What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Discuss the MVC hoops season here.

What happens next?

Wichita St leaves for a better league
40
37%
Missouri St, IllinoisSt, UNI move up to FBS
27
25%
MVC expands
40
37%
 
Total votes : 107

Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby unipanther99 » September 14th, 2017, 1:34 pm

rally wrote:
Khan4Cats wrote:
I'd be curious to see the balance sheets of the private schools to see just how profitable their 'non-football' athletic departments are. I doubt they are any more profitable than the football playing publics.


If all or almost all FCS schools are losing money playing football, their overall athletic departments are going to be worse off then if they didn't sponsor football. Conversely, if you don't sponsor football, your athletic department if going to be better off than if it did because aren't losing money on it. That's one factor, and there are plenty of others in judging the performance of an athletic department. But the negative financial effect that FCS football has on an athletic department is pretty much undeniable.


Football loses money, yes. But UNI without a football program would be a drastically different kind of school. WSU was sort of a unicorn. Without football, several key donors just go away, the student to athletic department relationship changes significantly for the worse, our standing and exposure within the state declines --- and perhaps our share of tax $ with it. Cutting football would create more problems than it would seem to solve. The Campanile (Bell tower) doesn't make UNI any money either, but that's not a reason to put a wrecking ball to it. It's part of the identity of the university. Football is much the same.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby Jsnhbe1Birds » September 14th, 2017, 2:02 pm

unipanther99 wrote:
rally wrote:
Khan4Cats wrote:
I'd be curious to see the balance sheets of the private schools to see just how profitable their 'non-football' athletic departments are. I doubt they are any more profitable than the football playing publics.


If all or almost all FCS schools are losing money playing football, their overall athletic departments are going to be worse off then if they didn't sponsor football. Conversely, if you don't sponsor football, your athletic department if going to be better off than if it did because aren't losing money on it. That's one factor, and there are plenty of others in judging the performance of an athletic department. But the negative financial effect that FCS football has on an athletic department is pretty much undeniable.


Football loses money, yes. But UNI without a football program would be a drastically different kind of school. WSU was sort of a unicorn. Without football, several key donors just go away, the student to athletic department relationship changes significantly for the worse, our standing and exposure within the state declines --- and perhaps our share of tax $ with it. Cutting football would create more problems than it would seem to solve. The Campanile (Bell tower) doesn't make UNI any money either, but that's not a reason to put a wrecking ball to it. It's part of the identity of the university. Football is much the same.


Unicorn? Tell that to Gonzaga, St. Mary's, VCU (only a club team) . Butler and dayton are non-scholarship. Xavier? Nopen. Not a single one play any sort of scholarship football.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby mvfcfan » September 14th, 2017, 2:53 pm

Yeah because we all know that the privates are so cash strapped that we have to have travel partners in this league even though they don't sponsor football.

Where's all this extra money everyone is talking about? I certainly don't see it. Everyone is so cash strapped we can't afford the extra trips to Missouri State every year.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby BEARZ77 » September 14th, 2017, 4:17 pm

mvfcfan wrote:Yeah because we all know that the privates are so cash strapped that we have to have travel partners in this league even though they don't sponsor football.

Where's all this extra money everyone is talking about? I certainly don't see it. Everyone is so cash strapped we can't afford the extra trips to Missouri State every year.


You just made the point we all have been making. If I am currently losing 5 million a year in athletics and 2 million of that is Football, I don't become solvent because I cut Football. I just become less in debt. There are still major issues beyond that that will have to be addressed in athletics funding at the non power 5 Universities.

I'm a public school guy, but I can't understand what is so difficult to understand about the fact that athletic departments at our level are consistently operating millions of dollars in the red, and the only way they don't show it is by drawing down huge subsidies from their schools general funds. And when you look at the #1 culprit in that it's FCS football for most schools for a number of reasons. One is the obvious fact it can't cover it's own expenses. But it also forces Universities to have to maintain an equal number of non revenue producing sports for woman to remain in compliance, thus adding to the debt athletics burden their Universities with. This is going to come to an end at some point, because state legislatures are increasingly putting the screws to funding.

There are many activities and programs at Universities that don't cover their costs and have to be funded, so the fact Athletics is also in that boat isn't so much the issue as to the amount and the ever increasing costs associated with that. People are forgetting the primary role of the University is to use it's resources to further the education of its students, not fund semi-pro sports teams.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby mvfcfan » September 14th, 2017, 7:13 pm

I'd rather see my team go to the Ohio Valley for all sports than drop football. I'd almost rather see us go that route anyways.

Pros- Rivalry with E Illinois, competing with teams that spend comparatively to us, basketball tournament in Evansville, probably have the nicest basketball arena in the league, immediately compete for football and basketball championships, every school in the OVC is a public except Belmont but they're actually good.

Cons- Murray State would join MVC, OVC is a one bid league (who cares, we're never getting an at large anyways and not convinced the MVC ever will either)

I'd also like to add Western Illinois and North Alabama to the OVC, but I'd be willing to join with or without them.

