, and JMU did?

Well as is mentioned in the article it's no surprise that VA schools are at the top of this list and you explain why. Other schools are getting the funding from the students through tuition whereas VA schools must use only fees.

As far as ODU vs JMU? We currently have similar football budgets (ODU 11.4 M vs JMU 10.6 M) although what we spend it on is different. We obviously have more student aid and travel and they seem to have more administrative, overhead and gameday expenses. Coaching salaries is not too far off though we (ODU) raised some money to increase our salary pool with the hiring of the new coach (it was obviously needed). But ODU had a lot more revenue so we posted a loss of $2.9M where JMU post a 5.7M loss for football. Now before Quo decries this as the worst crime to students in history let's look at some other figures. In 2008 before we had football the athletic department brought in 1.4 million in donations, in 2018 that number had risen to just shy of 7 million even though less than half (3.3M) were designated to just football. So would the other 3.7M come in without football? Probably not. For comparison JMU had 1.3M in donations in 2008 and 2.6M in 2018.

(03-10-2020 10:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:53 PM)VCE Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:43 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:14 PM)VCE Wrote:  Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

That's your opinion but ....

I would bet that at certain schools that have developed a reputation for high-level athletics, that it is a big driver of enrollment and donations, etc. I mean, it's silly to think that the Alabama or LSU or USC football programs don't drive a lot of interest in the school.

But at East Texas Panhandle State? Probably next to nothing.

There's surely a line, and I'd guess it's above ETPS

But is it above or below a JMU? I'm not so sure that it's above the Dukes.

and Hoya Saxa!

Hoya Saxa!

About this exchange, you make some interesting points. First, going back a post, I'm not sure the study I referenced didn't control for the absence of high level athletics. I haven't looked at it in a while, but it would seem easy enough to do within and without. E.g., we could look at enrollment impact at schools like ODU and USF before and after the introduction of FBS football, and we can compare enrollment at schools with FBS football (if we define FBS as "high level") with schools at FCS or D2 or D3 level, so unless that wasn't a research concern of the authors I would expect it to be done.

Second, I would bet the "cutoff line" is probably higher than you believe it to be. Probably half the FBS schools don't derive any discernible enrollment or academic donation benefit from FBS. Eastern Michigan? San Jose State? My goodness. Much less FCS - though North Dakota State is probably an exception.

E.g., since we're swapping anecdotes, ODU moved up to FBS in 2014. Their undergrad enrollment last year was around 19,100. Their undergrad enrollment in 2012, before FBS, was ... 19,600. At JMU, enrollment has grown steadily since it admitted men in the 1960s, before and after football moved from D3 to FCS in 1980.

At USF, yes, our enrollment rose significantly after we got football in 1997 and moved up to FBS in 2000, and has grown since then. Problem is, like at UCF, enrollment was growing rapidly before football too.

I was at USF during the early 1990s when establishing a football team was being debated. I don't recall any arguments being made that football was critical to growing our enrollment and stuff like that. The argument was more along the lines of "we're the largest university in the country without a football team, so why don't we have one? Florida and FSU have football teams, why not us"?

IOW's, and I suspect this has been true at many places, the establishment of "high level" (FBS) football is likely an effect of enrollment and institutional growth not a cause. A school grows to a particular size for multiple reasons, and important constituencies start to think that we should have football too, as if football is an emblem of having arrived at a certain level of size and importance. I think this has what has driven football at many of the G5 type directional schools.

Then, once you are stuck with these expensive money losing programs, it is devilishly hard to get rid of them, much like with other government programs that become entrenched.

Our admission requirements have risen I believe. We're getting about 25% more applications than we did before we had football. If you'd ever been to the campus before and after adding football it's night and day. It's really helped shed a lot of the commuter college aspects. Though there's still plenty of students that commute it feels much more like a traditional University. There's no doubt adding football has improved the University, whether moving to FBS had as big of impact is debatable but I think the economics is better at the G5 level.

(03-10-2020 10:23 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:02 PM)sierrajip Wrote:  I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

But ... I suspect most such alumni are interested in donating to athletics, which doesn't do any good in that regard.

E.g., in 2015, UCF's endowment was about $160 million. Today, after two undefeated football regular seasons and NY6 bowl appearances, it is $180 million, a gain entirely attributable to the rise of investment markets during that time.

