Here is what I mean. For rough numbers: let's say total athletics spend is $18M with revenues of $3M $2M from football) meaning university budget of $15M. So you cut football at $5M but lose $2M of revenue and add $.5M to basketball. Your spend is now $13.5M but your budget (support) from the university us $12.5M. So you've cut 28% of your spend but only 17% of your budget. Are there net savings? Yes. Good luck getting that $.5M add-back approved is what I'm saying.
I agree that it isn't a likely scenario, but the point was just that it was possible, even if unlikely.
First of all, you haven't told me when the "arms race" started or any proof that there is one (that football net spend has grown as a greater percentage than basketball). I'm not being facetious about this. It's kind of the basis for the argument.
I thought that the MAC's increased emphasis on football was clearly publicized back in the late-90s or early-00s. The conference front office made a big deal about increasing the membership's commitment to Division I-A football, roughly around the time of the talk of an attendance-based demotion to I-AA land. Do you remember things differently?
I don't see that we have "fallen behind". I see that we are behind (if schools account for them similarly). Maybe I missed it but where did you show the slide in basketball expenditure? As you acknowledged earlier, a CAA team hired a MAC coach back around 1997. So they must have been investing more back then and I'm guessing that was pre-arms race.
I'm going to work on tracking down the data, but in the interim and just to be clear, your position is that our basketball funding compared to the Horizon and Colonial has not changed appreciably in the last 10-15 years (i.e., that we are being outspent by roughly the same percentage now as we have been for a decade or more)?
And again, the fact that a CAA team hired a MAC coach does not prove anything about overall conference spending. Setting aside the plethora of personal factors that can be involved in such a move, as with the Horizon coach bolting for the Toledo job, that move can be explained by the fact that Larranaga was fleeing the lowest budget MAC hoops squad for an upper-level CAA job. That does not mean that, on the whole, the CAA was investing more than the MAC on hoops back in the late-90s. At most it would mean that George Mason was in a better budgetary position versus the rest of the CAA than BGSU was versus the rest of the MAC, although even that is a stretch to conclude on the basis of the move alone.
Again, you speak to prioritizing football I guess hoping it becomes fact. I'm waiting for evidence of that. What I do know is that conference affiliations are driven by football (see this summer when basketball royalty Kansas was facing not being in a BCS conference). College football is one of the most popular sports in the country and growing in popularity whereas college basketball is declining (see below). I think the one way Ohio moves the dial in Athletics is in a new conference. The only hope (emphasis on hope) is that someone needs an FBS football school. There are no shortage of basketball schools (345 and counting), everyone has one.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/248/Default.aspx
I don't doubt that football is more popular than basketball. But I disagree that the MAC should just blindly prioritize the most popular sport, regardless of its realistic ability to have make an impact in that sport. Most college football fans focus on the BCS conferences and a handful of mid-majors (soon to be one - Boise State). They don't care about the MAC, and think that our level of competition is generally a joke. You are going to be waiting until the cows come home for Ohio to move up into a better football conference. We have no fan following, and play in an insignificant media market oversaturated by better FBS programs (Ohio State, Cincinnati, Pitt, WVU, Marshall).
In contrast, while college basketball obviously occupies a shorter window of time in the consciousness of the average sports fan, the MAC has an ability to make a much bigger impact than just about anything it can do on the gridiron. Last March's victory by Ohio was a more impressive showing on the national stage than anything a MAC football program had done since 2003, and I would offer almost certainly had a larger impact on the average sports fan than the last several years of MAC football combined.
In any event, this is again all beside the point. I didn't enter this conversation to argue that football should be dumped, or even necessarily that we should prioritize basketball over football. The point is just that I believe it is abundantly clear that the MAC's stature in basketball has fallen as a result of its prioritization of remaining a cellar-dwelling FBS conference.