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Academic Donations due to Football
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Captain Bearcat Offline
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Post: #21
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
(08-15-2018 12:15 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 11:51 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 09:12 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 08:59 AM)Big Frog II Wrote:  Winning sports teams make alums feel good about their school. This helps open their checkbooks when it comes time for the school to raise funds for new building and scholarships. Any ivory tower egghead who doesn't believe it is only fooling themselves.

But ... the 'feel good' aspect is usually proportional to the sense of achievement that *others* perceive. E.g., fans of the Philly Eagles are at 100% pride right now because they weren't just a 'winner' they won the Super Bowl, the biggest prize in football. Fans of Alabama too, because the winner of the top-level national title receives national acclaim as well.

That's why there's zero doubt that at 'big time' schools like Notre Dame and Georgia and yes, TCU, winning will drive donations to academics. Because when you guys win, you win big titles that matter - P5 conference titles, major bowl game, etc. Nobody has any doubt that football has built libraries and chemistry labs at big time schools.

The real issue is, does winning help at lower levels, where the prizes are smaller. Does a North Texas really get more academic donations because they go 10-2 vs a Sun Belt schedule nobody cares about? That they know nobody in the broader football realm respects?

This is the core issue, because these are the schools that soaking their students with fees and transfers. So that needs to be justified in terms of stuff like alumni donations.

The point of athletics is media attention, not alumni donations. And winning at a lower level certainly helps with media attention.

Article: "The same day the triumphant '95 Lady Huskies visited the state legislature, Connecticut lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pump $1 billion into "UConn 2000," a campus-improvement project that has since followed the initial billion with another $1.3 billion."

From the same article: Butler and George Mason both did internal studies which found they gained over $600 million in free publicity from their Final Four runs (Butler had 2 runs, so they got over $1 billion in publicity).

Not bad for a $10-$20 million subsidy.

National titles and Final Four runs are not "winning at a lower level". That's winning at the highest level. So in a way, you're supporting Quo's point. Nobody's squeezing a billion dollars out of taxpayers (or quadrupling donations to the university general fund) for playing in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl.

NKU winning the Horizon League is "winning at the lower level."

In 1995 (pre-WNBA), a Women's basketball national title was "winning at the lower level." Do you brag about Cal's water polo dynasty that won back-to-back national titles in 2006 & 2007?

Stephen F. Austin winning one game in the NCAA tournament is "winning at the lower level."

Marshall winning 1 C-USA title and the Boca Raton Bowl is "winning at the lower level."

And I was constantly told in 2009 & 2010 that Cincinnati's back-to-back Big East titles did not count as "winning at the highest level."
08-16-2018 01:05 PM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #22
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
(08-16-2018 01:05 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 12:15 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 11:51 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 09:12 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(08-15-2018 08:59 AM)Big Frog II Wrote:  Winning sports teams make alums feel good about their school. This helps open their checkbooks when it comes time for the school to raise funds for new building and scholarships. Any ivory tower egghead who doesn't believe it is only fooling themselves.

But ... the 'feel good' aspect is usually proportional to the sense of achievement that *others* perceive. E.g., fans of the Philly Eagles are at 100% pride right now because they weren't just a 'winner' they won the Super Bowl, the biggest prize in football. Fans of Alabama too, because the winner of the top-level national title receives national acclaim as well.

That's why there's zero doubt that at 'big time' schools like Notre Dame and Georgia and yes, TCU, winning will drive donations to academics. Because when you guys win, you win big titles that matter - P5 conference titles, major bowl game, etc. Nobody has any doubt that football has built libraries and chemistry labs at big time schools.

The real issue is, does winning help at lower levels, where the prizes are smaller. Does a North Texas really get more academic donations because they go 10-2 vs a Sun Belt schedule nobody cares about? That they know nobody in the broader football realm respects?

This is the core issue, because these are the schools that soaking their students with fees and transfers. So that needs to be justified in terms of stuff like alumni donations.

The point of athletics is media attention, not alumni donations. And winning at a lower level certainly helps with media attention.

Article: "The same day the triumphant '95 Lady Huskies visited the state legislature, Connecticut lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pump $1 billion into "UConn 2000," a campus-improvement project that has since followed the initial billion with another $1.3 billion."

From the same article: Butler and George Mason both did internal studies which found they gained over $600 million in free publicity from their Final Four runs (Butler had 2 runs, so they got over $1 billion in publicity).

Not bad for a $10-$20 million subsidy.

National titles and Final Four runs are not "winning at a lower level". That's winning at the highest level. So in a way, you're supporting Quo's point. Nobody's squeezing a billion dollars out of taxpayers (or quadrupling donations to the university general fund) for playing in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl.

NKU winning the Horizon League is "winning at the lower level."

In 1995 (pre-WNBA), a Women's basketball national title was "winning at the lower level." Do you brag about Cal's water polo dynasty that won back-to-back national titles in 2006 & 2007?

Stephen F. Austin winning one game in the NCAA tournament is "winning at the lower level."

Marshall winning 1 C-USA title and the Boca Raton Bowl is "winning at the lower level."

And I was constantly told in 2009 & 2010 that Cincinnati's back-to-back Big East titles did not count as "winning at the highest level."