We just finished raising $500m. We'll see how that get calculated into the endowment, but I'm highly skeptical that the football success did not help enable that. Winning in athletics certainly creates an image and feeling around the university of overall success.

(03-10-2020 02:55 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  

(03-10-2020 10:23 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:02 PM)sierrajip Wrote:  I would give you a +100 if I could. Bringing in money from alumni which wants the D1 sports is the reason.

But ... I suspect most such alumni are interested in donating to athletics, which doesn't do any good in that regard.

E.g., in 2015, UCF's endowment was about $160 million. Today, after two undefeated football regular seasons and NY6 bowl appearances, it is $180 million, a gain entirely attributable to the rise of investment markets during that time.

We just finished raising $500m. We'll see how that get calculated into the endowment, but I'm highly skeptical that the football success did not help enable that. Winning in athletics certainly creates an image and feeling around the university of overall success.

Well, I do have my doubts. E.g., at USF we raised $1 Billion ending in 2017, and that was during a time of very little football success (ouch!).

Anecdotes aren't worth much when it comes to accurate analysis, but I'll share NDSU's.

NDSU was very successful in DII. Football, women's basketball, wrestling, volleyball, track & field, and women's softball were all extremely successful to just regular successful. Even so, the university as a whole was stagnant through the 80s and 90s.

The move to DI in the early 00s helped to invigorate the campus and community. It was only one piece of a bigger plan, but it was the part that got the attention of general public and many alumni. The football games between NDSU and the Minnesota Gophers, and the basketball games versus Wisconsin and Marquette, all grabbed the attention of alumni that had lost touch with the university. The NDSU Alumni Association started hosting football watch parties across the country to help these fans reconnect(many of the watch parties were happening before the DI move, but attendance and the number of parties shot up during it). This rejuvenated network of friends of the university allowed for a record-breaking fundraising campaign that greatly increased scholarship and faculty endowments. And now it's helping another campaign that is over three times as big.

But that's not to say that NDSU's case is typical; in fact, I'd suggest it's the outlier. But it shows it's possible to be done right. And NDSU has managed to accomplish this with pretty low student fees and institutional subsidies. (5.3% of the athletic budget comes from student fees, and 31.6% come from student fees plus institutional funds.) I wouldn't mind seeing the total subsidy number below 25%, but it's damned good for the FCS/mid-major level.

Intercollegiate athletics being self-sustaining is a new thing. If you go back a few decades you find most years the number of self-suffificent programs often was in the single digits even back when head coaches were making less than university presidents and even back when schools sponsored fewer sports because there was no Title IX.

BUT

I think people ought to agree that Division I with the requirement of 14 sports and awarding at least half the maximum scholarships and Division I FBS with 16 sports and 200 grants-in-aid probably isn't where you belong when three out of four dollars spent comes from students and somewhere around 50 cents of every dollar spent you should re-evaluate your athletic spending.

Maybe FBS is appropriate but instead of hiring a football coach for $1.5 million you need a $500,000 a year coach. Maybe you should have one set of helmets and one dark and one light jersey. Maybe you should rethink upgrading a video board that still has 6 years of useful life until it is a bit older.

If you are only offering the full scholarship limits in men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball and baseball and less than full aid in 10 other sports and you consistently finish in contention for last in your conference all-sports trophy because you have ten sports that usually aren't competitive, you really ought to either find a less competitive league or consider Division II where the budgets are more in line with what you can afford.

(03-09-2020 09:53 PM)VCE Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:43 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:14 PM)VCE Wrote:  Different kids have different expectations for their college experience. The existence of high level college sports can have a profound impact on the choices they make.

That's your opinion but ....

I would bet that at certain schools that have developed a reputation for high-level athletics, that it is a big driver of enrollment and donations, etc. I mean, it's silly to think that the Alabama or LSU or USC football programs don't drive a lot of interest in the school.

But at East Texas Panhandle State? Probably next to nothing.

There's surely a line, and I'd guess it's above ETPS

But is it above or below a JMU? I'm not so sure that it's above the Dukes.

and Hoya Saxa!

Based on a sample of 1, my son, below P5 is all the same (as far as the impact of athletics-academics still differentiates).

(03-13-2020 08:42 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Intercollegiate athletics being self-sustaining is a new thing. If you go back a few decades you find most years the number of self-suffificent programs often was in the single digits even back when head coaches were making less than university presidents and even back when schools sponsored fewer sports because there was no Title IX.

