BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Wouldn't Chattanooga be a decent ASUN candidate?

 

Probably, but is the ASun a step up over the SoCon? Who knows these days.

 

Yeah I just looked at who's in it now. And, nope, I retract my suggestion.

 

There’s a bit of money floating around Chattanooga and a nice-ish stadium on the edge of downtown with room for expansion. I’m surprised none of the powers that be have ever taken a look at bumping up to FBS. Of course, the UT trustees may have that quietly on lockdown.

 

I don't think they are that far out of line. I went to Colorado and they lose about as much money. I think the schools in the bottom half of the Pac 12 and the ACC are losing a similar amounts. They are trying to compete with the Big 10 and SEC and just don't have the revenues.

For example, Colorado signed Mal Tucker for about 14 million over five years. Tucker goes 5-7 and Michigan State basically doubles his salary. So Colorado gives Karl Dorrell twenty million over five years. And if the school is going to throw that money at a non-entity like Dorrell they better give the basketball coach, Tad Boyle, who has done an excellent job, a raise to 2.5 million a year.

Tennessee also hired away a defensive line coach and basically doubled his salary. So Colorado increased the salary pool for Dorrell's assistants. Keeping up with the neighbor's can be costly.

 

Isn’t UVA’s athletic department endowed too?

 

I really don’t get it. Even the biggest Athletics programs have relatively low endowments, but I still wonder why they have such high subsidy rates.

 

I think that was what aTm had in mind when they stroked Jimbo that fat new contract. What we tended to forget was that he does not have a buy out. The Aggies basically just said "If you want him badly enough to pay him enough more to get him to make a move, go for it." I think that it was also a fat finger in Texas' eye, since they're paying Sark around $5m. You know that it grates on the Teasip's big boosters that A&M's coach is getting paid twice as much as UT's, like he was coaching at a cow college or something, and they can't give him a raise without looking like idiots.

 

Austin Peay leaving OVC for ASUN next year

 

"Endowed" in the sense they seem to get titty-fucked on a regular basis by the likes of Chaminade and UMBC.

 

I have posted the database from USA Today for 2018-2019 (pre-pandemic) revenues, expenditures and subsidies for college sports.

College Finances - USA TODAY

I find it staggering. For example, if you add up all the MAC schools in Ohio they receive more than 125 million dollars a year in allocations (subsidies) a year. How do MAC sports give Ohio residents that much value every year?

And these numbers are probably understated. For example, at Washington State they put money aside each year to save up to occasionally refurbish the dorms. But Washington State is a is a very small market school trying to compete with larger market schools. So the dormitory fund has "loaned" the athletic program money. I don't think the dorm fund will get repaid anytime soon and either dorm rates increase or the physical facility declines.

I like college sports but I find this very sad. One of the things our country used to do really, really well was provide educational opportunity to a very broad segment of the population. Thomas Jefferson founded UVA on those principals. And we are losing that because the cost of college is being driven up by many things, including the cost of college sports.

And as an aside I really admire the work USA Today has historically put in producing data base journalism.

 

I don’t think UVA has been geared towards a broad segment of the populace for quite some time. If you are an average child of the commonwealth seeking a public college education, you are much more likely to be on the George Mason/ODU/James Madison track, no?

Even flagships not nearly as prestigious as Mr. Jefferson’s are pricing themselves into a bougie bracket. Many of my college friends from Alabama now have kids of their own in school. Very few of us are sending kids to Tuscaloosa because the finances don’t pencil out.