Courant's Kevin Rennie: UConn Football Is Out Of Its League | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Courant's Kevin Rennie: UConn Football Is Out Of Its League

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UConnNick

from Vince Lombardi's home town
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Serious question. What is the cost differential between funding an FCS team and an FBS team? It isn't like funding an FCS team is free.

I did a study several years ago based on the publicly released revenue numbers for all 120 FBS schools at that time. The numbers were from the early 2000's because they run several years behind. At that time, there were roughly 80 schools, or 2/3 of the entire FBS membership, reporting they were making a profit from their football program. The top 20 or so were making huge profits, in the tens of millions up to as much as 50. The next 30 teams were doing OK, but profits were more in the few to several million dollar range.

One team that stood out to me was Vanderbilt. As a perennial SEC doormat, the Commodores were making a profit right at about a million a year. They were at No. 50 or so. From there down to near 80 the schools were reporting a small profit of less than a million down to negligble numbers, maybe a few hundred thousand. From 80 down to 120, the rest of the schools were losing money, some in the millions.

However, compared to FCS schools, the potential to make money from your football program exists almost exclusively at the FBS level. There are a number of FCS schools that manage to turn a small profit, but you can probably count them on one hand. The rest of them bleed nothing but red ink. That's why the trend over the past 15 years or more has been for FCS programs to upgrade to FBS. They are driven by the mere possibility they may one day get lucky and at least break even or make a small profit. Bowl games are the other incentive. Even a marginal, low payout bowl gets your school and program exposure. You can lose money on the bowl but the benefits from the exposure may outweigh that.

I do find it interesting that Idaho is downgrading to the FCS division. Whether or not that's the start of a trend I don't know. Some schools may be getting tired of chasing the elusive brass ring, especially the ones financially mired in the bottom third of the FBS division.
 
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OK, let's for argument sakes say we decide to go FCS. Anyone know where we will be playing games?
 
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OK, let's for argument sakes say we decide to go FCS. Anyone know where we will be playing games?

Shenkman would be just fine considering how many fans would show up.
 

whaler11

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I did a study several years ago based on the publicly released revenue numbers for all 120 FBS schools at that time. The numbers were from the early 2000's because they run several years behind. At that time, there were roughly 80 schools, or 2/3 of the entire FBS membership, reporting they were making a profit from their football program. The top 20 or so were making huge profits, in the tens of millions up to as much as 50. The next 30 teams were doing OK, but profits were more in the few to several million dollar range.

One team that stood out to me was Vanderbilt. As a perennial SEC doormat, the Commodores were making a profit right at about a million a year. They were at No. 50 or so. From there down to near 80 the schools were reporting a small profit of less than a million down to negligble numbers, maybe a few hundred thousand. From 80 down to 120, the rest of the schools were losing money, some in the millions.

However, compared to FCS schools, the potential to make money from your football program exists almost exclusively at the FBS level. There are a number of FCS schools that manage to turn a small profit, but you can probably count them on one hand. The rest of them bleed nothing but red ink. That's why the trend over the past 15 years or more has been for FCS programs to upgrade to FBS. They are driven by the mere possibility they may one day get lucky and at least break even or make a small profit. Bowl games are the other incentive. Even a marginal, low payout bowl gets your school and program exposure. You can lose money on the bowl but the benefits from the exposure may outweigh that.

I do find it interesting that Idaho is downgrading to the FCS division. Whether or not that's the start of a trend I don't know. Some schools may be getting tired of chasing the elusive brass ring, especially the ones financially mired in the bottom third of the FBS division.

Idaho dropped down because the only home they could find was the Big Sky.

They got kicked out of the Sun Belt.
 
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Off campus and 40K for FCS? There will be more folks shopping that day at the outlets

So your solution to drop down would be to build a new stadium? Not sure how that helps.
 

Husky25

Dink & Dunk beat the Greatest Show on Turf.
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So your solution to drop down would be to build a new stadium? Not sure how that helps.
In terms of the stadium, it would help by owning the building and collecting 100% of the parking and concessions, as opposed to paying rent to the state, but that's about it. Of course 10K paying customers would be grounds for throwing a parade down Hillside Road, but that is beside the point.
 
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There may be valid merit for discussing the value of Uconn football, but it's highly questionable whether it should come from Hartford Courant columnists like Mr. Rennie who have all they can do to intelligently discuss subjects they're suppose to know something about. There's a heck of a lot more financial problems affecting the State of Connecticut... than Uconn football. Problems that have gone wanting due to the incompetence shown by state legislators ...including former representative, Kevin Rennie.
 
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Kevin Rennie?? The guy is supposed to be a conservative, but he wasn't that conservative...
 
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