Difference is cost. For example, in 1990, the average Big 10 athletic budget was $9 million, so we can assume that Division I schools that were not in a major conference - "G5" type schools - were spending what, around $5 million? Probably too high but let's just say.

That's about $9 million in today's money. So even if we assume absolutely zero revenue and a "transfer rate" of 100%, that's nothing compared to the $25 million transfer rates by many G5 today. Adjust for student enrollment too if you want, it's still way way more.

So why? I suspect the problem is "ego". That is, circa 1990, schools like Eastern Michigan were satisfied with being what they were, off the map football schools. Today, though, every G5 is a 'striver' trying to build a "big time" program. So that means constantly spending more to not be "left behind", etc.

(03-13-2020 01:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-13-2020 08:42 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Intercollegiate athletics being self-sustaining is a new thing. If you go back a few decades you find most years the number of self-suffificent programs often was in the single digits even back when head coaches were making less than university presidents and even back when schools sponsored fewer sports because there was no Title IX.

Difference is cost. For example, in 1990, the average Big 10 athletic budget was $9 million, so we can assume that Division I schools that were not in a major conference - "G5" type schools - were spending what, around $5 million? Probably too high but let's just say.

That's about $9 million in today's money. So even if we assume absolutely zero revenue and a "transfer rate" of 100%, that's nothing compared to the $25 million transfer rates by many G5 today. Adjust for student enrollment too if you want, it's still way way more.

So why? I suspect the problem is "ego". That is, circa 1990, schools like Eastern Michigan were satisfied with being what they were, off the map football schools. Today, though, every G5 is a 'striver' trying to build a "big time" program. So that means constantly spending more to not be "left behind", etc.

I think it is a two-fold problem. The 70's are hard to evaluate, started the decade with stagflation and new responsibility of Title IX. The 80's are hard to evaluate because mostly even power schools ended up sideways to behind in media income after OU v NCAA. Took the breakup of CFA and rise of cable to get income rising then it went exponential.

When the cash influx happened, power schools had no idea what to do with it. Unable to spend it on student-athletes and many P5 athletic departments being powerful fiefdoms (see Georgia and Arkansas where chancellors/presidents went up against AD's and lost) the system went off the rails. Coaches and ADs began making more than their titular boss the university president and if successful wielded more power than the president.

Schools seriously have gone bonkers. Eli Drinkwitz, I'd bet my paycheck would have taken the Mizzou job for half what they paid, probably less than that to get closer to home. I like the guy one of the few guys who put in two years at AState during the 5 in 5 years. I KNOW that Hugh Freeze would have gone from AState to his childhood favorite school Ole Miss for half what they paid him.

The irresponsible spending, over-paying just because your fans would be appalled that you spent ONLY $2 million a year on a head coach has caused people to lose their minds.

But I think we are going to get a market correction.

Attendance is down something like six straight years. Come September I think we will see even more empty seats. The public is going to go 60, maybe 90 days with no sports at all. Maybe there is pent-up demand, I suspect more likely people fall out of the habit of thinking so much about sports.

Consensus seems to be we are headed to a deep recession but probably an abnormally short recession for the degree of economic downturn.

Most likely we see an acceleration cord-cutting. You survived three months without sports, hanging on to cable/satellite for ESPN and your local RSN is going to be less of an imperative but saving expenses probably will be more important.

Remember the national championship game was up 4% in viewership this year and even then, out of every 1000 homes with a television, only 143 were tuned in. Out of all of bowl season, only six games drew 5% or more of TV homes. Only three conference title games hit that and all were on OTA broadcasts.

Unless a direct-to-consumer model is embraced by consumers at price point to keep demand there it will be hard to stop the revenue declines from carriage fee losses. Sports fans are a hardcore bunch but a small segment.

Recession means state tax collections will fall and the budget knife almost always starts at higher ed. We are short of people age 12-18 vs the past decade or so, that means college enrollment is likely to decline so fee and transfer income is likely to fall.

The NCAA very likely will cut it's distribution because they've spent most of the reserve fund to bail the power five schools out of student-athlete litigation related to full cost of attendance, name and likeness, and concussions.

Ohio State and Alabama probably won't notice the cut. Alabama A&M and Cleveland State probably will notice the cut.

