GP1

You are 100% correct. To pretend it won't impact decision making of employees is foolish. To leave it out of discussions is whistling past the graveyard. To pretend politicians who head up state universities don't figure politics in their decision making calculus is foolish. It is causing smaller, leaner athletic departments and that is on theme of this topic and can't be ignored. Forget the MAC. Does anyone think that if the state of the coronavirus is the same next year at this time there won't be enormous political pressures on the leaders of midwest states to play college football? The Big Ten is teetering on the verge of giving in this year as we speak. Is it data and science moving them (it should be), or is it political pressure? If the Big Ten doesn't play next year, it will be catastrophic for the league. Elected officials will lose their jobs over it. There won't be a decent coach or player left at any of the schools, and that includes Ohio State. They too can enjoy their smaller and leaner athletic departments.

It would increase revenue. Expenses are something else.

I believe they are all legitimate questions and my guess is a lot of athletic department employees are asking the same questions.

It would increase revenue. Expenses are something else. Coaches shouldn't be held responsible for enrollment.

Thanks for the link. Trying to put myself in someone else's shoes here. If you were an employee in the athletic department of one of these schools, what evidence is there that the current conditions will change by next year? At what point do you leave for another job in order to provide for your family? At what point do you leave to go somewhere where they will let you do your job? If it turns out that on November 4th, everything returns to normal magically, how peed of are you to the point you will leave the conference just to avoid further exploitation? I don't think the Big Ten or PAC 12 clearly thought through their decisions.

Throw in: he has a hot sister.

Since we know there would be no MAC athletics in Ohio without the taxpayers and student fees, shouldn't the taxpayers get something for their money? If student fees get you a free ticket to an athletic event, should't your tax dollars in a small way? What would be wrong with every Ohio taxpayer, filing electronically with an email address, getting a voucher for two general admission tickets to any MAC sporting event they wanted to attend, as long as tickets were available, along with their confirmation of tax filing? Conference championships would be excluded.

Better yet, interrupt the steady drip of negative stories about finances that are driving new students away and bringing down enrollment. G5 schools have a revenue problem driven by declining in enrollment. The expenses of college athletics would be reduced if they could get this under control.

On a side note, I know a guy who played for the Force. He was the soccer coach for the local high school here in South Carolina and I think he still might be.. Anyhow, if the goal of college athletics is profitability, they should close every program with the exception of around 20. G5 schools need to examine exactly how much taxpayer dollars they are willing to spend on college athletics (I think we are at an acceptable level). They then need to provide such an awesome experience in the form of good football, clean stadiums, clean bathrooms, clean parking lots, good food/beer at a time convenient for the taxpayers to attend that the taxpayers will find it acceptable to put some of their tax dollars into college athletics. If that means giving tax payers free GA tickets to something they are already paying for, then so be it. Then, here comes a crazy idea, maybe they can cut back on some of the endless stories about budget deficits and mix in some PR related to the awesome public service the kids engage in around NE Ohio. What they need to do really isn't difficult to do. In and effort to win an award in the category of "Best Use Of Language In A Rant Against Stupidity", I present the following. If college athletics is the "business" everyone claims it to be, it would have been shuttered years ago. It is closer to "monkey business" than actual "business". It's complete nonsense to look at it as a business. The only actual business going on comes from those making money off of it outside of the universities (television networks, beer companies, etc.) and if they completely destroy G5 athletics, they will shift their business elsewhere. I rest my case and hope the judges will look favorably on my submission for "Best Use of Language In A Rant Against Stupidity".

As crappy as the BB arena is, it's amazing 3,500 went to games. Look at my plan for success. The BB experience fails on multiple levels. Bad stadium, bad food, feh parking, half of college BB games take place on weeknights in the dead of winter, beer?, etc.

I was hoping this might say something along the lines of, "With 70% of the world's layers in the United States, these two schools have taken an important step in reducing the number of leaches on the rest of us."

