(07-03-2018 01:33 PM)MWC Tex Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 11:00 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 10:29 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  That is why there is so much panic among the AAC fans about the TV deal.

That is because if it's not great (10-15 million) then it puts the leagues future in question.

With the football spending it's not just the head guys salary it's also paying for an assistant pool. Where is the extra money for all of that coming from.

If the AAC doesn't make power status in the next 5 years or so I'd expect we will see some rollback in spending.

I think the issue why the AAC can't get P5 status when most of the schools are considered P5 material is that they have dead-weight. Tulsa dn Tulane both have the lack of fan support. The other schools are fine. Those 2 schools can not keep up with the others. Remove them, and replaced them with La. Tech and ODU? You might have a better chance. Or if not La. Tech? Southern Mississippi or UTSA both have very good fan support. ODU is already spending at the AAC level.

You need to look at what type of schools are in the P5 conferences. They are state flagship and land-grant institutions. The AAC is full of private schools and other city/state or directional state colleges.
Despite being in populated areas, they are dwarfed by the state flagship and land grant schools in many areas. Sure the AAC has some great academic institutions, but that isn't where gets them power status.

I don't think any G5 conference will be a power conference, but the one conference that fits the make-up of power conferences is the MW. It's just that in low populated areas won't get it the TV deal of a Power status. But they do have 7 states that are given full attention by their state governments and 14 Senators in US Congress.

Did not stopped some P5 conferences to add city schools. Syracuse, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Miami and Boston College all named after the cities that they are in. They are all in the ACC. Stanford, Purdue, Northwestern, Duke, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt are not land grants or state flagship schools.

AAC is more in make-up like the ACC. MWC is more in a make-up like the PAC 12 except for San Jose State.

(07-03-2018 01:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 12:31 PM)panama Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 07:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 11:10 PM)panama Wrote:  

(06-30-2018 06:39 PM)ken d Wrote:  For most of my adult life, most colleges who had football teams among other sports all ran deficits. This was uniformly justified by all those schools by the argument that underwriting sports was a marketing expense that benefited the university as a whole.

Now that some of those schools are bringing in more cash than any of them ever imagined possible, it seems that they feel like that's no longer a valid argument. Instead, they (or at least their fans) argue that those who don't have that cash should curtail this marketing expense and drop down in class - to thin the herd, as it were.

I've never known a business whose success was improved by reducing its advertising budget. Does it work differently for schools?

Ahhh...someone who gets it

But Ken-D's claim is too simplistic. Companies DO cut their marketing all the time, or shift marketing priorities from one aspect of the business to another, and if being in a particular market or product area becomes too costly, they will exit markets and cut product lines. They do it all the time, even successful companies.

Also, you have to remember that during the era Ken was talking about, costs were relatively low for everyone, as was revenue. And we're not talking ancient history here, but much more recently. E.g., in 1995, Baylor, a Power school, had a total athletic budget of $7.5 million. That same year, Florida and Nebraska, two powerhouses that played for the national title, had athletic budgets of $12m and $10m respectively.

So whatever budget a "Group" school like a Troy or North Texas had, we know it was no more than $7.5m less than Baylor or $10m less than Nebraska (make it $16m for Nebraska if you want to adjust for inflation). A "group" school didn't have to bust its budget or soak its students to stay within striking range. Not true any more.

Also, the mentality of 'group' schools has changed. Twenty years ago, most group-level schools were satisfied with trying to make it at that level. Precisely because there wasn't that much money to be made if you were truly big-time, there wasn't the incentive. An Eastern Kentucky was basically happy with its second-tier lot in life.

Now, though, it seems like half the 'group' schools have adopted an ambitious 'striver' mentality, they have a plan to boost themselves into the Power level. So as they have more ambitious goals, they are spending more at a time when the costs of keeping up are rising, no check that, the costs of keeping up are impossible, because as my Memphis example showed, you can't keep up when the state Power school is getting $40m from its conference each year and you are getting $2m. This is why it is more harmful to the rest of the university in a way it wasn't 20 years ago. Schools, particularly schools with no power history, are investing big resources chasing the Power dream. And they don't have the money to spend, by and large.

If my operating budget is $1B and I decide to pay $15M or $20M to take care of any deficit and the end result is more notoriety, more admission apps and enhanced prestige for the university, that isn't a bad tradeoff. The only ones upset are P5 fans whose schools did the same in the 1950s.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

But ... there's no evidence that there are any of those benefits. It's pretty astonishing, because universities are supposed to be citadels of scientific studies and the like, but nobody has shown that those benefits exist. Administrators just assert them.

