Why the UConn athletic department’s $41 million deficit might not be quite as bad as it sounds (Putterman)

[JustbrewitMan]

Not sure if this deserves its own thread...

Came across these articles today as a result of researching Eastern Michigan University with my daughter. She’s looking to pursue a degree in Fermentation Sciences (EMU is one of a handful of schools that offer this degree); she also has a reasonable shot to play D1 Softball.

I thought they were Interesting reads and have lots of parallels to us/food for thought:

From March 2018:
EMU cuts four sports, leaves football alone

>>Eastern Michigan University, facing steep budget shortfalls, will drop four of its sports programs at the end of this school year, the Ypsilanti school announced Tuesday.
Getting cut are softball, men’s swimming and diving, wrestling and women’s tennis. With the change, EMU, which previously led the Mid-American Conference with 21 sports, will now have 17 — seven men’s sports and 10 women’s sports. The school will remain in the MAC.<<

>> “EMU administrators have cut back on course offerings, laid off staff, left positions unfilled, and outsourced essential student services. In this environment, it’s not sustainable for EMU to spend more than $20 million a year from its own funds to subsidize football and other NCAA Division I sports teams.<<

Then from yesterday:
Court to EMU: Put softball not lacrosse back in place by Fall

>>Eastern Michigan University must have a women's softball program up and running by the fall, a federal court ordered Tuesday.
In doing so, the court rejected an Eastern argument that softball was too expensive and it should be allowed to start a women's lacrosse team instead, largely because it would bring more revenue to the financially struggling university.

"Having determined that the elimination of the tennis and softball teams violated Title IX, and that Plaintiffs have demonstrated irreparable harm, the court emphasizes that the appropriate remedy is the reinstatement of those teams," George Caram Steeh wrote in his order for the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. <<

>>The university is under a federal court order to reinstate women's softball and women's tennis, which it cut last year in budget-trimming moves. Female athletes sued and the court issued an order that the programs be reinstated because Eastern was in violation of Title IX. <<

>>The two sides have been meeting in mediation, but have reached an impasse. The reason for the refusal? Money. Softball would cost Eastern about $870,000 a year in scholarships, staffing and operations. That includes 12 athletic scholarships to the 17 to 20 athletes on the team, athletic director Scott Wetherbee wrote in a letter to the court.
"This means that only 5-8 student-athletes are paying their way to attend EMU," he wrote.
But that changes if Eastern adds women's lacrosse instead. In that sport, Eastern would still have to pay for 12 scholarships, but there are 33 to 36 athletes on the team.
"This means that 21-24 student-athletes are paying their way to attend EMU, generating more financial efficiency and promoting the sport’s sustainability," Wetherbee wrote.<<

Thought it was interesting because (1) the Title IX rulings (2) the football team being targeted as needing to “move down to DII” (especially because they’ve been a bad team, as well as (3) the “fuzzy math” with athletic scholarships/total athletes and how partial scholarships/non scholarship athletes are viewed as “revenue” for the AD’s budget.

 

[uconnbill]

Arguably to guarantee the state doesn't default. In a perfect world, the state would have negotiated more sensibly and have funded the pensions annually, but it didn't happen.

This was the answer 20 years ago. I'm not sure it is viable anymore.

I am a big believer that the state should meet its obligations, but I don't think the math works anymore.

It will end up like Detroit where they got pennies on the dollars for their retirement. I am not suggesting that should happen, but the unfunded mandates at around $80 billion dollars.

I want football to do well as I want all UConn sports and when it comes back this will be somewhat of a bad dream, or so that is my hope

 

[Rocktheworld]

the star ledger does nothing but kill rutgers. entertaining really

Grew up 20 minutes from New Brunswick

Can confirm lol

At least JC and Geno gave the media reason to dislike UConn

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

Came across these articles today as a result of researching Eastern Michigan University with my daughter. She’s looking to pursue a degree in Fermentation Sciences (EMU is one of a handful of schools that offer this degree). ...

Meanwhile in Storrs, Cannabis 101 is now offered.

