Sacramento State?..in the MAC?

[jpfalcon09]

Terms officially announced. Five-year agreement, Sac St won't take a conference distribution, will cover air travel costs for visiting conference members, and pay $6 million of the $18 million in the first year.

[Beaker]

They just spent millions to buy their way into a broken system that's been engineered to see schools in their position fail, while we need to find a way out of said broken system.

[fanatic13]

Honestly it sounds like there's isn't much to lose for the Mac here besides some inconvenient times for fans which they clearly have never cared about. Sac st is desperate for a home so they can prove themselves at the fbs level to the Mwc or their pipe dream of the Pac. This deal tells me they still want to move on in the future. For the Mac they get money, expenses paid, more tv windows, and don't have to be committed long term if it doesn't work. It doesn't solve long term problems but it helps cover short term ones

[Flipper]

Is Sac State any good at football? Not that that really matters in the MAC

[BillyLP]

Is Sac State any good at football? Not that that really matters in the MAC

They were very strong under Troy Taylor. He left for Stanford after 2022 and they have been relatively mediocre since. Seemed to be getting traction under Marion last season but he bolted after one year.

One thing they do have is financial backing. Not sure where it is coming from, but their basketball team hired Mike Bibby, they are upgrading all of their facilities, and are building out a solid NIL program. I hate this from a geographic standpoint, but from a financial standpoint, this is kind of a win-win for the MAC and their schools. Opens up new recruiting avenues, a big TV market right in time for negotiations, and will have very little financial impact on the current programs.

[jpfalcon09]

Is Sac State any good at football? Not that that really matters in the MAC

They were very strong under Troy Taylor. He left for Stanford after 2022 and they have been relatively mediocre since. Seemed to be getting traction under Marion last season but he bolted after one year.

One thing they do have is financial backing. Not sure where it is coming from, but their basketball team hired Mike Bibby, they are upgrading all of their facilities, and are building out a solid NIL program. I hate this from a geographic standpoint, but from a financial standpoint, this is kind of a win-win for the MAC and their schools. Opens up new recruiting avenues, a big TV market right in time for negotiations, and will have very little financial impact on the current programs.

Rumor is that private equity is involved.

[Flipper]

Private equity firms will...inevitably..destroy everything they touch

[jpfalcon09]

Private equity firms will...inevitably..destroy everything they touch

You mean BGSU presented by Greenbriar doesn't have a good ring to it?

[hammb]

Private equity firms will...inevitably..destroy everything they touch

The mere mention of private equity makes me seethe with rage.

Rape people, rape businesses, rape the environment. Enshittify EVERYTHING...to make some asshole investors another couple bucks.

[kdog27]

A desperate act by a desperate conference trying to hang onto D1 status that was lost years ago. How about we stop looking for a way to stay D1 in football and actually develop a business plan for the athletic department that makes any financial sense?

Yep I’m in agreement with this or something similar. Make a commitment to being really good at one sport in men’s and women’s. I don’t care if it’s chess, be good at something. Seems like we just exist in division 1 between bad to mediocre in everything with a sport and there’s a sport and there that is slightly above average. It’s boring.

[mbenecke]

A desperate act by a desperate conference trying to hang onto D1 status that was lost years ago. How about we stop looking for a way to stay D1 in football and actually develop a business plan for the athletic department that makes any financial sense?

Yep I’m in agreement with this or something similar. Make a commitment to being really good at one sport in men’s and women’s. I don’t care if it’s chess, be good at something. Seems like we just exist in division 1 between bad to mediocre in everything with a sport and there’s a sport and there that is slightly above average. It’s boring.

Hock-ey! Hock-ey! Hock-ey!

[kdog27]

A desperate act by a desperate conference trying to hang onto D1 status that was lost years ago. How about we stop looking for a way to stay D1 in football and actually develop a business plan for the athletic department that makes any financial sense?

Yep I’m in agreement with this or something similar. Make a commitment to being really good at one sport in men’s and women’s. I don’t care if it’s chess, be good at something. Seems like we just exist in division 1 between bad to mediocre in everything with a sport and there’s a sport and there that is slightly above average. It’s boring.

Hock-ey! Hock-ey! Hock-ey!

For sure. This one makes sense.

[hammb]

A desperate act by a desperate conference trying to hang onto D1 status that was lost years ago. How about we stop looking for a way to stay D1 in football and actually develop a business plan for the athletic department that makes any financial sense?

Yep I’m in agreement with this or something similar. Make a commitment to being really good at one sport in men’s and women’s. I don’t care if it’s chess, be good at something. Seems like we just exist in division 1 between bad to mediocre in everything with a sport and there’s a sport and there that is slightly above average. It’s boring.

Hock-ey! Hock-ey! Hock-ey!

For sure. This one makes sense.

This makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of things, but the reason why they're unlikely to consider it is losing people like me. While I always hope BGSU teams perform well I couldn't possibly care less about hockey. I'd much rather watch a curling match than a hockey game.

If they were to choose becoming super good at hockey and dissolve the other programs (or drop to lower divisions) I'd probably never spend another dollar on BG athletics. That's the delicate balancing act of any such discussions. Obviously I don't bring enough money or anything to matter, but people like Bill Frack were huge donors here because of basketball, not because of a good hockey program. While I don't matter, do you lose the Sebo, Frack level donations if you're only really fielding hockey as a men's program? Obviously none of those donations are self-sustaining for the programs they've helped, but many of those people are donating to academics as well, do you risk losing those donations?

I don't really have the answers. Athletics is freaking expensive and every sport is a cost bucket for student fees. Some more than others, for sure. Football feels especially futile because the gulf between the haves and have nots is wider than other sports (and the expenses are more), but it's also true that football is the sport bringing the most people to campus and likely the most eyes (if not most dollars) to the program.

That being said the soccer program is by far the most fun program I follow/invest in at this point. Rugby, baseball, softball, tennis, etc. are probably similar. Soccer runs the way athletics at BG should be. IT's not about money...admission is free, you can bring in your own food, your own lawn chairs. It's a fun time with the BG soccer community, and the players/coaches on the team invest in that community right back. If you had to drop hoops down to D2 or D3, but it felt more like the soccer program? I'm game for that.

[Tricky_Falcon]

With the current landscape, hockey is really the one sport - to me - that makes sense going all in on.

That doesn't mean getting rid of other sports - look at Western Michigan.

I felt like years ago BG should've went all in on basketball. They got a new stadium and Frack money but the athletic department let it become a mediocre product and was fine with that for so many years.

I also love football but we're never going to win a national championship and bowl games are becoming less meaningful by the year.

[Flipper]

Re private equity firms...in the 80's and 90's "corporate raiders" took a lot of flack from people for buying out companies and breaking them up...but that was a legitimate practice. Kinda weeded the garden economically, taking out poorly managed or companies following obsolete strategies. Private equity firms will buy functioning companies and destroy them through whatever cost cutting stupidity they can think of. Look at Panera Bread. They don't bake fresh bread anymore...they heat up frozen dough. Cheaper quality..smaller portions...profits increase temporarily until people get sick of it and move onto another alternative.

Don't even get me started on generative AI in entertainment and the arts