And the reason for that is that these benefits probably don't exist, or to the extent they do, they are far less than the cost of generating them.

I have always suspected that the real reason schools make these bids to have 'big time' college athletics is because of administrator and wealthy donor egos. Admins and elite alums want to go on junkets to bowl games and they don't want to attend conferences and business meetings where peers from athletic powers are bragging about their school's big football or hoops team and they have to sit silent. Student behavior at such schools strongly supports this notion (e.g., empty stadiums).

It's very similar to situations where a mayor or city councillors support public financing of stadiums for pro sports teams. They talk about 'economic development'and status as a 'big time' city to justify soaking taxpayers, when research shows that the costs actually far outweigh the benefits.

The actual motivation is mayor and elite egos, they don't want elites in other cities to be able to wave their sports franchises in their face.

We had 31k applications for admission the year after we started football. There is evidence. If there isn't an ancillary benefit to marketing of the University, then there is no reason for sponsoring of athletics beyond recreation leagues.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

(07-03-2018 01:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 12:31 PM)panama Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 07:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 11:10 PM)panama Wrote:  Ahhh...someone who gets it

But Ken-D's claim is too simplistic. Companies DO cut their marketing all the time, or shift marketing priorities from one aspect of the business to another, and if being in a particular market or product area becomes too costly, they will exit markets and cut product lines. They do it all the time, even successful companies.

Also, you have to remember that during the era Ken was talking about, costs were relatively low for everyone, as was revenue. And we're not talking ancient history here, but much more recently. E.g., in 1995, Baylor, a Power school, had a total athletic budget of $7.5 million. That same year, Florida and Nebraska, two powerhouses that played for the national title, had athletic budgets of $12m and $10m respectively.

So whatever budget a "Group" school like a Troy or North Texas had, we know it was no more than $7.5m less than Baylor or $10m less than Nebraska (make it $16m for Nebraska if you want to adjust for inflation). A "group" school didn't have to bust its budget or soak its students to stay within striking range. Not true any more.

Also, the mentality of 'group' schools has changed. Twenty years ago, most group-level schools were satisfied with trying to make it at that level. Precisely because there wasn't that much money to be made if you were truly big-time, there wasn't the incentive. An Eastern Kentucky was basically happy with its second-tier lot in life.

Now, though, it seems like half the 'group' schools have adopted an ambitious 'striver' mentality, they have a plan to boost themselves into the Power level. So as they have more ambitious goals, they are spending more at a time when the costs of keeping up are rising, no check that, the costs of keeping up are impossible, because as my Memphis example showed, you can't keep up when the state Power school is getting $40m from its conference each year and you are getting $2m. This is why it is more harmful to the rest of the university in a way it wasn't 20 years ago. Schools, particularly schools with no power history, are investing big resources chasing the Power dream. And they don't have the money to spend, by and large.

If my operating budget is $1B and I decide to pay $15M or $20M to take care of any deficit and the end result is more notoriety, more admission apps and enhanced prestige for the university, that isn't a bad tradeoff. The only ones upset are P5 fans whose schools did the same in the 1950s.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

But ... there's no evidence that there are any of those benefits. It's pretty astonishing, because universities are supposed to be citadels of scientific studies and the like, but nobody has shown that those benefits exist. Administrators just assert them.

And the reason for that is that these benefits probably don't exist, or to the extent they do, they are far less than the cost of generating them.

I have always suspected that the real reason schools make these bids to have 'big time' college athletics is because of administrator and wealthy donor egos. Admins and elite alums want to go on junkets to bowl games and they don't want to attend conferences and business meetings where peers from athletic powers are bragging about their school's big football or hoops team and they have to sit silent. Student behavior at such schools strongly supports this notion (e.g., empty stadiums).

It's very similar to situations where a mayor or city councillors support public financing of stadiums for pro sports teams. They talk about 'economic development'and status as a 'big time' city to justify soaking taxpayers, when research shows that the costs actually far outweigh the benefits.

The actual motivation is mayor and elite egos, they don't want elites in other cities to be able to wave their sports franchises in their face.

Of course they exist. 30 years ago Virginia Tech was athletic peers with VMI and anyone who wanted to go there was accepted. Not true today. I'm not saying that's all football but football was a HUGE impetus in allowing the transformation.

