Mike Anthony: Cutting UConn football isn’t the prudent move or simple solution | The Boneyard

Mike Anthony: Cutting UConn football isn’t the prudent move or simple solution

"All options, best as I understand, include cutting at least four sports, asking the university to assign a reduced price tag to scholarships, taking measures to reduce operating expenses and perhaps riding recent fundraising success to the preservation of some sports that otherwise would have been axed."

Wouldn't that be nice?
 
KSC94 said:
"All options, best as I understand, include cutting at least four sports, asking the university to assign a reduced price tag to scholarships, taking measures to reduce operating expenses and perhaps riding recent fundraising success to the preservation of some sports that otherwise would have been axed."

Wouldn't that be nice?
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assigning a reduced price tag to scholarships doesn’t save any money. It just makes the spreadsheet look better.if you are Benedict, you want that number reduced on your budget.

But if you are BOT, that doesn’t actually save the school anything.

I can find $18 million right now for UConn.Don’t account for scholarships. Silly? Yes. But that would in fact save no money unless that allocation somewhere else in the university was taken off the books.
 
JohnFSilver said:
assigning a reduced price tag to scholarships doesn’t save any money. It just makes the spreadsheet look better.if you are Benedict, you want that number reduced on your budget.

But if you are BOT, that doesn’t actually save the school anything.

I can find $18 million right now for UConn.Don’t account for scholarships. Silly? Yes. But that would in fact save no money unless that allocation somewhere else in the university was taken off the books.
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Accounting can be very misleading. I have seen businesses make bad decision based on how they used accounting to apply costs to various products and businesses. The same thing applies to accounting for athletic scholarships which has made UConn athletics look worse financially than it is. Same holds true for how UConn accounts for the expenses associated with using the XL Center instead of using Gampel for all home games. Should UConn athletics be on the hook for the expenses associated with a state political decision to play games at the XL Center?

Look at athletic scholarships. UConn charges the athletics department full cost for both in-state and out-of-state athletes. Do you know what % of students pay full price? Less than 40% and the average discount (scholarship) given by UConn is ~$11.7k. (There is more financial aid, but I am simplifying here.) Wouldn't the majority of scholarship athletes be provided with a tuition discount seeing that the majority of UConn students are? Shouldn't you base athletic scholarship costs on the net price charged by the university instead of the full price?

If you want to accurately asses the financial situation of the UConn athletic department, you need to allocate revenues and expenses appropriately so that you can make informed decisions.
 
As I've said before, each incremental OOS student doesn't "cost" what they say it costs in terms of cash outlay. I have no idea how much "cash" the athletic department is bleeding.
 
JohnFSilver said:
assigning a reduced price tag to scholarships doesn’t save any money. It just makes the spreadsheet look better.if you are Benedict, you want that number reduced on your budget.

But if you are BOT, that doesn’t actually save the school anything.

I can find $18 million right now for UConn.Don’t account for scholarships. Silly? Yes. But that would in fact save no money unless that allocation somewhere else in the university was taken off the books.
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Of course, by that logic, you could also make $100M for UConn by charging $118M for scholarships. Even sillier, right?

The cost of scholarships should be accounted for based upon the actual cost to the university, not the undiscounted full out of state tuition that virtually no one pays. You are absolutely correct that that does not "save the school anything" but it also does not "cost the school anything" since it is, in essence, a mere journal entry.

As pointed out above, inflating this number to the "MSRP" (undiscounted out of state listed tuition that virtually no one pays) is just bad accounting.
 
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CL82 said:
Of course, by that logic, you could also make $100M for UConn by charging $118M for scholarships. Even sillier, right?

The cost of scholarships should be accounted for based upon the actual cost to the university, not the undiscounted full out of state tuition that virtually no one pays. You are absolutely correct that that does not "save the school anything" but it also does not "cost the school anything" since it is, in essence, a mere journal entry.

As pointed out above, inflating this number to the "MSRP" (undiscounted out of state listed tuition that virtually no one pays) is just bad accounting.
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The managers know this. If you are in a business and are asked to cut costs, accounting tricks aren’t what leaders are looking for.