Regardless, they are losing money hand over fist. 1,000 seats at $5 each is a drop in the bucket. Give the tickets away to youth football teams that want them. The kids will load up on enough junk food to pay for themselves. Give steep food discounts for inter city teams that may not have much money to spend on food. Don't openly promote it though, just do it. Our biggest problem is we and our partners in the MAC have successfully destroyed our fan bases with the ESPN nonsense because the athletic directors/universities prioritize money over everything else. The destruction is complete. Time to build a fan base again. It's more expensive to acquire/reacquire customers than retaining them. It shouldn't matter at this point if they hand out 60,000 free GA tickets in the hopes that 10,000 show up. Remember, don't over think it.... What should be openly promoted at this point? Clean parking lots, clean bathrooms, clean temporary restrooms, clean seats, decent food/beer, good football at a time when people can attend. It is not very difficult.

Of all the things I listed, good football is the most difficult part. Clean parking lots, etc. are pretty easy to accomplish if schools just enter into the right contracts with vendors. With that said, it wasn't that long ago we were a decent team. It isn't hard to win 6-7 games as a MAC team. Clawson proved at Wake Forest how easy it is in the ACC. If he goes to a bowl game, there is a contract extension for him on the horizon. We just need to get back to decent. The utter crap cannot go on. If the team was just decent and all of the easy stuff was accomplished, things would work out. I hate to say it, but once the team gets back to decent and they are doing the easy stuff, going back to the days of giving away general admission tickets might be the way to go to get people to games to see how nice it can be. An empty seat doesn't buy a hot dog or a beer or pay for parking or buy a t-shirt. It also doesn't become part of a growing fan base. Conceding the financial loss to a degree of college athletics while still having it can be freeing for many universities.

Just what the world needs, another engineer..... Seriously though. How much different would your experience had been if they lost? My guess is a twinge of disappointment on the walk to the car followed by the joy of another beer in the parking lot. My trips to Wake Forest games have taught me a lesson, and that lesson is I'm relatively easy to please as are most people. All I need is a clean parking lot, clean stadium, clean bathrooms, clean port a johns, some decent food/beer in the stadium, convenient time and day, and good football (doesn't even have to be great). Watching the MAC implode over the past decade has been astonishing. Depending on how you define "good football", Cincinnati isn't doing anything Akron couldn't do. The MAC is entertaining enough for most people as most people in NE Ohio are entertained by high school football so the MAC would be better. Give the students, fans, alumni and community members something decent and they will go because people are easy to please. This really isn't that hard.

The AAC is closer to P5 than G5. It's amazing what you can do if you play good football in clean stadiums with nice tailgating at a time and place convenient for students, alumni and fans to attend. It really isn't hard. Who would have thought when the pandemic started that the PAC12 and Big 10 would have actively taken a road down turning themselves into the AAC? Out of sight, out of mind. The lifeblood of college football is recruiting. It will take these two conferences years to recover.

Good article. "Who should they serve?" Great question. The state schools should serve the public by providing an affordable education to the students that will benefit the public good moving forward and avail the general public by providing access to many of those benefits creating strong community bonds. College athletics has a large role in this.

I never realized how much worse it is when measured in centimetres..... The temperatures are pretty bad as well.....and if you think those are bad, convert them into centigrade.

I can see the MACtion now. One team lines up to kick a last second FG to win the game from 22 yards straight away. MAC kicker misses the easy FG so wide right he misses the net that is home to the three yellow painted lines signifying where the goal post is entirely.....on a Tuesday night........at midnight.....in mid January......during a blizzard. Did anyone really think that if you got a group of MAC athletic directors in a room to make a big decision that it couldn't get worse than it already is?

If you can't do something right, don't do anything at all. In my opinion, have a minimum of 10 games or don't have any at all.