What's the evidence for that? VT's enrollment when Frank Beamer arrived in 1987 was about 25,000. Today, it's about 33,000. Very modest growth, in fact, VT's big enrollment boom came from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.

And how can Old Dominion have experienced a big football impact? Honestly, very few are aware that ODU even has football.

(07-03-2018 11:00 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 10:29 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  That is why there is so much panic among the AAC fans about the TV deal.

That is because if it's not great (10-15 million) then it puts the leagues future in question.

With the football spending it's not just the head guys salary it's also paying for an assistant pool. Where is the extra money for all of that coming from.

If the AAC doesn't make power status in the next 5 years or so I'd expect we will see some rollback in spending.

I think the issue why the AAC can't get P5 status when most of the schools are considered P5 material is that they have dead-weight. Tulsa dn Tulane both have the lack of fan support. The other schools are fine. Those 2 schools can not keep up with the others. Remove them, and replaced them with La. Tech and ODU? You might have a better chance. Or if not La. Tech? Southern Mississippi or UTSA both have very good fan support. ODU is already spending at the AAC level.

It is because the cartel, P5 and their TV partners won't allow it.

(07-03-2018 02:09 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 12:31 PM)panama Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 07:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  But Ken-D's claim is too simplistic. Companies DO cut their marketing all the time, or shift marketing priorities from one aspect of the business to another, and if being in a particular market or product area becomes too costly, they will exit markets and cut product lines. They do it all the time, even successful companies.

Also, you have to remember that during the era Ken was talking about, costs were relatively low for everyone, as was revenue. And we're not talking ancient history here, but much more recently. E.g., in 1995, Baylor, a Power school, had a total athletic budget of $7.5 million. That same year, Florida and Nebraska, two powerhouses that played for the national title, had athletic budgets of $12m and $10m respectively.

So whatever budget a "Group" school like a Troy or North Texas had, we know it was no more than $7.5m less than Baylor or $10m less than Nebraska (make it $16m for Nebraska if you want to adjust for inflation). A "group" school didn't have to bust its budget or soak its students to stay within striking range. Not true any more.

Also, the mentality of 'group' schools has changed. Twenty years ago, most group-level schools were satisfied with trying to make it at that level. Precisely because there wasn't that much money to be made if you were truly big-time, there wasn't the incentive. An Eastern Kentucky was basically happy with its second-tier lot in life.

Now, though, it seems like half the 'group' schools have adopted an ambitious 'striver' mentality, they have a plan to boost themselves into the Power level. So as they have more ambitious goals, they are spending more at a time when the costs of keeping up are rising, no check that, the costs of keeping up are impossible, because as my Memphis example showed, you can't keep up when the state Power school is getting $40m from its conference each year and you are getting $2m. This is why it is more harmful to the rest of the university in a way it wasn't 20 years ago. Schools, particularly schools with no power history, are investing big resources chasing the Power dream. And they don't have the money to spend, by and large.

If my operating budget is $1B and I decide to pay $15M or $20M to take care of any deficit and the end result is more notoriety, more admission apps and enhanced prestige for the university, that isn't a bad tradeoff. The only ones upset are P5 fans whose schools did the same in the 1950s.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

But ... there's no evidence that there are any of those benefits. It's pretty astonishing, because universities are supposed to be citadels of scientific studies and the like, but nobody has shown that those benefits exist. Administrators just assert them.

And the reason for that is that these benefits probably don't exist, or to the extent they do, they are far less than the cost of generating them.

I have always suspected that the real reason schools make these bids to have 'big time' college athletics is because of administrator and wealthy donor egos. Admins and elite alums want to go on junkets to bowl games and they don't want to attend conferences and business meetings where peers from athletic powers are bragging about their school's big football or hoops team and they have to sit silent. Student behavior at such schools strongly supports this notion (e.g., empty stadiums).

It's very similar to situations where a mayor or city councillors support public financing of stadiums for pro sports teams. They talk about 'economic development'and status as a 'big time' city to justify soaking taxpayers, when research shows that the costs actually far outweigh the benefits.

The actual motivation is mayor and elite egos, they don't want elites in other cities to be able to wave their sports franchises in their face.

Of course they exist. 30 years ago Virginia Tech was athletic peers with VMI and anyone who wanted to go there was accepted. Not true today. I'm not saying that's all football but football was a HUGE impetus in allowing the transformation.

