Charleston's President would trade places with us athletically in a heartbeat. Not in location necessarily. It is probably easier to get NIL in a city, But having a MAC football and basketball program or just a SC basketball program.
It is laughable how out of touch you guys are. It is like you think an athletic budget is like an family entertainment budget or something. We have X amount of money to spend and can either spent it on the movies or restaurants or something...... It really actually sounds like this is how you are thinking. It really actually does as hard as that is for me to believe. I mean most of you guys are alums right? I'd like to think that you are smarter than that.
I'm not promoting football or basketball. Heck, I 'd love to see us be great at both but that isn't the point. I am not going to post here again in this thread. I've tried to explain this so many times in the past that this is my last post here this time. But for starters, just ask yourself, does the University itself need to spend money to entertain itself? OK, now think about why a University might be spending money on athletics and then ask yourself if deleting the football program would suddenly free up all of that money for basketball. Try to figure it out yourselves this time instead of having other try to explain it which never seems to work.
Yes, this is one of those takes that pops up every year, and it’s just fundamentally misunderstanding how college athletics actually works.
College sports are about visibility, identity, and engagement — not just trophies.
Cutting football doesn’t fix basketball. It shrinks the entire university’s reach.
This idea that success is only defined by championships is flawed. And sad.
Look at Nebraska — they just won their first-EVER NCAA Tournament game in 2026 after 130 years of basketball.
By this logic, should they have shut down basketball decades ago?
Of course not.
Because college athletics isn’t purely about winning titles — it’s about:
• Visibility
• Experience
• Identity
• Community
Programs exist to represent the university, not just to maximize trophy counts.
OU doesn’t need to win a national championship in football for the program to be valuable.
It just needs to do what it already does:
• Drive engagement
• Generate revenue
• Create moments that connect students, alumni, and the brand
Cutting football doesn’t fix basketball.
It weakens the entire system.
This isn’t a household budget where you cut one expense and reallocate it cleanly somewhere else.
Football isn’t competing with basketball for the same dollars — it’s the engine that helps create the dollars in the first place.
Football:
• Drives a significant share of total athletic department revenue
• Generates the majority of media rights exposure
• Anchors donor engagement and alumni giving cycles
• Creates the largest in-person campus events (homecoming, Saturdays, etc.)
Basketball, by contrast, typically operates at a net loss.
So the idea that eliminating football would “free up” $15–20M to reinvest into basketball isn’t just unlikely — it’s backwards. You’d be removing one of the only revenue-generating and visibility-driving assets the department has.
And the impact goes beyond athletics.
Football is a front door to the university:
• It’s a national marketing platform
• It drives applications and enrollment interest
• It creates shared identity and school pride
• It keeps alumni connected (which ties directly to donations across the entire university)
You don’t cut your biggest brand amplifier and expect the rest of the system to grow.
If anything, dropping to FCS would:
• Reduce media exposure
• Shrink sponsorship and NIL opportunities
• Lower donor enthusiasm
• Decrease overall relevance in the college sports ecosystem
That’s not a reinvestment strategy — that’s contraction.