kreed5120

I believe what he's referring to is that full cost of tuition stipend the NCAA started allowing schools to pay 3-5 years ago. It's something in the neighborhood of $1500-$3500 per full scholarship. Akron eliminating paying it would impact all sports, not just football.

I went to college during the Ianello days so I use to pregame for the games then leave near halftime when I sobered up and realized we were down 4 TDs. The football team hasn't improved much, but at least they serve beer in the stadium now. If I was a student now I may have actually been able to make it through all 4 quarters.

I saw that athletics deficit figure equated to ~1350 per student, but I don't believe that's how much students are being charged for it. A full time student pays $1.132.32 per semester or $2264.64/yr in student fees. Built into that figure is x-number of dollars for transportation, student union, rec, and a variety of all kinds of other things. When I was in college the transportation fee alone was $350, but I'm sure that has went up. I'm not exactly sure the number allocated to athletics, but I highly doubt it's $1350 considering all the other amenities on campus that needs its cut. The university covers the shortfall from its reserves/general budget. Not saying that makes it much better, but not 100% of that shortfall is hitting the students. Some of it is passed along to the taxpayers. https://www.uakron.edu/student-accounts/estimator

I'd agree any real cost saving would be by us being able to eliminate other sports. That being said, D1 (non FBS) requires us fielding 14 sport teams. We're currently at 16 now so dropping football means we could cut 1 women's non revenue sport. Eliminating 1 women's sport may save us 600k-1 million depending what they cut. It really doesn't seem to be worth cutting football over that.

What I stated was football generates more revenue than soccer and men's basketball combined, which is true. I provided the detail to support it. Larry Williams is on record stating football costs 6.5-7 million to operate. Don't believe me you can go look through the forum as it was just posted a day or two ago. Football pretty much pays for itself. Any money Akron loses on football is from Infocision, which is a sunk cost. Cutting football makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's really the only sport that's capable of turning an operating profit. The 12-13 non-revenue sports is why our athletic deficit is so large as we're paying for coaches, travel, and scholarships, but getting pretty much $0 revenue from them

Speak and though shall receive. https://www.thestate.com/sports/college/university-of-south-carolina/usc-football/article221772820.html I've heard from other sources this deal was back loaded as it was a 10 year extension on a deal that had 3 years remaining, but feel free to use $670k instead of the previous $833k that I previously quoted https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2014/08/20/Media/MAC-ESPN.aspx For 2019 MAC schools split ~16 million 12 ways. That works out to $1.33 million per team http://businessofcollegesports.com/2019/12/28/college-football-playoff-payouts-for-2019/ 2 buy games at 1.3 million + 633k for tv + 1.33 million for CFP money = $4.59 million. That's not getting into ticket sales, concessions, parking, sponsorship, and donations. The article you posted showed athletics costing 35 million while only producing ~10 million in revenue. I'll hang up the phone now and wait to hear your response on how soccer or men's basketball generates more revenue than football....

What am I looking at here? Nothing in your post provides evidence stating what I said to be false. Frankly I feel dumber for reading it. Fact is each buy game generates 1.3 million in revenue. The MAC tv deal generates 833k and the reason they get that is because of football. From there add in college football playoff pool money, ticket sales, concession, parking, sponsorship, and donations. Edit: I stated football by far and away generates the most revenue for the athletic department, which is true. The athletic department as a whole operates at a large deficit. That isn't ground breaking news.

I'd argue extending Bowden in the first place was the mistake, but I digress

I see you posting fairly often on olympic sports specifically swimming/diving and track/field. I'm sure you have posted some cross country from time to time. It wouldn't surprise me one bit as you're involved in those type of sports. Those posts just weren't all that memorable to me.

There is certainly room for men's basketball attendance to improve, but out of curiosity what numbers would you be happy with? Right now we typically average 2800-3000 for the season and ~3500 for MAC play. With the bump to 20 conference games I'd expect attendance numbers to improve. I'm a season ticker holder and Zips basketball is by far and away my favorite Zips sport, but even I have trouble justifying making the time commitment to watch Akron basketball play random MEAC/SWAC/NAIA teams at home during OOC. There is no way I'd pay $15 for a single game ticket to one of those games.

Yeah, I doubt he's worth even 100 million. Obviously that's more than I'll accrue in my lifetime so certainly that's no knock to him

It's really hard to build any kind of fan base when you've been a perennially losing program for 3 straight decades. Don't get me wrong I've vocalized that the football program should look to trim some fat from the budget just like everyone else. I'm just not sure why this has turned into some sort of crusade against the football program. I'm personally a basketball guy myself, but the numbers speak for themselves. The football program generates more revenue (even as terrible as it has been) than basketball and soccer combined.

I'm not trying to be anti-soccer, but basketball averages double that attendance and football has 1-2 games per year where they pull more than 13k fans, which is how many fans soccer got for their entire season.

I'm pretty sure Larry Williams has another year on his contract. Wouldn't make sense to buy him out in this climate. Besides do you really think we'd hit on the next AD?

I hate to admit it, but dre is right here ☝️. Akron has as nice of facilities, if not better, than pretty much every MAC team. The university has kept trying to throw money at football to solve its problems. The problem is we've had a poor string of ADs who have in turn have hired some pretty poor coaches. The blame should be on whoever hires the AD, which I'm guessing would be the BOT.

Outside of Akron, the newest MAC football stadium was built in 1993. I'm pretty sure the only stadium that has seen a meaningful renovation this century is the Glass Bowl. We pour more money into football than our peers, but get worse results. I hate to admit, but maybe Kent was onto something by just punting on the sport to focus on its other sports.

Between buy games, CFP money, and tv money football generates the bulk of the athletic departments revenue. I'm not a big fan of the football program myself, but there is no denying that it's the biggest revenue generator for the athletics program. More than soccer and men's basketball combined.

I'd figure most would transfer anyways. How many scholarship baseball players stuck around? And that's even when we offered to let them keep their scholarship

Not to mention reduced payouts from P5 schools, no FBS playoff pool money, and no tv money. The TV deal alone pays 833k per year. At 35k per scholarship that alone is enough to fund 23.8 scholarships, which makes up the difference between FCS and FBS.

From how I understood the wording is that 4.4 million figure doesn't represent 23% of athletics overall costs. It represents a 23% reduction in direct institutional support. Pretty much they subtracted revenue generated from overall costs then reduced costs by 23% of that.

The thing about tennis though is those courts can still be used by the students and community.

Yep, especially since I don't recall seeing one article ever posted about cross country, tennis, or men's golf in my however many years frequenting this site. Then again I'm sure I'd be more relaxed in my finances if I was spending someone else's money instead of mine.

If those 3 sports cost 4.4 million combined to run, they should have been cut 10 years ago.

I'd be surprised if baseball has more than 3 scholarships currently. When they announced they were starting the program back up they said scholarships would be funded through donations. If they have 8 that means that either A) This program has a ton of donor support or B ) The university lied. I suppose B is a possibility, but I still doubt they have 8 scholarships. Edit: I still think we should have required a $5-$10 million endowment to be funded before bringing back baseball. That's great we have a handful of guys cutting checks now, but eventually those checks will quit coming and we'll be stuck flipping the bill.

Didn't someone post an article a few days back saying WMU managed to cut 6-7 million from their budget without cutting a sport? They were already at 16 teams so they couldn't cut another team. If they were able to do that without cutting a team, we should have some flexibility since we're in a position to cut 2-3 teams.