What's the evidence for that? VT's enrollment when Frank Beamer arrived in 1987 was about 25,000. Today, it's about 33,000. Very modest growth, in fact, VT's big enrollment boom came from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.

And how can Old Dominion have experienced a big football impact? Honestly, very few are aware that ODU even has football.

VT is the size it wants to be. Check # of applications, percentage accepted and average SAT scores and I guarantee you can find the difference.

Maybe very few of the Trolls that live under your bridge are unaware that ODU has football but everyone in the greater Hampton Roads area and Eastern VA is well aware of it. Which is where we draw most of our students from. Do you think anyone outside of the greater Tampa area would be familiar with USF if it wasn't for sports? The answer is no. But that wasn't my point. ODU had very much a commuter vibe not long ago (and still there's a large number of commuting students and military that attend there) but it has a much greater campus feel now. It doesn't matter if BFE Ohio or Fla knows about ODU football, it's here and our community supports it.

Facility, staff, and spending caps. Like every other professional league has on the Planet. Even Formula 1 has caps and limits these days.

The NCAA is the last hold out of professional sports not doing this. Because to fix the problem is to admit they've made billions off the backs of student athletes who typically are handed a garbage degree in an irrelevant field for their troubles.

(07-03-2018 02:47 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 02:09 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 12:31 PM)panama Wrote:  If my operating budget is $1B and I decide to pay $15M or $20M to take care of any deficit and the end result is more notoriety, more admission apps and enhanced prestige for the university, that isn't a bad tradeoff. The only ones upset are P5 fans whose schools did the same in the 1950s.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

But ... there's no evidence that there are any of those benefits. It's pretty astonishing, because universities are supposed to be citadels of scientific studies and the like, but nobody has shown that those benefits exist. Administrators just assert them.

And the reason for that is that these benefits probably don't exist, or to the extent they do, they are far less than the cost of generating them.

I have always suspected that the real reason schools make these bids to have 'big time' college athletics is because of administrator and wealthy donor egos. Admins and elite alums want to go on junkets to bowl games and they don't want to attend conferences and business meetings where peers from athletic powers are bragging about their school's big football or hoops team and they have to sit silent. Student behavior at such schools strongly supports this notion (e.g., empty stadiums).

It's very similar to situations where a mayor or city councillors support public financing of stadiums for pro sports teams. They talk about 'economic development'and status as a 'big time' city to justify soaking taxpayers, when research shows that the costs actually far outweigh the benefits.

The actual motivation is mayor and elite egos, they don't want elites in other cities to be able to wave their sports franchises in their face.

Of course they exist. 30 years ago Virginia Tech was athletic peers with VMI and anyone who wanted to go there was accepted. Not true today. I'm not saying that's all football but football was a HUGE impetus in allowing the transformation.

What's the evidence for that? VT's enrollment when Frank Beamer arrived in 1987 was about 25,000. Today, it's about 33,000. Very modest growth, in fact, VT's big enrollment boom came from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.

And how can Old Dominion have experienced a big football impact? Honestly, very few are aware that ODU even has football.

VT is the size it wants to be. Check # of applications, percentage accepted and average SAT scores and I guarantee you can find the difference.

Maybe very few of the Trolls that live under your bridge are unaware that ODU has football but everyone in the greater Hampton Roads area and Eastern VA is well aware of it.

I believe that VT wants modest enrollment growth in recent years, which is what they've experienced. But to think SAT scores and US News rankings have anything to do with football at VT is silly.

And sorry to hurt your feelings, but do you really think that only trolls under a bridge are unaware of ODU football? it is true that ODU has basically zero national football profile. When I think of Old Dominion at all, I think of a couple of good men's hoops teams you had around the turn of this past decade, but mostly for the "Lady Monarchs" women's team that i recall being dominant in my youth, back in the early 1980s or thereabouts. They were one of the original top women's hoops programs when the sport first came to public light, along with the Lady Techsters of Louisiana Tech and USC.

That's it. Football? Nobody within hundreds of miles of me has probably ever heard of it.

(07-03-2018 02:47 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 02:09 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 01:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 12:31 PM)panama Wrote:  If my operating budget is $1B and I decide to pay $15M or $20M to take care of any deficit and the end result is more notoriety, more admission apps and enhanced prestige for the university, that isn't a bad tradeoff. The only ones upset are P5 fans whose schools did the same in the 1950s.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

But ... there's no evidence that there are any of those benefits. It's pretty astonishing, because universities are supposed to be citadels of scientific studies and the like, but nobody has shown that those benefits exist. Administrators just assert them.

