(04-23-2013 08:56 PM)MSUBear42 Wrote: Add. Football. Please.
WE ARE. MO STATE
This may go against the common narrative, but I don't see the money in football. How profitable is the FCS? How profitable is DII or DIII football?
Here, let me put it in a graph:
Now, you might ask why I am talking about FCS football when clearly the goal of every program is to get to the FBS level. Guess, what:
In ten to twenty years, the low end of FBS will BE the new FCS!
Why would Wichita State want to add football to try and get a lower level FBS league? The Sun Belt sucks, and would be a ridiculous downgrade in the sport we actually care about. Would we join C-USA, a league so successful that it successfully lost every founding member of the conference? The MAC? Get out of here.
The only exceptions would be the AAC and the MWC. We would want to join those conferences, but for basketball only. I see no future in football outside of the Power5 conferences. Even if we never see a full breakaway, I think you'll continue to see 90% of the media money go to the power conferences.
If we DID add football, you would be looking at millions a year in expenses. For example, UMass was spending about $8.5 million on football. How much extra money would we get by moving from the MVC to a G5 conference?
AAC: < $3 million (estimate)
MWC: $1.33 million
C-USA: $1.15 million
MAC: Virtually nothing ($600,000 for the whole conference)
Sun Belt: Virtually nothing times two ($208,000 for the whole conference).
If we added football, we would go from being in the black to being millions of dollars in the red (not to mention the tens of millions needed for facilities). We live in a world where football is not necessary, and
IMHO is not the money-maker for non-Power5 schools. It is far easier to run a really good basketball program and make money than it is to make money from football in a non-power conference.
For inspiration, look no farther than the C7. A conference with no football that is LEAGUES better than any of the G5 schools in terms of media money. Sure, Wichita State is unlikely to ever join that league, but the potential for basketball to make money exists and is far more likely (at least for Wichita State) than ever turning a profit from football.
Sorry for the rant, but I think football is the last option for us to leave the MVC, something we would only do if the MVC completely hamstrung us from moving forward.