Merry Christmas,,,,Here come the Spring Student Fees

[pdt1081]

Thanks Don Jr. I’ll zoom a high school guidance counselor as soon as possible in order to take that advice.

Who's Don Jr? Some kind of affineur?

Depending on where you are, Google Meet might be a better choice. Then again, a good old fashioned phone call could suffice as well.

[Schadenfreude]

It seems to me guess44 launched this thread about general fees in the football forum because he has a hidden agenda, which is for Bowling Green to drop football. He just doesn't have the courage to come out and say it.

[guest44]

Bowling Green Football loses 3 or 4 million dollars per season in a normal year. Bowling Green Athletics is funded by 13 million dollars in student fees. Bowling Green State University raised general fees on students by 4.1% in Fall 2020 the middle of a pandemic and campus shutdown. Bowling Green Football has been a national embarrassment since 2016. Bowling Green Football still employs Brian VanGorder & Steve Morrison to coach defense. Cutting football would be the decision of Recreation & Wellness director Bob Moosbrugger. We know he would cut it before seeking further fundraising like he did with BGSU Baseball, so who knows. Maybe he cuts football to improve overall wellness at BGSU. Bowling Green is a public university for the public good.

[Schadenfreude]

Cutting football would be the decision of Recreation & Wellness director Bob Moosbrugger.

And he won't. We know this. Bowling Green is a member of the MAC, and it has been close to 70 years. The MAC is a fundamental part of Bowling Green's athletic identity and the MAC is a football conference.

Enough with the mayhem. We are here to enjoy Bowling Green football. This is the wrong place to bellyache about student fees or try to undermine the football program, and that's all you seem to be doing.

[TommyG]

Schad should be the new moderator then he can block and remove any conversations he doesn’t like. He certainly thinks he’s the smartest person on the board.

[guest44]

Undermine the football program? I didn’t hire Mike Jinks. Chris Kingston undermined the BGSU Football program. All the people involved in the decision to hire Mike Jinks undermined the football program. The BC guy who hired Scot Loeffler rather than 3 or 4 better candidates undermined the football program. They got paid (largely by student fees) to undermine it.

You know what else was around for a long time? Forest Creason. Eventually it lost enough money that it has become a place to grow weeds. Times change. They raised general fees 4.1% in a pandemic. It doesn’t get much lower than that.

[hammb]

Undermine the football program? I didn’t hire Mike Jinks. Chris Kingston undermined the BGSU Football program. All the people involved in the decision to hire Mike Jinks undermined the football program. The BC guy who hired Scot Loeffler rather than 3 or 4 better candidates undermined the football program. They got paid (largely by student fees) to undermine it.

You know what else was around for a long time? Forest Creason. Eventually it lost enough money that it has become a place to grow weeds. Times change. They raised general fees 4.1% in a pandemic. It doesn’t get much lower than that.

You wanna know the irony of this thread? From what I've pieced together in various contacts (including the people in charge of Forrest Creason), you can largely blame the continued pumping of money into football for the failures of Forrest Creason as well.

20 years ago that course was packed every single weekend day. You couldn't get tee times in the AM without doing so 7 days ahead. As golf started to lose some popularity that slowed, along with the emergence of Stone Ridge, obviously. But they also stopped putting any money whatsoever in course maintenance. He lost his funding. He lost his full time help and was only relying on a couple of part timers to maintain the course. When bunkers needed new sand he couldn't get funding so instead they had to fill in and seed the bunkers, making the course more boring. When Emerald Ash borer killed trees, he couldn't get funding to get new trees planted. The course went down and down, but the price stayed the same. As other area courses were lowering their rates, Creason's rates stayed the same, but they couldn't do any course maintenance to keep it worth the price.

Golf became a tougher business over the last 20 years, yet still other area courses have stayed in business purely as businesses. Forrest Creason didn't even need to turn a profit in that same regard, it was also a service to the student population. Instead the revenue they did generate got pumped back into the over all departments above them, and the course was never given a chance to survive as a standalone entity.

It still pisses me off to no end, because that golf course was the best "student perk" available when I was on campus. I cannot even begin to count the number of rounds, the number of friends, etc that were made on that course. The presence of that golf course did more to enhance my experience as a student than the Union, the rec center, or any other athletic programs did. Yet, you can count it as another casualty of consistently throwing more and more money at football.

[guest44]

https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/f ... Y-2012.pdf

As of 2014-2015 Forrest Creason was still getting General Fee money. The trend was it losing roughly 1/3rd of that money yearly until it was to be closed.