And the reason for that is that these benefits probably don't exist, or to the extent they do, they are far less than the cost of generating them.

I have always suspected that the real reason schools make these bids to have 'big time' college athletics is because of administrator and wealthy donor egos. Admins and elite alums want to go on junkets to bowl games and they don't want to attend conferences and business meetings where peers from athletic powers are bragging about their school's big football or hoops team and they have to sit silent. Student behavior at such schools strongly supports this notion (e.g., empty stadiums).

It's very similar to situations where a mayor or city councillors support public financing of stadiums for pro sports teams. They talk about 'economic development'and status as a 'big time' city to justify soaking taxpayers, when research shows that the costs actually far outweigh the benefits.

The actual motivation is mayor and elite egos, they don't want elites in other cities to be able to wave their sports franchises in their face.

Of course they exist. 30 years ago Virginia Tech was athletic peers with VMI and anyone who wanted to go there was accepted. Not true today. I'm not saying that's all football but football was a HUGE impetus in allowing the transformation.

What's the evidence for that? VT's enrollment when Frank Beamer arrived in 1987 was about 25,000. Today, it's about 33,000. Very modest growth, in fact, VT's big enrollment boom came from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.

And how can Old Dominion have experienced a big football impact? Honestly, very few are aware that ODU even has football.

VT is the size it wants to be. Check # of applications, percentage accepted and average SAT scores and I guarantee you can find the difference.

Maybe very few of the Trolls that live under your bridge are unaware that ODU has football but everyone in the greater Hampton Roads area and Eastern VA is well aware of it. Which is where we draw most of our students from. Do you think anyone outside of the greater Tampa area would be familiar with USF if it wasn't for sports? The answer is no. But that wasn't my point. ODU had very much a commuter vibe not long ago (and still there's a large number of commuting students and military that attend there) but it has a much greater campus feel now. It doesn't matter if BFE Ohio or Fla knows about ODU football, it's here and our community supports it.

I knew ODU had football before they dropped the program. I knew they had one since I was living in Norman, Oklahoma at the time going to high school. I knew Lamar had a team. I even saw scores for D2 Campbellsville State (still do not know what happened to the school. Did they changed their names?), Evergreen State (some people think it could have been a club team at the time.) and Oregon Tech (which some people think they were a club team.) I think Campbellsville State was in North Carolina. Which school in the 1990s, early 2000 changed their name at that time? They were talking about going to D1 with their football program back in the 1990s.

(07-03-2018 02:08 PM)panama Wrote:  We had 31k applications for admission the year after we started football. There is evidence. If there isn't an ancillary benefit to marketing of the University, then there is no reason for sponsoring of athletics beyond recreation leagues.

That's a jumble there. First, of course college sports provides benefits for some schools. There's no question that football has built many buildings on the Notre Dame and Penn State campuses, or that basketball has done the same at Duke and Syracuse.

But the issue is, what has it done at G5 schools, especially the ones soaking their students bigly chasing the P5 dream?

And I'd agree that even at those schools, there are some benefits - some students clearly love to go to the football games and maybe football or basketball induced them to enroll. I'm glad USF has a football team that I can watch and support. But that has to be balanced against the very significant costs, and at many of these schools there's no evidence that the benefits exceed those costs.

At most, the costs are probably significantly greater.

(07-02-2018 10:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 08:47 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  Boise State and Memphis have sugar daddies that are willing to give millions of dollars to elevate the schools. Not all G5 schools have that luxury to have one which could ease the debt. These sugar daddies want their G5 programs to join a P5 conference. The sugar Daddy of the Memphis school was offering the Big 12 money, sponsorship of the championship game and all that so that Memphis could join the conference. I think if you have major sponsors that want to spend money for a school to join? I think you may have to look at the offer which I think is another way realignment can happen. That sponsorship could help put ads on The Longhorn Network and so forth.

IIRC, that Memphis sugar daddy and all the money they offered couldn't even get Memphis in the Big 12 final 12.

Fred Smith's offer just highlighted that university CEO's and corporate CEO's don't use the same thought process.

University CEO's don't want to ruin the mystic of affiliation. I can go buy as much equity in FedEx as I have spending power to do so. Universities don't want people believing they can just walk up and buy equity in their enterprises.

