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Smaller, Leaner athletic program...


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16 minutes ago, Captain Kangaroo said:

We had it 1/3rd the way paid off with the Summa and Infocision donations alone, correct?

 

I could be wrong, but I don't believe those were lump sum payments. I believe we're getting paid that money over 7-10 year payments. The university is paying ~$5 million per year to service the debt, but certainly the Infocision and Summa money is reducing the amount the university is really paying towards it.

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7 hours ago, RowdyZip said:

Unless the NCAA changes some rules, UA has to host at least 17 sports to remain D1.  I believe last count I saw was 19.

I believe this is exactly why the G5 conferences petitioned the NCAA to give them greater flexibility in the number of sports required. I'm sure they have an eye to cut some sports. 

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7 hours ago, kreed5120 said:

 

I could be wrong, but I don't believe those were lump sum payments. I believe we're getting paid that money over 7-10 year payments. The university is paying ~$5 million per year to service the debt, but certainly the Infocision and Summa money is reducing the amount the university is really paying towards it.

I also could be wrong, but I thought Infocision paid $10 M for the stadium naming rights. Summa paid $5 M for the field naming rights and the former First Merit paid $1-2 for the naming rights to the club level. The annual loan service was $4 M charged directly to athletics. I don't know for how many years the debt service was.

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I'm not a big fan of across the board decisions. For the athletic budget, I think all non-revenue sports should be severely starved. Treat them almost like  good intramural programs with volunteer coaches and drive yourself travel etc (drop programs where allowed by affilations and Title 9). I've never been an advocate of whoring out our football program for revenue, but we need now to buy alot of lipstick and get as many non-conference games with rich programs as possible (four instead of two or three). Same goes for men's basketball. Soccer should be safe as is. Instead we seem to be lowering possible success for the revenue sports by across the board cuts. We are playing checkers with these decisions when we should be playing chess (ie - try to slightly increase spending on football).

 

Also, note that FCS (mentioned earlier in this thread) was previouly called I-AA (IA - now FBS is the top tier where Akron competes). Lastly, any thought of student athletes getting anything other than a scholarship for competing in sports at the college level should be shelved indefinitly. A free education at a school like Akron is worth a hell of a lot and the athletes should recognize that.       

 

       

Edited by UA1987
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12 hours ago, 72 Roo said:

I believe this is exactly why the G5 conferences petitioned the NCAA to give them greater flexibility in the number of sports required. I'm sure they have an eye to cut some sports. 

 

They'd better get flexible or you're going to see some schools start to break away from the NCAA.

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On 4/23/2020 at 7:02 PM, clarkwgriswold said:

"We will have a much leaner and smaller athletic program."

 

"I have directed the athletic director to provide a plan for a 20% reduction in athletic expenditures for FY 21.  There is considerable uncertainty about the future of mid-major division 1 athletics.  Additional reorganization and reduction may be necessary in the future as we learn more about the future of athletics."

 

Translation-  Ouch, this is going to hurt.  Much pain ahead.

 

In today's climate, the athletic department needs to become much more focused.   Focus on proven success and substantially cut or eliminate programs whose costs outweigh their benefit to the University.   This focus is something that should have been pursued years ago rather than a scattershot approach to being all things to all people.  Unfortunately, a crisis had to bring us here.  Some difficult value judgments are in the very near future.

A 20% reduction in The Athletic Dept. budget is going to come from where? The Department is already nowhere close to be 'self supporting', never has been. 20% is a big chunk of change particularly when there is an over reliance on student fees to stay in business. Obviously a lot of that support will go away because it appears a lot of student fee revenue will go away.

To me the most telling part of the statement was when Miller said 'there is considerable uncertainty about the future of mid-major Division I athletics'. That shows his attitude toward what all athletics will look like at UofA in the future. I fear that this health crisis simply accelerated what may have occurred further on down the road.

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'Athletics currently spends something in the neighborhood of 30-35 million. A 20% reduction would mean we're needing to trim $6-$7 million. Some costs like infocision and the field house we're stuck with long-term. I believe Groce and Arth both have 4 years left on their guaranteed contracts so we can't do anything about those costs either. Wouldn't most coaches be locked into multi-year deals?

 

I think it's going to be real challenging to hit that threshold in cuts this year. We can make cuts, but some of those cuts will take a few years to recognize some of the cost savings.