I don't agree with your argument about a women's national title being winning "at a lower level", and particularly don't agree that the WNBA has anything at all to do with how people view a women's national title. In particular, I don't think any reasonable person would dispute the fact that supporters of UConn care a helluva lot about their women's basketball national titles. Which is absolutely understandable because they've accomplished more than any other program in the sport.

Those examples you gave of winning one game in an NCAA tournament, or winning a G5 conference title in football, did not result in any benefit to the university remotely close to the amount that you said UConn gained from winning national titles or even what you said Butler gained from its Final Four runs.

As for Cal winning national titles in water polo, or swimming, or rowing, or rugby, or softball -- I think that covers all of the most recent ones -- they are great accomplishments for the athletes and coaches. They would only be relevant to this thread if someone were arguing that they caused donations to the university's general fund to be 5-10 times greater than in a normal year. And no one here is arguing that.
08-16-2018 02:49 PM
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Stugray2 Offline
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Post: #23
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
(08-14-2018 01:45 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(08-13-2018 11:16 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  It's a mixed bag. I think when a program is big enough you do tend to get more institutional donors along with sports. But if don't reach that level, say and Eastern Michigan, there is pretty strong evidence of Cannibalism, that is donations to athletics drain money that might have gone to the University.

Overall it's hard to truly correlate. Almost all evidence is purely anecdotal and not systemically collected.

Perhaps the best comparisons can be found in the UC System and CSU system, where you can compare say UCLA or Cal to UC San Diego ... possibly UC Davis (not quite the same pedigree as the first three) where schools are pretty much identical except athletics. (It is already pretty clearly demonstrated that level of athletic program has zero impact on applications or admission quality for schools in either the UC or CSU system; so donations are a good thing to examine.)

Somebody (probably me knowing this board's work ethic when it comes to research) should look into those schools over the last decade.

Doing a study like that would ignore decades of sports history.

However, it's safe to say that merely fielding a team isn't good enough. You must have athletic success in a major sport.

There's plenty of evidence that winning improves your academics: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...mp/519846/

Where was Notre Dame academically in 1915, before Knute Rockne? My friends who are ND alums swear that ND would be worse than Marquette if it weren't for football (because the schools used to be pretty similar other than location, and Milwaukee is more attractive than South Bend). Today Notre Dame has an $11.8 billion endowment, and Marquette's is $550 million.

Then all you are doing is BSing. Telling tales we like to hear and which bear out our preconceived notions.

Athletics at one time was a great driver for publicity of schools. But is that still true today? I think not. Liberty grew like gang busters before they ever got to FBS. The UC system and Ivy League donations have nothing to do with Sports as far as anyone can tell.

In all of California, one school, San Diego State, can probably make a really strong case, and another Fresno State a much weaker case. But in a way their situations are similar to Memphis or Boise State, in that they are located in a significant urban area and the town identifies with the school. And further the school's academic chops are pretty sketchy.

For the UC system and Stanford the picture is extremely clear, that sports has always been very secondary to donors. And as the massive donations to the non Pac-12 and in some cases like UC San Diego non D-I schools demonstrate, there is ZERO impact from athletics. I very much doubt the recent growth tied especially to graduates from mainland China has anything whatsoever to do with athletics.

The same is almost certainly true at similar schools like Washington, Virginia, Duke, and North Carolina. It is certainly true that massive donation machines like those of the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech, MIT and CMU have nothing whatsoever to do with sports.

The picture I see is that a very small subset of schools see a worthwhile difference. And the question is for those G5 schools, is that difference as great as the annual 8 digit subsidies thrown at the programs? Memphis for example would need to see a donation increase of $11M annually (how much institutional money is transferred to keep the lights on at the athletic department) to the general fund to justify the expenses. A school like Eastern Michigan would need to raise $28M just to break even (Their entire endowment is barely $68M). But if you get $12M for transferring $11M is that any better than 90% overhead fundraising effort?

So yes, hard numbers can be had and points of value obtained, rather than vague and meaningless anecdotal BS.
(This post was last modified: 08-17-2018 05:54 PM by Stugray2.)
08-16-2018 03:24 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #24
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
(08-16-2018 01:05 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  In 1995 (pre-WNBA), a Women's basketball national title was "winning at the lower level."

Disagree. I remember when UConn won in 1995, that got a lot of mainstream media publicity. Lobo, Rizzotti, Wolters ... I remember those names because that team got some pretty big publicity.

As much as men's hoops or football? No, but more than any other college sport. That qualified as 'quasi' big time, at least.
08-16-2018 04:40 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #25
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
(08-16-2018 03:24 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Athletics at one time was a great driver for publicity of schools. But is that still true today? I think not. Liberty grew like gang busters before they ever got to FBS.

Yes, e.g., if you look at schools that have experienced big enrollment and growth the past 25 years, like USF, UCF, and Georgia State, D1 football was a *product* of that growth, not a cause.

All grew in to big sprawling universities before football, it was becoming big and sprawling that made them think that they should have a football program to match that status.
(This post was last modified: 08-16-2018 04:44 PM by quo vadis.)
08-16-2018 04:44 PM
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arkstfan Away
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Post: #26
RE: Academic Donations due to Football
Arkansas State got positive press locally because the school had its best ever year in fund-raising on both the academic and athletic sides and did not increase tuition for 2018-19 because of the increase in donations.
08-17-2018 11:35 PM
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