I don't think it is any mystery why Memphis didn't get invited to the Big East dance hall at the same time as Houston, SMU, and UCF.
I don't think it should be a mystery why Memphis got cut from the failed Big XII expansion so early, because they had the resume to not go in that first cut.

(07-03-2018 04:54 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 02:08 PM)panama Wrote:  We had 31k applications for admission the year after we started football. There is evidence. If there isn't an ancillary benefit to marketing of the University, then there is no reason for sponsoring of athletics beyond recreation leagues.

That's a jumble there. First, of course college sports provides benefits for some schools. There's no question that football has built many buildings on the Notre Dame and Penn State campuses, or that basketball has done the same at Duke and Syracuse.

But the issue is, what has it done at G5 schools, especially the ones soaking their students bigly chasing the P5 dream?

And I'd agree that even at those schools, there are some benefits - some students clearly love to go to the football games and maybe football or basketball induced them to enroll. I'm glad USF has a football team that I can watch and support. But that has to be balanced against the very significant costs, and at many of these schools there's no evidence that the benefits exceed those costs.

At most, the costs are probably significantly greater.

I'd say at least for the AAC there is a sense of athletic pride within the alumni that they have significant sport programs.

I don't think the gluttony factor has set in quite yet. The next CFP contract in 5-6 years is going to be quite telling. What if its the exact same arrangement? All those new CUSA and SBC schools will have time to bring up their recruiting causing more competition for the AAC so their edge might be lost.

(07-03-2018 05:32 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I don't think it is any mystery why Memphis didn't get invited to the Big East dance hall at the same time as Houston, SMU, and UCF.

I don't think it should be a mystery why Memphis got cut from the failed Big XII expansion so early, because they had the resume to not go in that first cut.

You're right on both counts. Memphis did not make the first Big East cut. Memphis did not make the last Big 12 cut.

The question is why?

Memphis certainly has the fan support (and basketball tradition) to merit a better showing. What do you think the reasons are? Here are some possibilities (I have no way to know if any of these actually played a role):

1. Renegade reputation

Memphis led the nation with 14 vacated NCAA tournament wins (during the Kirk & Calipari years) until the Pitino scandal hit Louisville.

2. Lack of football history

Memphis went to 2 bowls in its history until 2003. Has never played in a major bowl. Has never finished in the Top 20.

As Kansas found out in 2010 when it was almost left out of the Pac 12 raid of the Big 12, football is king.

3. Academics

Memphis has a 43% 6-year graduation rate. Maybe one P5 school is below 60%. Most are above 70%.

4. Off campus stadiums owned by someone else

The Liberty Bowl is 2.5 miles off campus, while the Fed Ex Forum is 7 miles away. The City of Memphis owns both.

5. Memphis is too diverse for P5 schools (36% African-American)

Certainly controversial. And would never be publicly stated as a reason. But private clubs tend to admit new members that "look" similar to current members unless they are desperate.

IDK, prolly some combination of all of the above. I tend to think academics play a big role and that takes longer to overcome...though they are on pace to reach Carnegie 1 designation sooner rather than later. The rest may be perception which is also slow to change. I don't think the arena/stadium situation is going to change anytime soon (very political) nor do I think it much a detriment in the long run. Memphis, the university and city, are very integrated with equal amounts of civic pride. While not a big market, the UofM owns it and has significant penetration in W TN and N MS.

While the current admin says they work "daily" on improving conference affiliation, they are not spending like it is a probability. I know others think the lack of budget increases since moving up to the AAC points to "not keeping up," but the current admin is concentrating on making the dept as self sufficient as possible while competing on the highest level. A state of the art bball practice facility has been funded and built and the long awaited fball facilities have finally begun w/o affecting student fees or transfers. The previous admin really left quite a mess (like should have been prosecuted kind of mess) that has taken time to dig out from under. They are cash strapped and will always be compared to local SEC teams, but have proven they can compete on the court and field with the resources they do have while slowly growing enrollment in a stagnating/declining brick and mortar macro environment.

(07-03-2018 03:44 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Facility, staff, and spending caps. Like every other professional league has on the Planet. Even Formula 1 and caps and limits these days.

The NCAA is the last hold out of professional sports not doing this. Because to fix the problem is to admit they've made billions off the backs of student athletes who typically are handed a garbage degree in an irrelevant field for their troubles.

Truer words may have never been written.

