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Post by nittanylionvb on Apr 17, 2009 17:36:20 GMT -5
You say student applications surged because the football team had a good year here. Do applications go down when the nittany lions have a less successful year? It is hard to believe there is much of a correlation. If it were true, that would be a real indictment on today's students. Most people aspire for an education to prepare for a career.
Boosters definitely donate because of a school's success in athletics, but I don't think that is why students attend college.
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Post by BoilerUp! on Apr 17, 2009 18:03:47 GMT -5
My daughter's first pick was based upon their sports teams. Maybe with students who decide their majors in grade school, it doesn't matter, but for the undecided majors, it can figure in on the decision, I think.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 17, 2009 19:59:47 GMT -5
[Possibly related]
University Of Washington and Washington State are currently discussing whether to stop playing their annual football game in a home/home series and instead play it in the Seahawks Stadium in Seattle.
Currently each team gets about $800K when they play at Husky Stadium and $240K when they play at Martin Stadium. They think the take from Qwest Field would be more like $2M each year.
I suppose that could have a pretty significant impact on the funding of all the sports at both schools.
Neither football program really wants to do this, but in hard times, you have to start thinking about milking the cash cow.
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Post by karellen on Apr 17, 2009 21:27:54 GMT -5
Unfortunately, the size and success of athletic departments and individual teams do matter when students make decisions about where to go for school. I know of one DII school that made the decision to go DI partly based on their belief that they were losing students because they were not a DI athletic program. They had survey results that showed students were go to other nearby DI schools of what DI athletics meant in the student's head.
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Post by pogoball on Apr 17, 2009 22:51:11 GMT -5
Years ago, there was an SI article about how Kansas used to be the doormat of Big 12 football. They made a significant investment in their football program and it became one of the better ones in the Big 12 and nation.
The article discussed at length the benefits reaped by Kansas both financially and academically in terms of a better student body.
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Post by UCSBVball on Apr 17, 2009 23:18:30 GMT -5
Football and basketball - follow the money - colleges make money when their basketball teams make it into the NCAAs - what to they make in dollars when their Volleyball teams make it into NCAAs?
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Post by donneyp on Apr 18, 2009 0:58:45 GMT -5
I know Mississippi has a state law that the athletic departments at Ole Miss and Mississippi State, and I think Southern Miss, are run in the black. They are not legally allowed to use public money for athletic operations so their budgets are entirely based off of donations, and revenue. I'd be surprised if they were the only ones.
Also, I read that South Carolina's athletic department had pledged $10 million over 10 years to the Universtiy.
Also, I believe the increase in applications and the higher deposit percentage that comes with athletic success is noticed at schools that don't win every year. Look at George Mason a few years back. Boise State in football. Essentially these schools are getting free advertising, and given that amount of advertising you would expect applications and yield to go up.
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Post by jgrout on Apr 18, 2009 5:02:32 GMT -5
Washington State may also have worries about average attendance... Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A football) has rules and if the Cougs played all their "home" games in isolated Pullman with a bad team, they could be kicked out if things got bad enough long enough. San Jose State football has been skating at least near that edge for over a decade and the whole of the Ivy League left Division I-A football en masse, all but Yale involuntarily (they had the football attendance to turn independent in football, be in a different conference for football or be in a different conference for all sports ala Boston College years later but they remained loyal to their conference).
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Post by donneyp on Apr 18, 2009 7:00:42 GMT -5
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Post by donnyg on Apr 18, 2009 7:21:50 GMT -5
They covered themselves by adding cheerleaders...it looks bleak for any justifications. If I recall this was announced back in February, unlike Univ. of Maine who was just a few days ago.
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Post by lonewolf on Apr 18, 2009 21:58:52 GMT -5
I'm kind of depressed. Suppose a school like George Mason wanted to increase volleyball attendance to the point where it paid (or almost paid) for itself. If Hawaii can't do it or if only Hawaii, Nebraska and a couple others can break even, what hope is there for the vast majority of programs. Does a "basketball school" like Wichita State with strong volleyball attendance break even in volleyball? Texas doesn't care; money is no object for UT or TAMU. What about Colorado State? Illinois State? Ohio? One thing to take into account is the economics of football and basketball. Even though everyone assumes that DI football and basketball make money and fund other sports, that is not gnereally true. A large football and basketball program sucks up money in order to survive in the competitive environs in which it exists. Most DI footbnall programs are happy to break even given the amount of money they spend. The numbers that they show the public does not include a lot of infrastructural cost that are shared by all the teams. For example, and it is a little silly, doing laundry ofr a team of over 100 football players is very different from doing laundry for a 15 men basketball team. Those costs are built into the overhead costs of running an athletic program and the various burdens on each team is not accounted for by the teams but are evenly split amongst all teams. Who does make money on football? The usual big name teams of course, but specifially the BCS schools. By virtue of the exclusivity of being a BCS school, they share in the revenues of the whole BCS system, which is quite lucrative. What this means is that a team that aren't part of the BCS, aren't eligible for that kind of payday. This is why there will never be a football playoffs, too many large conference schools have entrenched interests in keeping themselves paid. OK, so why the soapbox speech? As i read people's comments about the variosu programs, one fact stand out: those volleyball programs that are in the BCS won't ever be in trouble of being cancelled or have to earn their keep by generating their own revenue mainly because of the BCS payoff. Those that aren't in the BCS are not so lucky. The reality of the situation is that most volleyball programs fund raise like crazy, to pay for the little extras that aren't built into the budget, for recruiting budgets, and for road trips. Taking a cross country swing to play good out of conference competition are usually paid for by funding that comes from out side of the regular budget. Those that don't fundraise will usually stay at home a lot and be very selective about where they recruit. Good point. The research I looked at 3 years ago in football had, not counting bookstore clothes sales, only the top 10 programs making money. The bowl bonuses are also misleading as that unless it's a major bowl, the majority if not all the money is spent on the trip.
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Post by Ajava on Apr 20, 2009 8:16:48 GMT -5
Lets just say that the coach and the players "win" the lawsuit......what's next.......going back to being happy campers and business as usual? Who would want to stay there after that anyway? You are not wanted, needed nor deemed important or relevant. What kind of atmosphere will the coach and team work under after the lawsuit? How much support will the team and coach have at that point? My guess is minimal at best. It's like being served with divorce papers, going to trail, being dragged through the mud and then saying, " you know what......on second thought, we are going to get back together and live happily ever after." Not going to happen!!! Get over it....move on.
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Post by Phaedrus on Apr 20, 2009 8:57:27 GMT -5
While I agree that the situation could be much less that cordial if they won the lawsuit, I think that it is good to challenge the decision. the fact is that Quinnipeac has always been less that enthusiastic about supporting volleyball, this could be their way of not dealing with it at all.
If the program was terminated under false pretenses, then tilting at windmills is acceptable, while filing lawsuits just to be a nuisance is not.
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Post by donnyg on Apr 20, 2009 9:39:44 GMT -5
Robin Sparks was brought in to rebuild the program - meaning at some time someone had a brainstorm idea to revamp and make the program more appealing.
I agree, I think there will be some hard feelings if it goes ahead and it will be hard to bring people into this program in the future knowing it was dangling by a thread. Robin is a great coach and a great person but I have to wonder if this is all worth it.
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Post by Phaedrus on Apr 20, 2009 13:56:53 GMT -5
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