(06-15-2020 02:24 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 01:43 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 01:29 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 10:34 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  ODU's last full year in CAA 2012-2013 travel costs 2.2M. Most recent available in CUSA 2018-2019 travel costs of 3.9M.

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/ODU_NCAA-2013.pdf

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/OldD...AA2019.pdf

It seems you can buy quite a bit of complaining with $1.7m.

ODU is reporting $7.2 million in "Operating (Game-Day) Expenses" for 2018-19 in their EADA report, which is consistent with travel costs being higher than UMKC or NKU.

OTOH, given that ODU says the vast majority of their cost increase is for sports other than football, maybe they should be asking themselves why they don't return to the CAA, play football as an FBS indy, and then use the travel cost savings to spend more on football.

Well, take a look at the revenue side for those years. Specifically the NCAA/Conference distributions. Independence is not a good option for any FBS school that doesn't have an invite to the Big East.

The conference distributions in the CAA are probably about a million per year less than in CUSA, which would be more than offset by the travel cost savings if numbers in those reports are correct.

Alternatively, if CUSA's revenue distributions are much larger than reported and thus far larger than CAA's, then it would make sense to accept CUSA's higher travel costs as a reasonable price to pay for getting much higher revenue.

(06-15-2020 01:43 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 01:29 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 10:34 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  ODU's last full year in CAA 2012-2013 travel costs 2.2M. Most recent available in CUSA 2018-2019 travel costs of 3.9M.

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/ODU_NCAA-2013.pdf

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/OldD...AA2019.pdf

It seems you can buy quite a bit of complaining with $1.7m.

ODU is reporting $7.2 million in "Operating (Game-Day) Expenses" for 2018-19 in their EADA report, which is consistent with travel costs being higher than UMKC or NKU.

OTOH, given that ODU says the vast majority of their cost increase is for sports other than football, maybe they should be asking themselves why they don't return to the CAA, play football as an FBS indy, and then use the travel cost savings to spend more on football.

Football was *a* driver for ODU's move from the CAA to CUSA (FBS moveups require a conference invite when you're not Liberty), but not *the* driver. VCU had just left, Richmond had long left, George Mason was rumored to be following suit and James Madison wasn't expanding and improving the football stadium for an indefinite diet of Elon, Rhode Island and Maine. The CAA was destabilizing, and when it comes to conference realignment, you may not want to be the first school to move but you surely don't want to be the last.

FBS independence is still a risky proposition even with UConn and Liberty in the pool. The CAA in its current form holds no appeal. The only two schools ODU fans really care about from there is JMU and William and Mary, and we play them both every year in most sports anyway. Some ODU posters dream about FBS independence/A-10, but the A-10 is already at 14 schools, and if they lose enough to require backfills, they'll probably be the programs that make them attractive in the first place.

Best hope is eventually getting in the AAC with ECU, Navy and Temple. Second-best hope depends on the circumstances. Right now I think helping CUSA turn into a better basketball league while getting football back up to credibility is a better route than hoping to get the schedule/media deal to go indy while crossing our fingers that somehow, the A-10 thinks 14 isn't enough.

(06-15-2020 03:24 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 02:24 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 01:43 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 01:29 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 10:34 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  ODU's last full year in CAA 2012-2013 travel costs 2.2M. Most recent available in CUSA 2018-2019 travel costs of 3.9M.

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/ODU_NCAA-2013.pdf

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/OldD...AA2019.pdf

It seems you can buy quite a bit of complaining with $1.7m.

ODU is reporting $7.2 million in "Operating (Game-Day) Expenses" for 2018-19 in their EADA report, which is consistent with travel costs being higher than UMKC or NKU.

OTOH, given that ODU says the vast majority of their cost increase is for sports other than football, maybe they should be asking themselves why they don't return to the CAA, play football as an FBS indy, and then use the travel cost savings to spend more on football.

Well, take a look at the revenue side for those years. Specifically the NCAA/Conference distributions. Independence is not a good option for any FBS school that doesn't have an invite to the Big East.

The conference distributions in the CAA are probably about a million per year less than in CUSA, which would be more than offset by the travel cost savings if numbers in those reports are correct.

Alternatively, if CUSA's revenue distributions are much larger than reported and thus far larger than CAA's, then it would make sense to accept CUSA's higher travel costs as a reasonable price to pay for getting much higher revenue.

James Madison of the CAA reported a goose egg in conference distributions. So 1.3 million in revenue gained from CUSA distributions and another 450k from media. We couldn’t get our travel expenses back to 2013 levels playing in the CAA and FBS Indy so at best it’s a wash, likely we’d be losing money. A10 would be a better proposition as we’d gain some revenue and it would likely engage our basketball fan base more but still not likely even if we were invited. We could start playing bodybag games in football every year and make up the travel expenses if we’re just talking dollars and cents.

http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/Jame...AA2019.pdf

Travel savings for switching from one conference to another certainly are on a case by case basis. La. Tech switch hing from the WAC, where they were an extreme eastern outlier, to C-USA, where several schools are within driving distance, probably yielded a significant travel savings. NC A&T switching from the MEAC to the Big South will see some travel savings, too, but being in the middle of the MEAC's Delaware-to-Florida corridor, the savings probably won't be as much as La. Tech's were.