I'd give you +2 but you're the man.


Power to the people!

Still on the money with the comment.

(07-03-2018 05:32 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 10:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 08:47 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  Boise State and Memphis have sugar daddies that are willing to give millions of dollars to elevate the schools. Not all G5 schools have that luxury to have one which could ease the debt. These sugar daddies want their G5 programs to join a P5 conference. The sugar Daddy of the Memphis school was offering the Big 12 money, sponsorship of the championship game and all that so that Memphis could join the conference. I think if you have major sponsors that want to spend money for a school to join? I think you may have to look at the offer which I think is another way realignment can happen. That sponsorship could help put ads on The Longhorn Network and so forth.

IIRC, that Memphis sugar daddy and all the money they offered couldn't even get Memphis in the Big 12 final 12.

Fred Smith's offer just highlighted that university CEO's and corporate CEO's don't use the same thought process.

University CEO's don't want to ruin the mystic of affiliation. I can go buy as much equity in FedEx as I have spending power to do so. Universities don't want people believing they can just walk up and buy equity in their enterprises.

I don't think it is any mystery why Memphis didn't get invited to the Big East dance hall at the same time as Houston, SMU, and UCF.
I don't think it should be a mystery why Memphis got cut from the failed Big XII expansion so early, because they had the resume to not go in that first cut.

Yes, universities see themselves as having a special role in society and even as they do frantically chase corporate dollars they also insist on not being treated like just another crass money-grubbing trollop, they want to believe they are (and just as importantly, want others to see them as) shrouded in the halo of Socrates, etc.

It's not that the Big 12 didn't want the Memphis backing money, but they couldn't be seen taking it from a ham-handed source, the embarrassment among their peers would have been too much to bear. Memphis donors need to learn how to do this stuff more discreetly, in ways that allow the university (or conference) to uphold that 'mystique'.

It's kind of like 100 years ago, when some kid from the USA working class would claw tooth and nail up his industry and end up a rich tycoon, and then seek to marry his daughter off to an impoverished British Earl or something to upgrade the family name. The Earl was often willing to do that, but the working class tycoon had to have enough sense to not run around yelling "I'm buying my kid a Duke!" or whatever. Appearances had to be kept up ....

(07-01-2018 05:46 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Rather than quoting and responding to multiple posts.

There is some marketing value to a football team. I tend to suspect that there is no school that is getting $20 million in marketing value from athletics to warrant plowing $20 million in university and student funds into athletics, when the school isn't generating as much in athletic revenue from all other sources.

Eastern Michigan was long the poster child for inept football. The 7 win bowl season of 2016 was the first 7 win season since 1989. EMU got no positive publicity from football for nearly 30 years but their enrollment grew. One has to wonder if EMU might have grown even faster without the negative attention.

When a university is exceeding 25,000 full-time students and now wants football to market the university, I'm not buying the argument.

Value of athletics debates almost never include the argument that athletics are an amenity. I don't think it is an accident that smaller metros are heavily represented in FBS because those communities have fewer entertainment options for students and the community at-large. There is some value to having a sports program to provide an alternative to driving around the courthouse square down the main drag to Sonic and turning around and repeating the drive.

Taxpayers are generally not the ones getting "soaked" by transfers. Government in most if not all states just sends a pile of money to colleges and it neither rises nor falls based on the athletic activities of the college. The transfers to athletics become dollars not available to maintain buildings or pay salaries or to stave off increases in tuition and fees.

I think the difference is that the subsidies are in some cases more than P5 budgets just 15-20 years ago.

(07-03-2018 06:44 PM)CougarRed Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 05:32 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I don't think it is any mystery why Memphis didn't get invited to the Big East dance hall at the same time as Houston, SMU, and UCF.

I don't think it should be a mystery why Memphis got cut from the failed Big XII expansion so early, because they had the resume to not go in that first cut.

You're right on both counts. Memphis did not make the first Big East cut. Memphis did not make the last Big 12 cut.

The question is why?

Memphis certainly has the fan support (and basketball tradition) to merit a better showing. What do you think the reasons are? Here are some possibilities (I have no way to know if any of these actually played a role):

1. Renegade reputation

Memphis led the nation with 14 vacated NCAA tournament wins (during the Kirk & Calipari years) until the Pitino scandal hit Louisville.

2. Lack of football history

Memphis went to 2 bowls in its history until 2003. Has never played in a major bowl. Has never finished in the Top 20.