PR wise, I guess, you can reduce scholarship cost and say you saved money. But, that isn’t really savings. Maybe it will fool those people who think UConn is actually losing $42 million a year in athletics. But, real savings it isn’t.

As I have said,saries, travel, food, equipment, marketing and vendor deals are what he is looking at. I would expect layoffs and partnerships reduced. Reduction in recruiting budgets. Things like that.
 
JohnFSilver said:
The managers know this. If you are in a business and are asked to cut costs, accounting tricks aren’t what leaders are looking for.

PR wise, I guess, you can reduce scholarship cost and say you saved money. But, that isn’t really savings. Maybe it will fool those people who think UConn is actually losing $42 million a year in athletics. But, real savings it isn’t.

As I have said,saries, travel, food, equipment, marketing and vendor deals are what he is looking at. I would expect layoffs and partnerships reduced. Reduction in recruiting budgets. Things like that.
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John, you are missing the point. Billing the scholarships internally at a price no one would pay externally is the accounting trick. Reporting the intra-company charge at cost is accurate accounting. Managers may not know that but accountants and independent auditors certainly do.

It isn't "real savings" but it is isn't a "real expense." It is just correcting bad accounting.

Yeah, there are plenty of other areas that can, and should be cut. Those are real outlays and thus will have real savings.
 
CL82 said:
John, you are missing the point. Billing the scholarships internally at a price no one would pay externally is the accounting trick. Reporting the intra-company charge at cost is accurate accounting. Managers may not know that but accountants and independent auditors certainly do.

It isn't "real savings" but it is isn't a "real expense." It is just correcting bad accounting.

Yeah, there are plenty of other areas that can, and should be cut. Those are real outlays and thus will have real savings.
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I work in this field now with financials, And right now they are going to want to see hard Selling, General and Administrative costs cut.

Scholarships is a soft savings. Salary and travel cuts is a hard savings. it is savings, but getting direct cost out of any budget is always a painful thing to do.
 
JohnFSilver said:
I work in this field now with financials, And right now they are going to want to see hard Selling, General and Administrative costs cut.

Scholarships is a soft savings. Salary and travel cuts is a hard savings. it is savings, but getting direct cost out of any budget is always a painful thing to do.
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Scholarships is a horse crap number, as it is. It’s just not meaningful. Agree with you regarding the rest.
 
CL82 said:
Scholarships is a horse crap number, as it is. It’s just not meaningful. Agree with you regarding the rest.
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I've always believed the school had an incentive to report a huge athletic department loss because the state agreed to cut them a check for the loss. Bigger loss = Bigger check from state. In that sense the scholarship retail expense was meaningful.

Now that the state is no longer handing them a blank check, real incremental costs (internal cost accounting) become imperative for sound decision making. So what is the real incremental cost of a scholarship? It can't be the retail out of state price.

The problem with the state handing them a blank check for so many years is it probably funded the growth of a cancerous bureaucracy and because of the unions it becomes very difficult to eliminate said bureaucracy. Hopefully they will choose to cut the cancer before they cut vital organs (football).
 
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A point about the reported football loss that a lot of people miss is that because football is such a national, high profile sport a certain portion of its loss can justly be viewed as a valuable marketing expense for the school and state whereas the loss from the non-revenue sports is just a loss and has no marketing value. I would argue that even our soccer success has done little to nothing for the school, football beating Notre Dame however was huge, as was the three hour Michigan game. We have Clemson coming next year.
 
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It is really a philosophical discussion on the role of athletics in the college experience. If the sole evaluation is which sports pay for themselves it would be a pretty simple case. First drop all women’s teams except basketball though they would shut down too if every other school followed that rule since there would be nobody to play. I think UConn alone makes money consistently. Actually the idea that athletics should be profit centers or even pay for themselves is a pretty recent one. Lots of urban private schools dropped football in the 1950-70 period for costs but that often had other issues like space that came into the equation too. Plus a number of them had shuttered their programs during the war and reestsblishing them was a pretty capital intensive proposition when campuses were expanding. Also decisions like that of the Ivy Leagut to de-emphasize sports came into play.
 