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17 hours ago, 72 Roo said:

I believe this is exactly why the G5 conferences petitioned the NCAA to give them greater flexibility in the number of sports required. I'm sure they have an eye to cut some sports. 

 

Petition was denied.

 

https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/2020/04/ncaa-denies-request-to-drop-division-i-sport-minimum.html

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46 minutes ago, kreed5120 said:

'Athletics currently spends something in the neighborhood of 30-35 million. A 20% reduction would mean we're needing to trim $6-$7 million. Some costs like infocision and the field house we're stuck with long-term. I believe Groce and Arth both have 4 years left on their guaranteed contracts so we can't do anything about those costs either. Wouldn't most coaches be locked into multi-year deals?

 

I think it's going to be real challenging to hit that threshold in cuts this year. We can make cuts, but some of those cuts will take a few years to recognize some of the cost savings.

 

If you play football you have to sponsor 16 sports, minimum. 6 must be men's sports.

 

Athletics Head count / Gender needs to be within 1% of campus full time enrollees, which was 50.6 male / 49.4 female for 2019.

 

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 3.28.14 PM.png

 

Stupid addition of Baseball makes cutting $$$ harder.  No one is adding non-revenue sports but Akron did.  Dumb move then, ever more so now.

 

407 total athletes for Akron 2018-19. https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/details

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 3.37.15 PM.png

 

 

Nothing makes sense to cut other than FOOTBALL (110) or TRACK & FIELD / CROSS COUNTRY as both are HUGE head count sports that can impact the financial side directly through scholarships and support staff salaries/benefits.

 

Not going to cut football as you have the stadium and revenues that come in.

 

Cutting golf solves nothing.  No funding and low head count.

 

Cut Track & Field / Cross Country and you can make up $$$.

 

Would have to add in a cheap men's sport like Tennis as that would get you back up to 6 men's sports.

 

Still not going to make up 6-7 million bucks.  

 

Smart play is dropping football as it  really has no value back for the school.  The debt service on Infocision Stadium is the ONLY reason football will survive.

Edited by DannyHoke
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3 minutes ago, NWAkron said:

Case by case basis.

 

It's not going to happen until schools get serious about cuts.  Again, Akron Athletics adding a non revenue men's sport (baseball) that was just cut in 2018 made no sense fiscally as the bigger issue of the athletics department as a whole is drowning in red ink having presented  a balanced end of year budget in over a decade.  Something big is going to have to be cut, or slimmed down across the board by 20% in such a way that there is no competitive level possible. I am told that President Gary Miller is not impressed with the athletics leadership and is looking to clean house as soon as Williams' contract is up. The move to NCAA Division II is a real option that is being discussed per two BoT members that I speak with.  

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3 minutes ago, NWAkron said:

Minimum is 16.  Akron has 18.  

 

Akron actually has 20 sports by the NCAA Count.  Indoor and Outdoor Track & Field are counted separately as they each of separate championships.

 

Men's (1) Baseball

Men's (2) Basketball

Men's (3) Football

Men's (4) Golf 

Men's (5) Soccer

Men's (6) Outdoor Track & Field

Men's (7) Indoor Track & Field

Men's (8) Cross Country

Women's (9) Basketball

Women's (10) Softball

Women's (11) Golf 

Women's (12) Soccer

Women's (13) Lacrosse

Women's (14) Swimming & Diving

Women's (15) Tennis

Women's (16) Volleyball

Women's (17) Outdoor Track & Field

Women's (18) Indoor Track & Field

Women's (19) Cross Country

Co-Ed (20) Rifle

 

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 3.50.41 PM.png

Have to have minimum of 6 mens.  Have to balance the male/female headcount to campus numbers which is 50/50.  Have to cut 20% from the operating budget.

 

These changes, ultimatley unavoidable, are due in part to Akron as an university in general suffering from debt and overexpansion even before the pandemic hit. As of 2015, the university was looking at $487 million of debt, due in part to massive undertakings by the previous president to update and expand the campus via construction. 

 

With a reported operating budget of $319 million in 2019 and expenses at approximately $295 million, such expansion has become fairly unsustainable, especially in the light of a significant decrease in student enrollments and increased tuition and fees costs. (Tuition increased 1.5 percent from 2018 levels in 2019, while enrollments dropped six percent in 2019 from the previous year.)

