(10-17-2020 11:04 AM)Hilldog Wrote: Are you saying that private schools aren't cutting sports and implementing furloughs? No school has unlimited or recession/covid proof resources. Stanford dropped 10 sports. If Stanford dropping sports, of course UIW or ACU are going to be effected by covid. From a basketball standpoint, they would move up to a tougher conference, but would only split the pie with 10 other schools, assuming SUU comes in.
You can say ACU is in the middle, they could be an "eastern" school of a western conference or a western school of an "eastern" conference.
Any school that leaves the SLC for the WAC will be spending more money. So, if ACU and UIW were to join the WAC, they would be joining a conference that spends more on athletics, particularly basketball. This is an example of the spending from the 2018-2019 athletic basketball budgets:
GCU - $5.3 million
NMSU - $3.0 million
Seattle - $2.6 million
CBU - $2.5 million
UIW - $1.37 million
ACU - $1.1 million
In the SLC, only SFA at $2.0 million and Texas A&M Corpus Christi at $1.9 million had bigger basketball budget than UIW. If UIW and ACU were to decide to leave the SLC, then they would be spending more to keep up with the WAC's three private schools and NMSU. Obviously, there would also be some additional travel involved. CBU will surpass NMSU in basketball spending in the next year or two.
Moving football to a new WAC football conference would involve some additional travel expenses, but overall not a lot more spending on FCS football. It is just another FCS conference, which is needed.
in 2018-2019, ACU won the SLC Conference Championship in basketball with that $1.1 million dollar budget, going 27-7 for the season. Their Net ranking was the best in the conference at 154 and the SLC was ranked 30th and of 32 conferences in Net Ranking. The WAC was 16th out of 32 conferences. NMSU had a Net ranking of 40, UVU was 90th and GCU 96th. There is a ceiling in the SLC in basketball. A move to join the three WAC private schools and NMSU makes sense for UIW and ACU but they have to be willing to spend more money. This would not be a cost-cutting move.
On the subject of Stanford, it is a matter of priorities for them. In 2019-2020, they had a $27.7 billion dollar endowment and a budget of $6.8 billion, of which $1.3 billion came from the endowment. Cutting from 36 varsity sports to 25 varsity sports, while surprising, saved them $70 million over the next three years. Covid-19 cost them a lot of revenue and they felt they had to make the cuts to be able to balance their operating budget. But it is not like they don't have money and with 25 varsity sports, they still have more varsity teams than most schools.
https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/