BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Every program new to the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision in the past 50 years has been in the Southeast. The last current FBS member from outside that region to start football was UNLV in 1968.

 

Particularly in the south, they do indeed wonder what's wrong with you. To state the obvious, football raises the school's profile, helps recruit students (UAB's enrollment numbers have hit new records every year since The Return), and energize alumni to get involved and donate. All of that works a helluva lot better if you have a good program, obviously, and the south is NCAA football crazier than other parts of the country so ymmv.

 

If this is true why aren't schools like Alabama and Nebraska considered elite public universities, with the largest endowments?

 

I can't speak to Nebraska, but most of the bammers I know (many of whom did not actually go there and couldn't find the university library with a gun to their head) are far more worried about the athletic budget than the endowment.

Of course that's a generalization, and yes, there's a baby bust coming along with a shakeout of entirely too many available spaces for students. There's still a good bit of truth in it in football country.

 

Not sure if I read your post exactly right but ....

Buffalo dropped football in 1970 but restarted its program sometime in the 1980s. I'm not sure when they joined the MAC and returned to FBS, sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Villanova also dropped its program sometime in the 1980s but reinstated it several years later, albeit at an FCS level.

UMass and UConn also moved up from FCS within the past 20-30 years, although they obviously were established programs.

 

OK, thanks. Looks much larger than 26K on TV. On further review, that's probably an appropriate size, if they can ever really get their program going. Beating Tennessee last year and being one play away from beating Auburn this year is good exposure.

 

You're right. I failed to account for schools that dropped down and returned.
Amended version: Every school that has founded a football program (i.e. fielded the sport for the first time) in the past 50 years and currently resides in the FBS is in the South.

 

I agree, which I think conforms my point that the success of the football tram has much to do with the endowment. FWIW, I attach a list of public universities ranked by endowment. Not surprisingly, the Texas and California university systems rank at the top. But Minnesota, Pitt and Virginia are in the top ten. The highest ranked southern public university is Georgia Tech at 17 and Florida is 18.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Also, how much of the endowment is sucked up building facilities for the football teams? For example, I went to Colorado. According to the attached list Colorado has an endowment of 1.55 billion dollars. In the past ten years the school has spent over 100 million dollars to remodel the stadium and a reported 156 million on a football practice facility.

 

Very little of the endowment is spent on buildings. Almost every endowed dollar is restricted according to stated donor preferences. And those preferences are mainly scholarships, faculty support and program/departmental support. Less than 5% of most schools' endowments are entirely unrestricted.
Schools pay for these palaces by borrowing the money. The loan/bond terms are repaid over time with a combination of general funds (tuition, room and meals, etc) and donor contributions, which are generally paid over five years.
Endowment doesn't pay for them, generally speaking.

 

Thanks. An accounting question. Are the cost of these facilities charged to the budgets of the athletic departments or to a general or capital funds account. I have always that when athletic budgets are reported they only report operating costs and not large capital expenditures. Am I correct?

 

Boise Jr. College became Boise State in 1968 and the football team joined the NAIA. It joined the NCAA Division II in 1970 and moved to I-AA in 1978.

But to your point, the school that became Boise State did have an existing football program. Probably the most successful of any new four-year program in the last 50 years.

 

Part of the reason Pitt's athletic program has been gloriously mediocre is the fact that alumni simply don't donate and support the program the way they do the endowment. So there's an attitude from the House of Representatives-sized Board of Trustees, "you don't care so why should we?"