As Kansas found out in 2010 when it was almost left out of the Pac 12 raid of the Big 12, football is king.

3. Academics

Memphis has a 43% 6-year graduation rate. Maybe one P5 school is below 60%. Most are above 70%.

4. Off campus stadiums owned by someone else

The Liberty Bowl is 2.5 miles off campus, while the Fed Ex Forum is 7 miles away. The City of Memphis owns both.

5. Memphis is too diverse for P5 schools (36% African-American)

Certainly controversial. And would never be publicly stated as a reason. But private clubs tend to admit new members that "look" similar to current members unless they are desperate.

I think its pretty much all #1 and #3.

And #3 is why the AAC looks more like a P5 conference than the MWC does even though the MWC has some state flagships. 7 of the 12 schools are Carnegie Highest Research and 11 are Highest or Higher with Navy being the one exception. CUSA has 4 highest, MWC has 3 and there are 3 combined among the other conferences and independents.

(07-03-2018 10:29 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  That is why there is so much panic among the AAC fans about the TV deal.

That is because if it's not great (10-15 million) then it puts the leagues future in question.

With the football spending it's not just the head guys salary it's also paying for an assistant pool. Where is the extra money for all of that coming from.

If the AAC doesn't make power status in the next 5 years or so I'd expect we will see some rollback in spending.

Really??? Where is this "panic" coming from? Because I have never seen a single thread where AAC fans are panicking. Have you? If so thread please. As a matter of fact most AAC fans have been optimistically cautious. Have you seen otherwise? Maybe you're misconstruing some fans of other g5 conferences "panicking " about the possibility of the AAC actually starting to distance itself from the other g4. HMMM...

(07-03-2018 09:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-03-2018 05:32 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 10:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-02-2018 08:47 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  Boise State and Memphis have sugar daddies that are willing to give millions of dollars to elevate the schools. Not all G5 schools have that luxury to have one which could ease the debt. These sugar daddies want their G5 programs to join a P5 conference. The sugar Daddy of the Memphis school was offering the Big 12 money, sponsorship of the championship game and all that so that Memphis could join the conference. I think if you have major sponsors that want to spend money for a school to join? I think you may have to look at the offer which I think is another way realignment can happen. That sponsorship could help put ads on The Longhorn Network and so forth.

IIRC, that Memphis sugar daddy and all the money they offered couldn't even get Memphis in the Big 12 final 12.

Fred Smith's offer just highlighted that university CEO's and corporate CEO's don't use the same thought process.

University CEO's don't want to ruin the mystic of affiliation. I can go buy as much equity in FedEx as I have spending power to do so. Universities don't want people believing they can just walk up and buy equity in their enterprises.

I don't think it is any mystery why Memphis didn't get invited to the Big East dance hall at the same time as Houston, SMU, and UCF.
I don't think it should be a mystery why Memphis got cut from the failed Big XII expansion so early, because they had the resume to not go in that first cut.

Yes, universities see themselves as having a special role in society and even as they do frantically chase corporate dollars they also insist on not being treated like just another crass money-grubbing trollop, they want to believe they are (and just as importantly, want others to see them as) shrouded in the halo of Socrates, etc.

It's not that the Big 12 didn't want the Memphis backing money, but they couldn't be seen taking it from a ham-handed source, the embarrassment among their peers would have been too much to bear. Memphis donors need to learn how to do this stuff more discreetly, in ways that allow the university (or conference) to uphold that 'mystique'.

It's kind of like 100 years ago, when some kid from the USA working class would claw tooth and nail up his industry and end up a rich tycoon, and then seek to marry his daughter off to an impoverished British Earl or something to upgrade the family name. The Earl was often willing to do that, but the working class tycoon had to have enough sense to not run around yelling "I'm buying my kid a Duke!" or whatever. Appearances had to be kept up ....

It would make more sense to approach the conference office about being the title sponsor of some conference events for a number of years and throw a number and then mention that if the CEO's favorite team joins they would extend the deal for more years and more money and that conversation doesn't exist outside of the room.

(07-03-2018 03:44 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Facility, staff, and spending caps. Like every other professional league has on the Planet. Even Formula 1 and caps and limits these days.

The NCAA is the last hold out of professional sports not doing this. Because to fix the problem is to admit they've made billions off the backs of student athletes who typically are handed a garbage degree in an irrelevant field for their troubles.

^^^^^THIS^^^^^