In the ESPN+ era the difference between being in the MEAC or Summit in Division I vs being in the SIAC or MIAA in Division II isn't that dramatic when it comes to exposure. The primary difference is whether or not your conference tournament title game is on ESPN/ESPN2 or on ESPN+ and then getting a school in the league on the office betting pool when people fill out brackets and most times you get one game, often low viewership game in Dayton but regular season telecasts are about the same.

(03-09-2020 06:51 PM)whittx Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 12:51 PM)ChrisLords Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 12:31 PM)DawgNBama Wrote:  Those fees differ from state to state. The state of Virginia is ridiculous with their student fees, I've noticed.

Athletics fees got so bad, that the state had to pass a law that limits athletics fees to a percentage of athletics budget. Looking at the top 10, there are a lot of schools out of compliance. I guess nothing is being done to enforce the law.

Virginia Military Institute $3,340
Citadel Military College of South Carolina $2,713
James Madison University $2,340
Longwood University $2,012
College of William and Mary $1,900
Old Dominion University $1,678
Norfolk State University $1,538
College of Charleston $1,278
Winthrop University $1,225
Radford University $1,180

And as shown here, South Carolina is just as obnoxious. They have the other three schools here, with Coastal close behind.

Part of the reason for The Citadel being so high is the fact that every cadet is required to participate in either a varsity or intramural sport. I would imagine being a military school as well that VMI is the same way.

(03-18-2020 09:17 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(03-13-2020 01:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-13-2020 08:42 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Intercollegiate athletics being self-sustaining is a new thing. If you go back a few decades you find most years the number of self-suffificent programs often was in the single digits even back when head coaches were making less than university presidents and even back when schools sponsored fewer sports because there was no Title IX.

Difference is cost. For example, in 1990, the average Big 10 athletic budget was $9 million, so we can assume that Division I schools that were not in a major conference - "G5" type schools - were spending what, around $5 million? Probably too high but let's just say.

That's about $9 million in today's money. So even if we assume absolutely zero revenue and a "transfer rate" of 100%, that's nothing compared to the $25 million transfer rates by many G5 today. Adjust for student enrollment too if you want, it's still way way more.

So why? I suspect the problem is "ego". That is, circa 1990, schools like Eastern Michigan were satisfied with being what they were, off the map football schools. Today, though, every G5 is a 'striver' trying to build a "big time" program. So that means constantly spending more to not be "left behind", etc.

I think it is a two-fold problem. The 70's are hard to evaluate, started the decade with stagflation and new responsibility of Title IX. The 80's are hard to evaluate because mostly even power schools ended up sideways to behind in media income after OU v NCAA. Took the breakup of CFA and rise of cable to get income rising then it went exponential.

When the cash influx happened, power schools had no idea what to do with it. Unable to spend it on student-athletes and many P5 athletic departments being powerful fiefdoms (see Georgia and Arkansas where chancellors/presidents went up against AD's and lost) the system went off the rails. Coaches and ADs began making more than their titular boss the university president and if successful wielded more power than the president.

FWIW, this notion of football coaches being paid huge amounts recently is not the case. The link below shows that as early as 1905, top football coaches were getting paid more than their university presidents. When Alabama hired Bear Bryant in 1957, his salary of $17,500 was greater than that of the university president, and stayed that way for the next 25 years.

https://www.bannersociety.com/2019/8/15/...ry-highest

And spending a ton on coaches is only irresponsible if it costs you money. Look at the very highest paid coaches: Is Dabo worth $9 million a year to Clemson? Is Saban worth $8m a year to Alabama? Was Urban worth $8m a year to Ohio State? Given the enormous revenue increases that have occurred while they were coaching, i think the answer is surely a whopping big "yes". That is not irresponsible spending.

What *is* irresponsible is paying a coach $2m a year, like my USF does, for a big negative return on investment.

Bottom line is, it is pretty clear that non-AQ football schools are losing a lot more money, after adjusting for inflation, than they were in the pre-BCS era. I mean a ton more. The data on AD budgets tells us that. And that, IMO is tied to a desire to "keep in touch" with the elite schools whose revenues have gone way up during that time.

Bear Bryant's 1957 salary is $161k in current dollars. So a very comfortable living, but not rich. Hard to say a 50-60x increase in real dollars isn't a huge increase.

And of course the true cost of coaches isn't even shown entirely by salary anymore with all the large buyout, guaranteed contracts. Missouri is not only paying Drinkwitz $4M/yr, they had to pay Odom $3M to get rid of him.