The only way we would keep up with revenue sharing in basketball by staying in the Big East is if we completely get rid of football and get rid of the 100 women's Title IX scholarships that go along with it.
Honestly, K-State was the worst football program in the country for decades until Bill Snyder arrived. KU was always up and down, but produced guys like Gayle Sayers, Nolan Cromwell, John Riggins Etc.
What revenue? Both men's and women's basketball lose money. Prior to Hurley's raise, the loss was significantly more than the entire Big East contract pays for all sports, now it is even more. Basketball has less than 5% of the athletes in UConn and is responsible for 30% of the athletic deficit. If a person was looking strictly at revenue and expense in the financials without any bias, you would easily say the basketball teams should be cut first. The basketball teams combined lost $10 million last year for 20 athletes and football lost $14 million for 85 athletes.
If everyone listened to Zimbalist, there'd be no sports industry in the US.
Exactly! I don’t know why they run to this guy. He doesn’t want life and fun in major cities. It is one thing to question taxpayer funding of stadiums, but to say they bring no economic benefits to cities is bunk. No, they are not high paying jobs, but remember the bars and restaurants when we had NHL hockey?
We actually don’t know if basketball is rev positive or neutral or negative. Nobody does. The accounting the school provides every year gives us some insight into sport by sport economics but it’s not a perfect view. For example, the license deals with Learfield, Nike, Coca Cola, etc cover the entire athletic department and don’t cover one sport.
Sportico’s Intercollegiate Finance Database
He's saying the economic impact is overblown because all the money is local.
That's all well and good until the President of the University declares 15% of all employees across all departments will be let go. At that point, it's actual cutbacks and not fungible money moving around.
Except UConn doesn’t have to make this expenditure (at least for basketball). So the President and AD have already pointed this out to the legislature that you will continue to scratch our back and we will scratch yours. The expense exists to keep folks in Ct government happy and in turn the government will support the university however necessary to support the expense, which makes this a unique arrangement.
In that case demolish the XL and the Rent and save everyone a lot of money. As much as I love UConn, I don’t think state taxpayers should be subsidizing a small segment of the population. Maybe build a satellite campus for Smith College. That might help the school pay for his salary
It's the exact opposite of this. They will NOT support the expense, and this is already proven.
Basketball makes an unbelievable amount of money for UConn.
Have you looked at Smith's endowment lately? They have over a million dollars for every student.
What you’re saying does not match reality considering the university laid it out in those terms and the state capitulated
Not my point
With this deal, the shortfall for UConn academics (not counting UConn Health & others campuses) has gone from $95m to $30m.
Except that the state doesn't actually make a dollar for dollar payment for those rentals. That amount comes out of the school's budget generally. You can argue that if those rental fees weren't being charged the state would pay us less, but that's just speculation.
Let's not forget that the scholarships don't really cost what they cost. It's more, this is what we could have had for revenue had your bed been given to a paying student. I believe they also use the out of state student rate, even if the athlete, like DC, is in state.
College athletics needs to adopt the Canadien Junior hockey model for all sports. The Major junior players ( WHL, OHL, QMJHL) get paid, all the rest of the leagues are a step below and don’t get paid. For college athletics the SEC, B1G, B12, ND, and for now the ACC can be the “major” division of college athletics for all sports. Those schools financially can compete with each other. All the other conferences are at a financial disadvantage and in the long run be better off competing at a lower level. That’s what needs to happen. No one wants UConn to drop down a level but, eventually that’s going to happen anyway. Without money UConn cannot compete.
Plus, out of state students often don't pay the full undiscounted rate
It's all real money. I'm not sure what you're point is. Every department has allocations from the college according to head count. This is how they pay professors. Those bean counters consider each and every student.