Dooooooomed said:
Can't cut New England's favorite college football team.

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I don’t know what I like more the Blue Wolf all over New England or Buffalo being both New York state’s in New Jersey’s team.
 
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JohnFSilver said:
The managers know this. If you are in a business and are asked to cut costs, accounting tricks aren’t what leaders are looking for.

PR wise, I guess, you can reduce scholarship cost and say you saved money. But, that isn’t really savings. Maybe it will fool those people who think UConn is actually losing $42 million a year in athletics. But, real savings it isn’t.

As I have said,saries, travel, food, equipment, marketing and vendor deals are what he is looking at. I would expect layoffs and partnerships reduced. Reduction in recruiting budgets. Things like that.
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The governor’s pet transportation projects are costing hundreds of millions. Investing in concrete and asphalt instead of brains and next generation digital infrastructure would be much wiser. But, no, we’re chasing the 90’s.
 
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NCAA regs...


"A school must calculate the cost of attendance for student-athletes using the same policies and procedures it follows for the general student body."

15.02.2 Cost of Attendance. The “cost of attendance” is an amount calculated by an institutional financial aid office, using federal regulations, that includes the total cost of tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation, and other expenses related to attendance at the institution. (Adopted: 1/11/94)

I wonder if the reported cost of an athletic scholarship must also mirror the reported costs for the general student body?
 
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I read portions of NCAA audit manual for required independent auditing (I know, but I am bored)...

and looked up Oregon's response...

1. We did not compare direct state or other governmental support recorded by the University on the Schedule during the Reporting Period with state appropriations, institutional authorizations and/or other corroborative supporting documentation provided by the University as none was reported in the Schedule.

The governmental support, if any reported, would be, as with any audit, traced from the NCAA report to source documents.
 
Dooooooomed said:
Can't cut New England's favorite college football team.

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LOL...what crap methodology....amusing though.

Alabama's favorite team not Bama nor Auburn but UAB ?

Georgia's favorite team ? The Florida Gators?

But Florida's favorite team, UCF?

Ohio's favorite team...Michigan? But Michigan's favorite, Ohio State?

In Pennsylvania...not Penn State...but Penn?
 
billybud said:
NCAA regs...


"A school must calculate the cost of attendance for student-athletes using the same policies and procedures it follows for the general student body."

15.02.2 Cost of Attendance. The “cost of attendance” is an amount calculated by an institutional financial aid office, using federal regulations, that includes the total cost of tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation, and other expenses related to attendance at the institution. (Adopted: 1/11/94)

I wonder if the reported cost of an athletic scholarship must also mirror the reported costs for the general student body?
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I don’t know, but I’m not sure that the quoted passage provides the answer. Is there also a definition for cost of tuition?
 
billybud said:
LOL...what crap methodology....amusing though.

Alabama's favorite team not Bama nor Auburn but UAB ?

Georgia's favorite team ? The Florida Gators?

But Florida's favorite team, UCF?

Ohio's favorite team...Michigan? But Michigan's favorite, Ohio State?

In Pennsylvania...not Penn State...but Penn?
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Computer-literate fanbases.
 
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bc puckett said:
GCU and Creighton (last played in 1942) don't even have football teams.
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And the Packers play college ball now.

IMO the most funny take away is the teams that are not represented.
 
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Butch said:
Computer-literate fanbases.
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I think there might be a negative correlation between computer literacy and football excellence...

But, more likely, it is the nancy boy non football fans who populate twitter....the under 30, ultimate frisbee and "The Hu" fans....etc
 
There are two basic ways to count scholarships. The opportunity cost of filling that spot with a paying student, or the actual incremental cost of supporting the academic portion (however you want to define that) for that student athlete. It doesn't actually cost that much to add one extra student to campus. A thousand yes, but it's not the same as the cost of full tuition.

The rest is just accounting, university overhead vs athletic department overhead.
 
As long as the cost for student athletes matches the appropriation documentation and is accounted for the same for athletic schollies as regular students...NCAA
 
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