One of my favorite stories to this argument is Florida Gulf Coast after its March Madness run.

https://eaglenews.org/1070/news/fgcu-admissions-spikes-ma... /

“The primary form of mass media advertising by academic institutions in the United States is, arguably, through their athletic programs,” said Harvard Business School Assistant Professor of marketing Doug J. Chung on HBS Working Knowledge website.

From March 21 to March 25, visits on the admissions page of the FGCU website jumped from 2,280 to 42,793, according to ESPN’s Kristi Dosh. The visits to the school website jumped from 47,067 to 230,985 and the athletics website visits jumped from 8,177 to 117,113, according to school records. This phenomenon is also known as the “Flutie Effect”.

The Flutie Effect is based on the 1984 Boston College-Miami football game when quarterback Doug Flutie threw a last second 48-yard “Hail Mary” pass to beat Miami 47-45.

In the following two years, according to Chung’s research, Boston College’s application rates shot up 30 percent. This has been an occurrence at multiple universities after a period of athletic success. According to ESPN, when Northern Iowa beat the top-seeded Kansas University Jayhawks in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, calls to the university admissions office spiked 30 percent. When Butler reached the national title game in 2010 NCAA Tournament, applications went up 41 percent.

So what has happened at FGCU? “At this time we would expect to see an increase in applications and we have,” said Marc Laviolette, the FGCU Director of Admissions. “However it is still early and taking a snapshot of where we are in applications compared to last year at this time is just one point in time and will not necessarily translate into a final percentage increase. We receive applications for next fall starting in September with the final deadline May 1st. At this point we are up in freshman applications by 27%.”

It's not about being the next Gonzaga (although that'd be awesome). Sports are a university's biggest revenue and exposure driver.

How many of those sports coaches that are the highest paid employees in their state coach at a program that loses money?

Here's the list of colleges ranked by the size of their endowments. We talk about athletics as a "marketing expense" and one that exists to keep alumni engaged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_univer... .

How many of those schools' highest paid employees are coaches? So, there's a model that works for schools perfectly well that doesn't involve making a coach your highest paid employee, right?

This^^^^All of this^^^^

Let’s say we paid our coaches in the dean range, 350ish. Nothing is preventing them from getting NIL deals just like the players. The players are getting money for what they think they are worth. A coach could do the same. We as an institution can stay in line with our revenues.

Isn't the number of programs that actually make a profit extremely low? Like less than 10%? Speaking from an Athletic Department as a whole, not individual programs. If that's the case, I would assume the answer to your question "How many of those sports coaches that are the highest paid employees in their state coach at a program that loses money?" is pretty high.

This list is old (2020), but it gives you a good idea.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/23/these-are... /

Here is your list of overall programs that actually make a profit. A very small number. One quote I found interesting:

"...37 of 229 public Division I athletics programs generated more money than they spent without considering FB coaches' salaries."

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-found-18-profitable-211-... -/

I don't have the time to cross reference, but the lists are pretty correlated.

I think this is true in basketball. We regularly punch above our weight class. But so do a lot of teams. It's literally the reason people like March Madness so much. We pay Boals 33% more than FAU's coach made before he took them to the Final Four. There's a lot of punching above weight classes in college basketball.

In football, I don't see how anybody can make the argument that we punch above our weight class. We haven't won our conference in forever. What better definition of weight class is there than our conference? We punch exactly at our weight class.

Well, let’s say we buy the argument that because we have some good years and enrollments are up as a result. Wouldn’t those students who came to Ohio because of the basketball team also show up to the games? 4756 avg attendance would say “no”.

Above Market? What market? Our peer institutions? NCAA Mid Majors? Only the MAC?

Funny, half the people commenting here will be wanting coaching changes by mid-year. You spend half the year degrading a sport and our position in it, then the other half complaining about the results.

You’re making too much sense.

What is John Groce salary?

According to the report, Groce decided to keep his $650,000 salary in order to put more money into the program, such as hiring a dedicated strength coach and increasing the assistants’ compensation. A $75,000 retention bonus is available to him on July 31, 2025, and July 31, 2028.


Someone above suggested that Groce is paid more than Boals. According to this info, that is not true. The above info was published in January of 2023.

I don’t think you’re kidding.

Schaus made a decision to become more nationally competitive with salaries after Groce left. Realized we should be paying 2x what the smaller schools pay in basketball and football. Its a mid major job not a low major job. 300k is low major/FCS money.

Anyone here questioning Boals salary might want to re-evaluate today what we are paying Timmy Albin.

Boals>Timmy