 

The university has been formulating cuts since at least 2018 under the prior administrative leadership, with the atheletic department already dealing with an $8 million reduction in subsidies from the university under the previous “Action Plan.”

 

Akron, in particular, has been in a rather unsteady place in terms of their budget in recent years, famously cutting its beloved baseball team back in 2015 before resurrecting it this past season.Akron spent $34.9 million on athletics, with 70 percent of that budget supported via a $24.3 million subsidy, per Cleveland.com’s Data Center, placing it amongst the top of the state’s public universities. Akron actually topped the state in expenses in fiscal year 2017, even without baseball as a sponsored sport.

 

Some of the athletic buget budget goes towards making payments and repairs to Akron’s InfoCision Stadium, which hosts multiple sports. As of fiscal year 2015, loan payments on the stadium totalled $4.4 million, with 94 percent of the stadium debt apportioned to the athletics budget.

 

It’s safe to assume the budget is still around that amount, so a 20 percent cut from $34.9 million would put the new mark at around $27.92 million. If you assume only the university subsidy is affected, the mark is even less, coming in at $19.44 million. 

 

 

https://www.hustlebelt.com/2020/4/24/21233631/university-of-akron-president-recommends-20-percent-budget-cut-for-athletics-in-new-master-plan

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49 minutes ago, DannyHoke said:

 

It's not going to happen until schools get serious about cuts.  Again, Akron Athletics adding a non revenue men's sport (baseball) that was just cut in 2018 made no sense fiscally as the bigger issue of the athletics department as a whole is drowning in red ink having presented  a balanced end of year budget in over a decade.  Something big is going to have to be cut, or slimmed down across the board by 20% in such a way that there is no competitive level possible. I am told that President Gary Miller is not impressed with the athletics leadership and is looking to clean house as soon as Williams' contract is up. The move to NCAA Division II is a real option that is being discussed per two BoT members that I speak with.  

Maybe you can give us some more rumor and innuendo Tiger King and maybe another post reminding us how you want to cut the football program because we didn't catch it the first 15 times you mentioned it.

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17 minutes ago, NWAkron said:

Maybe you can give us some more rumor and innuendo Tiger King and maybe another post reminding us how you want to cut the football program because we didn't catch it the first 15 times you mentioned it.

 

Perhaps you can learn mouse math, understand how budgets work, and how NCAA rules apply.  I give you facts and you do not like them, so you attack the reality.

 

Budget is $34,900,000

 

You need to cut $6.98 million per the President's directive.

 

You are already dealing with an $8 million reduction in subsidies from the university under the previous “Action Plan", which has not been transparent and no one knows what all has been cut.  To Brother Lee Adams' post, there is no fat on the bone, and the current athletics management personnel have run in the red every year they have been in charge.  In fact, the last balanced budget at Akron Athletics was in 1999-00 so it's closing in on 20 years of running in the red.  

 

Reality is D1 Athletics is not working at Akron, fiscally speaking.

 

Counter that with facts...

 

 

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On 4/24/2020 at 10:46 AM, clarkwgriswold said:

I know it is a sore spot with many, but the last guy that proposed budget cuts was Scarborough and he was run out of town on a rail.  He was brought in to be the bad guy and make cuts then was run in part for being the bad guy and making cuts.  He didn't have the COVID-19 crisis for cover.   Don't get me wrong, he messed up plenty, but he was the budget cuts guy.

 

I thought he was the change the name of the University guy.

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1 hour ago, DannyHoke said:

 

Perhaps you can learn mouse math, understand how budgets work, and how NCAA rules apply.  I give you facts and you do not like them, so you attack the reality.

 

Budget is $34,900,000

 

You need to cut $6.98 million per the President's directive.

 

You are already dealing with an $8 million reduction in subsidies from the university under the previous “Action Plan", which has not been transparent and no one knows what all has been cut.  To Brother Lee Adams' post, there is no fat on the bone, and the current athletics management personnel have run in the red every year they have been in charge.  In fact, the last balanced budget at Akron Athletics was in 1999-00 so it's closing in on 20 years of running in the red.  

 

Reality is D1 Athletics is not working at Akron, fiscally speaking.

 

Counter that with facts...

 

 

Here's a fact: U of A moves to D2, there goes soccer, basketball, and a huge donor base.  

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