This has often been my read on it as well. The cost savings is relatively minute compared to the revenue hits you would take. Coaches' salaries would obviously drop a lot, and you save the 22 schollies... But you're still traveling, you're still recruiting (although no doubt smaller budget), etc. Now you get LESS revenue from ESPN (hard to believe), far less revenue from payday games, and probably take a hit on ticket revenue as well (although tough to imagine there's much room to go DOWN in that dept).BGSU33 wrote: But as for any MAC school, moving down from the FBS to the FCS would not be a cost saving measure whatsoever. It would find itself in an even tighter financial bind.
To me the choice has always been to either drop football entirely, or drop out from D1 athletics and go much cheaper/leaner. I'm not really a fan of that, as I think BG is a good profile for a D1 university. It's just that the financial landscape of football has long ago passed us by.
Tough to really say considering we don't have access to the actual numbers. I'll just say I find it unfathomable to think that our coaches' salaries and 85 scholarships to D1 football are anywhere near revenue neutral. Given our horrible attendance numbers we're not making much on ticket sales. Especially when you figure a good chunk of that attendance is students who have paid regardless through their fees; and another good chunk are tickets handed out through promotions to sponsors. The ESPN contract is pretty well known, it's about $1million/year, but that is for ALL sports, not just football. Certainly football probably represents 85% of that revenue, but still, it's a drop in the bucket compared to costs.mbenecke wrote:Not asking because I have an agenda/opinion here, I'm just genuinely curious:
Could we even have sports at the D1 level without football, financially? I know that football is usually the overwhelming anchor for most departments, but I don't actually know the actual numbers. How sustainable would our department be on a D1 level without the money brought in from football?
The university does not publish (that I can find) their budgets broken down by sport. But looking at the approved FY 2020 budget, the Athletics Dept. funding is $13.4 million from general fees (more than half the students' general fee goes to athletics), and only about $9.6 million of all other revenues. I think it's fair to assume that football contributes MOST of that additional revenue, but it's key to remember that actually generated revenue only accounts for 40% of the total budget. Looking at expenses coach Scholarships, coaching salaries, and travel are the 3 largest line items by far. I'm sure football accounts for disproportionate share of those numbers as well.
It's really very difficult to figure out where we stand. People in the dept could easily subtract the football portion of each line item and have a better idea, but it still doesn't account for things like Falcon club. That's $1.5 million in revenue, but how much does it go down if you drop football? My suspicion based only looking at the budget breakdown is that football costs far more than it makes, and if you were willing to keep the general funds in the same range you'd have no problem funding the rest of the sports if you lost the revenue football brings in. Tough to say though for sure though because there is no doubt football accounts for the vast majority of that 40% of "earned" revenue.