Those are just two examples.
....

I have little doubt that athletic directors examine these things often, along with other factors, just in case there's another "seismic shift," as the commissioners used to say.

(06-15-2020 10:26 PM)Michael in Raleigh Wrote:  Travel savings for switching from one conference to another certainly are on a case by case basis. La. Tech switch hing from the WAC, where they were an extreme eastern outlier, to C-USA, where several schools are within driving distance, probably yielded a significant travel savings. NC A&T switching from the MEAC to the Big South will see some travel savings, too, but being in the middle of the MEAC's Delaware-to-Florida corridor, the savings probably won't be as much as La. Tech's were.

Those are just two examples.
....

I have little doubt that athletic directors examine these things often, along with other factors, just in case there's another "seismic shift," as the commissioners used to say.

I've worked in universities for the past decade. It would shock me if Athletic directors have examined these things.

Case in point: at my last university, my college literally did not have a budget. I suspect it's because they were illegally mixing funds (from state, endowment, and donations) and didn't want to have documents that could be audited. Also they did not want the President to find out how financially healthy we were, because the President would have made sure that those resources were taken from us to prop up the failing colleges.

Any industry that has had revenue growth every year for several decades has a LOT of waste. When the wrong people get promoted for the wrong reasons, or meaningless positions get created, no one gets fired or punished because there's still lots of growth.

It's doubly worse if it's a nonprofit with no shareholders to enforce discipline during good times.

It's triply worse if the "leaders" are picked for their people skills, rather than decision making skills or administrative ability. Do you think athletic directors (or deans, or presidents) are hired because they can schmooze donors or because they can use an income statement to develop an effective strategic plan?

That's where universities are now, and in 2020 the piper has finally come.

(06-15-2020 10:20 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(06-15-2020 08:35 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  Bottom line is these are estimates, and the true values won't be known until travel actually takes places and actual costs are incurred and recorded.

And because of this, different interest groups will come up with estimates that support their position. E.g., a group that wants their school to remain in conference X will produce an estimate showing very little savings or maybe even added costs in moving to conference Y. Those who want to leave for Y will produce estimates showing big travel savings for the move. This is because one thing both groups likely have in common is that neither favors or opposes the proposed move *because* of travel costs. That's just an excuse to cover for a deeper ideological/emotional reason.

You maybe didn't read the link. Northern Kentucky's estimate was towards the end of their first year in the Horizon.

I read it. I just decided to make a general statement about travel cost estimates not something tied to the specifics of this case.

(06-18-2020 10:40 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Do you think athletic directors (or deans, or presidents) are hired because they can schmooze donors or because they can use an income statement to develop an effective strategic plan?

It would be better if those tasks didn't have to be in the same job description. There should be people on staff who create good plans and figure out how to best *use* the money that's there.

Schmoozing donors -- or more to the point, getting big donors to donate more and more money, and getting money from corporate sponsors -- *should* be the #1 job of ADs (and probably also university presidents, but let's stick to ADs for now). If ADs were more effective at that part of the job, they wouldn't have to continually cover their budget deficits with student fees and other university subsidies.

Per David Teel in the Richmond newspaper:

Quote:Before delving into details, a nugget on the savings of regionalized competition. Depending on distance, charter flights for ACC football teams cost approximately $80,000-$100,000 per game. Bus trips cost about one-fifth as much, $15,000-$25,000.

Let's come up with a plausible maximum savings from playing a regional schedule instead of a far flung schedule.

Football plane charter savings: $100,000/game

Let's say it cost you half that to move all your other teams (it's going to be more per head than the football team, so diminishing savings will kick in). $50,000/game * 15 other sports.

Let's say you for whatever reason played half your conference road games so far away you had to fly.

Football savings: $100,000/game * (2.50 average flying road games per year on a 9 game schedule) = $250,000/year
Hoops savings: $50,000/game * (5 average flying road games per year on a 20 game schedule) = $250,000/year

Let's just call it $250,000/year/sport for giggles since we've come this far.

Grand total maximum airfare savings per year per school to field the NCAA Division 1 number of 16 teams:
$250,000 * 16 sports = $4,000,000/year This is enough money to make or break the one-bid leagues of the March Madness conferences, but doesn't really move the needle much at the P5 level. But is there money that is otherwise lost but not as easily visible?

Your road game has the inevitable return trip. Are your fans excited about that game? Let's assume a worst case -- you're a factory packing 100k+ into the stands and the ticket price is equivalent to FCS. Let's assume average ticket price difference was steep as well all things considered given luxury seating: $100 difference in average revenue per ticket.

Lost gate revenue on bad home game: $10,000,000/game

This is probably too high, but again, we're going for a maximum here. I picked Florida at psuedo-random and looked and their attendance only drops about 2,500 for Idaho or FCS instead of decent SEC East potluck or random team from the SEC West.

Let's say your revenue ratio football to hoops is 80:20. So that's $2,400,000 lost in hoops. All your other sports likely lose money or don't make enough to matter in this back of the envelope math.

That gets us to a grand total GTS Maximum Spitball Savings ™ of:
$4m + $10m + $2.4m = $16,400,000
(assuming your fans are somewhat fickle and you have an enormous gate haul and you play half your conference games a plane flight away)