OVC North Division
Western IL (football)
Eastern IL (football)
SIUE
INST (football)
Morehead
EKU (football)
SEMO (football)

OVC South Division
TN ST (football)
TN TC (football)
UT Martin (football)
Belmont
N Alabama (football)
Jax St (football)
Austin Peay (football)

The conference would be legit, and this is actually realistic. 14 overall members with 11 football members. I definitely like this a lot better than staying in a league where no one is on the same page. The travel is also very reasonable. If I was the OVC commissioner I'd be contacting us, WIU, and N Alab for sure. And the thing about is if we lost Jax St and EKU to FBS, we'd still have a 12 team league with 9 fb schools. Just seems a lot more stable to me. And there's always the chance Morehead State could bring back scholarship football.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby Jsnhbe1Birds » September 14th, 2017, 7:50 pm

That's the dumbest idea I've seen on the board
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby uniftw » September 15th, 2017, 8:23 am

No one is losing 2 million dollars on football.

Years UNI is in the red it's about 500K in the red for football.
There are years UNI actually turns a football profit.
Most years it's basically a wash.

UNI did a study in 2010 to explore what the options for football were - stay FCS, move FBS, go non-scholarship D1 (Drake, Valpo, Butler, etc...), go D2, or drop football completely. The study found that going doing anything except staying FCS or moving FBS would end up costing the athletic department so much money it would cripple it. The number of donors that would drop donations was found to be about 80% of donations. Ticket sales would have dropped an estimated 80-90%. It was found that donations to the university - not just the athletic department - would fall. It was found enrollment would greatly decrease thus losing money.

The reason so many hold on to football, even if it doesn't "Seem to make sense" is that the PR hit to the general public, the PR hit to the alumni, the PR hit to the donors, etc... isn't worth the potential savings on football.

UNI spends about 3.6M on football. Between ticket sales, cost to park (straight cash for the AD), FBS games, concessions, merch sold on game day in the stadium, and players not on scholarship paying tuition the program isn't losing any real money. That's not taking into account the donors who would go away if football left the school. That's not taking into account so many other things.


It's not as simple as "Drop football and take that 3.6m and put it into other sports".
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby BEARZ77 » September 15th, 2017, 10:15 am

The thing is UNI represents the upper 5% of FCS football; the financial picture for most others is much more desolate. Secondly, you're not also looking at the number of non-revenue woman's sports that have to be maintained for compliance issues; you have to add all that expense to what the cost of football actually is. And lastly, I'm not meaning to single out football per se; my real point is Universities at our level can't continue to fund athletics the way we do under the current system given the amount of subsidy that is being directed that way to offset the huge losses across the board in athletics departments. FCS football is just the most obvious point of scrutiny because of the number of scholys and the associated impact across entire athletics departments at most Universities maintaining FCS football. Even in the rosy picture you paint for UNI, their percent of subsidy is still significant for athletics, and they had to cut baseball to help that picture already.

I see Universities having to lobby the NCAA for a reduction in the total # of sports that have to be offered to be D-1, the power 5 +??? splitting totally off into their own separate entity, and the overall landscape changed drastically in 5-10 years. You just can't keep operating athletics departments the way they are now given the amount of subsidy it requires to offset the expenses.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby uniftw » September 15th, 2017, 1:11 pm

UNI cutting baseball was more a Title IX issue than a financial issue...though I suppose you could argue football makes that harder.

UNI's subsidity is extremely low, especially compared to the FCS - and actually in relation to non P5s as well. It's one of the few in the country under 50% at the FCS level, and many/most G5s are in the 60s and 70s for subsidy. I'd argue G5 football is less sustainable than FCS football.

I suppose UNI is better off financially, and a bit of a "unicorn" in the FCS world when it comes to combined football and basketball success being sustained and at the level it has been the last 20 years.
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Re: What's the next realignment domino to fall?

Postby BEARZ77 » September 15th, 2017, 2:18 pm

uniftw, I agree with your perspective on UNI and FCS football for them. But think what you just indicated. UNI is well above the norm, where most schools are subsidizing 50-60% of costs to run their athletics programs and the demands are increasing every year. So even as one of the more successful programs UNI can't cover about 45% of the costs it takes to maintain it's athletics programs and has to take that money from student fees or the general fund in order to exist. And they're one of the programs doing well. I just can't see with State legislatures tightening the purse strings on education how Universities will be able to justify those expenditures at an ever increasing level as time moves forward.

I think the sentiment will always be there that athletics are integral to the college experience, but in trying to keep up with the huge $$$ p-5 schools have available to throw into all levels of their athletics, the budgets at the non p-5 schools have gotten totally out of control. And yet what do we hear constantly on this site; MVC schools need to allocate more dollars towards athletics in order to remain competitive, get scheduling advantages, and retain coaches. I can't see that as a sustainable approach much longer. Where will the money come from and how much longer are States and Universities boards going to continue to divert $$ from other educational needs or tax students to pay for athletics at this cost.
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