I think you are 90% correct. The only question is....how fast can the P5 schools ditch G5 schools, the NCAA and reorganize themselves? Some of these P5 schools are going to be out of a lot more money than G5 schools this year. That kind of money does not get made up in one year or two. It could take many of them up to 10 years to get their finances back to where they want them to be. The sooner they ditch G5 schools and replace them with more profitable games, television money, advertisements, etc, the sooner they can get their balance sheets back in order. The sooner the NCAA goes away, the faster they can eliminate the overhead necessary for compliance nonsense. If the P5 schools think they can do this by next year, you are 100% correct. In the end, G5 schools really need to get together and decide how they can best use their athletic departments to shine a positive light on their schools. I'm hoping they have the sense to bring in other people to think about that for them.

Stay clear of South Carolina breweries. I've never had one I liked. Charleston is one of the great food cities in the world and I think as good as the food is, the breweries are that bad. Myrtle Beach? That's where you go to drink 30 Coors Lights per day. It's about time for those of us who live here to start our off season visits.

I'm not much of a beer expert, but I know what I like when I taste it. If you are in the Carolinas for whatever reason, Foothills is popular with those who like craft beer. Www.foothillsbrewing.com/

Is it systemic? No, that's not what the word "systemic" means. If it was systemic, ALL universities would be experiencing it. It is a "problem" for the bottom half. There is a need for systemic change. What system though? The Athletic Department or the overall university or G5 universities or just G5 athletic departments? The systemic issues at G5 schools have created problems for G5 athletic departments. G5 schools are having trouble coping with the financial pinches in recent years and are making already financially strapped athletic departments the target of poor administrative decisions including crippling cuts to athletic departments and student fees. Systemically, G5 universities are in a cycle of disastrous public relations. When is the last time you went six months without a report of the financial problems at UofA or similar schools. There is no reason to get upset with the media about this as they are public schools for the most part and taxpayers deserve to know what is going on at their public institutions. Are these schools making a concerted effort to highlight what they are doing positively within their communities? I doubt it. I don't see it and I live close to two decently sized public universities. The public is left with a feeling these schools are failing at every level and since they are funded by the public the "outrage response" is to demand cuts. Five years of cutting did not make General Electric a great company. Today, it is a shell of the company it was five years ago when the Six Sigma Black Belts took an hatchet to everything in sight (actually, it was much more than five years ago). During that period, you almost never heard good news about the company and investors lost confidence. The same is happening with G5 schools. How about the clowns who run them and work at them (yes, I'm talking to the professors who endlessly call for cuts to athletics) highlight some of the great things the kids are doing throughout the school to offset the negative financial press? What if these positive stories gave confidence to potential students and the enrollment/revenue increased? Isn't that a solution as well? G5 schools are not going to cut their way to success or a new future. That is a downward cycle that will cause the entire system to fail. If you want systemic failure, this is what it will look like. It's time to turn these schools into the beacons of light they are and not the black holes they appear to be. College athletics can be part of that endeavor.

I think you are correct and make a couple of really good points. Asking a college player to play 24 games in basically 8 months is not realistic or fair to those players. The body cannot withstand that level of punishment. Schools need to make spring football permanent or don't have it at all. The point about eligibility is a good one. The first consideration is the scholarship numbers. Even if they allow for increased scholarships for one year, where will the money come from at already cash strapped universities? We also need to keep in mind that almost all of the players have no shot of playing after college. My guess is as players earn diplomas after five years, they leave and start their adult lives. A sixth year is a long time to stick around a college just to play football. I went to college for six years, but the last two years were spent in graduate school earning a Masters Degree. It was odd looking at my peers from high school who already had two years of work by the time I was finished. The players will notice this as well. Moreover, how many players will want to stick around a losing program? It's a ton of misery in between games just to play some games only to continue to lose.

Good questions. G5 will need a governing body.... A much smaller governing body. We arent going to separate from anything. We are about to get dumped by the good looking girl and need to figure out a future. I'm less concerned about cutting the expenses and more interested in increasing revenue for the overall university. This revenue needs to come in the form of increased enrollment. It can spread out student fees and reduce the cost of attendance for all students. A proposal I would have is a reduction in the endless drip of poorly released public information that scares students away from enrolling. Unfortunately, the new President seems to be embracing the failures of the past in this regard.