Of course when you look at the athletics salaries above in 2012 it was 6.5 million. In 2020 it’s nearly 9 million. In 2012, 49% of student fees went to Athletics, it is 55% in 2020. Bob Moosbrugger is now in charge of the next biggest portion of the General Fee budget. No wonder they need 4.1% more from students in a pandemic. A public university for the public good.

[pdt1081]

You wanna know the irony of this thread? From what I've pieced together in various contacts (including the people in charge of Forrest Creason), you can largely blame the continued pumping of money into football for the failures of Forrest Creason as well.

20 years ago that course was packed every single weekend day. You couldn't get tee times in the AM without doing so 7 days ahead. As golf started to lose some popularity that slowed, along with the emergence of Stone Ridge, obviously. But they also stopped putting any money whatsoever in course maintenance. He lost his funding. He lost his full time help and was only relying on a couple of part timers to maintain the course. When bunkers needed new sand he couldn't get funding so instead they had to fill in and seed the bunkers, making the course more boring. When Emerald Ash borer killed trees, he couldn't get funding to get new trees planted. The course went down and down, but the price stayed the same. As other area courses were lowering their rates, Creason's rates stayed the same, but they couldn't do any course maintenance to keep it worth the price.

Golf became a tougher business over the last 20 years, yet still other area courses have stayed in business purely as businesses. Forrest Creason didn't even need to turn a profit in that same regard, it was also a service to the student population. Instead the revenue they did generate got pumped back into the over all departments above them, and the course was never given a chance to survive as a standalone entity.

It still pisses me off to no end, because that golf course was the best "student perk" available when I was on campus. I cannot even begin to count the number of rounds, the number of friends, etc that were made on that course. The presence of that golf course did more to enhance my experience as a student than the Union, the rec center, or any other athletic programs did. Yet, you can count it as another casualty of consistently throwing more and more money at football.

Even more irony, the same thing happened with the hockey team and Ice Arena through the 80's and 90's. And we all know how that worked out.

[guest44]

How did it work out? Hockey making money? Why does the hockey coach make like 35% of what the football coach makes? Since it worked out that scale seems off.

[FalconTurf]

https://journaltimes.com/sports/college ... 97551.html
Old article from 2017 but should give "guest44" some facts for his constant argument.
Head football at Wisconsin $3.2 million
Head hockey at Wisconsin $500,000 (or 15.6% of the football coach's salary)

Attendance at hockey in 2016-2017 at Wisconsin 182,839 for 18 contests (uscho.com) (Approximately 33% ticket sales)
Attendance at football in 2016 at Wisconsin around 79,000/game for 6 games 474,000 (wikipedia) plus a neutral game in Green Bay of 78,000 to make a total of 552,000

Seems like a national issue guest44 could be addressing. Enough research for me today.

[guest44]

Comparing Wisconsin to Bowling Green makes sense. Can you give me a couple more? Ohio St vs Findlay College & Adrian College vs Univeristy of Michigan

Seems like Bowling Green should pay its football coach more like what they pay the hockey coach. Thanks for the research.

Meanwhile it’s all headed toward streaming of games and each MAC contract with ESPN will continue to get worse as ESPN stops the business of bidding against itself. Does Bob Moosbrugger take over shuttle services and the Falcon Marching Band if Loeffler goes 0-12 next year and they need money to make him go? What happens if limited fans still allowed, does athletics then handle parking tickets too? Eventually the business of losing money and increasing department salaries exponentially bites ya. It should also make people question the hiring motives of the highest paid employee at the University who was in no other demand. The coach who claimed he didn’t even care what was in the contract because he wasn’t going anywhere. How did BGSU pay him 20 percent more than the guy you fired and still owed money? Because industry standard of losing millions? A year later in a pandemic they raised student fees by 4.1% and the athletic director is running Rec & Wellness. A public university for the public good.

[TommyG]

Don’t forget the baseball program that was coming off back to back conference championships and got their 1/3 of their scholarships taken away and eventually their program cut because hockey couldn’t raise money for the “Bring back the glory campaign” and Christopher raised the FB budget.

Like I said every decision made is to benefit football, not because it is the right thing for the department or the university...but because administrators want to use football to try and get their next job.

The MAC can’t afford football...eventually they’ll be forced out of it, but how soon I don’t know.

[guest44]

Bingo. Kingston 2.0 wants to get back to Boston badly. Two major things will expedite MAC Football death. The pandemic shrinking of budgets and eventual ability for players to make money off likeness and endorsements. At that point the administrators lose much control. That vote is coming soon despite NCAA trying to delay and delay.