"Even on a cold day at the University of Connecticut, there’s a warm glow from the high-pressure sodium lights inside the school’s greenhouse. It’s there that a crop you might expect to be hidden off campus is carefully tended by serious-minded students."

“It has a very negative stigma to it,” instructor Matt De Bacco said. “Lots of people didn’t want to go near it because they’re fearful of pushback.” De Bacco says its a bold move by UConn, recognizing the fast-growing acceptance of cannabis for medical, recreational, and other uses.

College students, of course, are worried about finding work after graduation. A market research firm says the cannabis industry will hit $40 billion by 2021 and support more than 400,000 jobs.

Professor Gerry Berkowitz says UConn will become a center for serious cannabis research.
“The industries are hiring people who grew pot in the basement,” he said. “There’s a great need for scholarship… we have a chance to make history together.”

Go Huskies!

 

[upstater]

Why the UConn athletic department’s $41 million deficit might not be quite as bad as it sounds

>>“Most schools are choosing to spend more than they generate in revenue," said Schwarz, who has written for publications including FiveThirtyEight, Deadspin and VICE and runs his own blog called Sportsgeekonomics. “That tells me that the wide consensus across a whole bunch of different kinds of schools is that the off-the-books benefits that athletics provides are worth spending a little bit of money." <<

>>When Schwarz says athletics are worth “a little bit of money” to major universities, he means $10-20 million, the amount that an average Division I school pays each year to maintain an athletic department, not the hefty $41 million figure that UConn spends. Still, Schwarz said, UConn’s official financial statement almost certainly overstates its deficit, due in part to accounting practices used in athletic departments across the country. <<

Thought this was an interesting point:

>>In theory, any bed taken up by an athlete with a scholarship could otherwise be filled by a non-athlete paying full tuition.

But Schwarz says that’s not necessarily true. At least some of the dorm rooms and lecture halls currently occupied by athletes would otherwise be filled by students paying less than full tuition, sometimes much less. And when athletic departments charge themselves for partial scholarships (which typically go to athletes in nonrevenue sports), it doesn’t credit itself for the portion of tuition that those athletes do pay to the university. For example, if a tennis player chooses UConn specifically because of his ability to play tennis for the Huskies, then pays half of the out-of-state tuition rate, that could arguably count as revenue generated by the athletic department. Instead, that player gets marked as costing the department thousands of dollars in a partial scholarship.<<

This is all so wrong I can't even begin to tell you how bad the reasoning is.

Universities take head counts and pay/hire faculty and staff accordingly.

None of it is phony.

The real reason Presidents keep subsidizing sports is that they don't want to piss off alumni, boards of trustees, etc., while they get paid $500k to $1m annually, and if they can do it by hiding the true extent of the losses from their true customers (parents of regular students who are subsidizing sports) then they will do it.

 

[Pudge]

*If you're good

Seems a little State U in NE got plenty of great marketing with 11 NCs in WBB & 4 NCs in MBB. Even a Soccer NC or other superlatives. Fiesta Tostito Bowl etc.

The National Flag Blue, Red and White are IMPRESSIVELY in the National consciousness versus my years walking those paths in the 70s. We won. We will Win again.

 

[ZooCougar]

If you look at the $ lost per student athlete. I bet football looks more favorable than some other sports.

 

[Pudge]

No cutbacks but pensions need to go the way of the dodo.

This should have been written in about 1990. When General Electic cut pensions etc etc

(And I have 3 State Work siblings in NYS)

 

[upstater]

If you look at the $ lost per student athlete. I bet football looks more favorable than some other sports.

I would doubt this. At both the schools that subsidize and at the ones who are earning a so-called profit. You can really tell how much football adds to the debt by analyzing the budgets of the schools that ramped up football, either from playoff subdivision or D2 to D1. You see massive increases in the budget, on the order of 300%, or more even. But even at the so-called profitable schools like Michigan, the build out in facilities (all bonded by the academic side) creates huge unseen amounts of debt. Michigan owes $400m on football facilities, and it spends 20m+ a year servicing those loans, and they're not part of the athletics budget. Now, the academic side used to pay for all of it, but in recent years the athletic department has begun returning $12-14m to pay for facilities.

The point of this is that you'd be hard-pressed to rack up $400m in debt to service other sports. It's really football that requires that kind of outlay.

 

[ZooCougar]

I would doubt this. At both the schools that subsidize and at the ones who are earning a so-called profit. You can really tell how much football adds to the debt by analyzing the budgets of the schools that ramped up football, either from playoff subdivision or D2 to D1. You see massive increases in the budget, on the order of 300%, or more even. But even at the so-called profitable schools like Michigan, the build out in facilities (all bonded by the academic side) creates huge unseen amounts of debt. Michigan owes $400m on football facilities, and it spends 20m+ a year servicing those loans, and they're not part of the athletics budget. Now, the academic side used to pay for all of it, but in recent years the athletic department has begun returning $12-14m to pay for facilities.

The point of this is that you'd be hard-pressed to rack up $400m in debt to service other sports. It's really football that requires that kind of outlay.

I’m talking specifically UConn. Maybe someone with time on their hands can do the math.

 

[whaler11]

I’m talking specifically UConn. Maybe someone with time on their hands can do the math.

you cant do the math. there is no way to properly disrribute some of the revenue streams between sports.

but yeah if you divide a loss by 105 and divide it by 15 unless you lose 8x more on the bigger team you’ll have a smaller loss per player.

not sure why youd care about that metric though

 

[ZooCougar]

you cant do the math. there is no way to properly disrribute some of the revenue streams between sports.

but yeah if you divide a loss by 105 and divide it by 15 unless you lose 8x more on the bigger team you’ll have a smaller loss per player.

not sure why youd care about that metric though

Just from the theory that offering sports scholarships results in a loss of tuition revenue. Just another way to look at it.

 

[CL82]

This should go well...

I wonder what the results would have been if the question was...
"Should UConn eliminate its money losing woman's basketball program?"

 

[huskymedic]

Interesting read on New Mexico’s situation and accounting practices: UNM's position: Football is making money after all

>>UNM previously did not determine revenue sport by sport because the athletic department’s financial budget had only been presented in its entirety. Nuñez and his staff have since broken it down. “That was many layers of the onion that we had to peel back because we went from a big hodge-podge of a budget to being able to separate it into individual sports and individual departments,” Nuñez said.<<

>>Nuñez said the sport by sport research into the athletics budget has created a clearer picture of what each activity costs and contributes financially to the university. “It should have been done years ago. But we had to take the time,” he said. “And that’s a lot of work to take the steps necessary to where we are today. We are at about 98 percent (for breaking down the budget across the athletic department), but over the next several months we will continue the process to get us to 100 percent.”<<

 

[whaler11]

Interesting read on New Mexico’s situation and accounting practices: UNM's position: Football is making money after all

>>UNM previously did not determine revenue sport by sport because the athletic department’s financial budget had only been presented in its entirety. Nuñez and his staff have since broken it down. “That was many layers of the onion that we had to peel back because we went from a big hodge-podge of a budget to being able to separate it into individual sports and individual departments,” Nuñez said.<<

>>Nuñez said the sport by sport research into the athletics budget has created a clearer picture of what each activity costs and contributes financially to the university. “It should have been done years ago. But we had to take the time,” he said. “And that’s a lot of work to take the steps necessary to where we are today. We are at about 98 percent (for breaking down the budget across the athletic department), but over the next several months we will continue the process to get us to 100 percent.”<<

uconn should do this.

call 33% of the 41 million dollar subsidy revenue.

see we make money!

throw in some of pal’s $83 per tweet value and the only thing that makes sense is starting a second football team

 

[UConnDan97]

uconn should do this.

call 33% of the 41 million dollar subsidy revenue.

see we make money!

throw in some of pal’s $83 per tweet value and the only thing that makes sense is starting a second football team

4 million of the 4.3 million "proportional" income is actually subsidy or fundraising. Not exactly what I'd call revenue...