The first article implies strongly that the financial picture is better in FCS than FBS. From what I've seen that is not true, it's worse. They seem to have slightly lower costs, but substantially lower revenues. That's why schools are leaving FCS to get into FBS if they can, and not the reverse. Idaho is going the other way, but only because they can't find an FBS conference that will take them.

The elephant in the room that they don't mention is that whenever I look at the data, I consistently find a very, very strong correlation between general endowment growth and FBS football success. A select few schools, such as Ivy League schools and U Chicago have had strong endownent growth without football, but there are very few others. It's a stupid relationship, but one that seems undeniable. In this age where people overvalue sports, they seem to donate to the schools that are successful in sports.

It makes some people sick to see Ohio students or graduates wearing scarlet and gray. It should make them even sicker to think about them sending charitable gifts to OSU. Do you doubt that it happens? Do you think that at, say Case Western, you find more OSU gear, or less? Do you think more of their alums give to OSU, or less?

The fact is that Ohio has had excellent endowment growth the last ten years. Has sports success contributed to that? I personally think that it has, and I suspect that the administration thinks so, too.

Why is it silly beyond belief? In your eyes, what is reasonable rationale for giving?

One thought. How is that some Big Ten schools with rather mediocre or worse football programs (Minnesota, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois) have endowments in the billions, yet SEC schools with huge football traditions are under or barely above a billion dollars? I don't think football drives endowment growth so much as simply being a good public research university. Very little of OSU's fundraising machine is going to the AD, about 6-7 percent in an average year.

I have a friend who works in development at OSU. He told me that they've had 3 major multi-year fundraising campaigns in the last 30 years, and two of them came when people were really down on the football program. The first was during the latter years of the Earl Bruce regime. It had a goal of $250M and ended up raising $450M, which was a record for a public university at the time. The second was in the last years of the Cooper regime. It had a goal of $850M and raised $1.25B, which made it one of only a few public universities to ever conduct a billion dollar campaign. The last came in the glory years of Tressel/Meyer and raised a little over $3B against a goal of $2.5B, while Michigan raised over $4B while their program was in the dumps. So, I'm looking at all of this, and I'm not seeing much difference in OSU's fundraising relative to whether alumni and other supporters are happy with the football program or not.

My point here is that I have a hard time believing that people are donating, either in minor or major ways, to the History or Chemical Engineering Department based on football success whether at OSU or Minnesota or OHIO. If football doesn't seem to have much of an influence on fundraising for Ohio State why would one believe that it would be the case for OHIO. I think the need to link the two is driven more by a desire to rationalize and justify D1 football and athletic subsidies in general, similar to the way people are always bringing up the (debatable) Flutie Effect on admissions.

We've had this debate before, and I'm sure we'll have it again. You have to remember that even when you have a strong statistical correlation, there are individual data points that don't fit where you might expect them. Here are links to two other prior threads where we debated this:

The first thread is one in which I point out that P5 schools are all ranked highly in the USNWR ranking of academics, with G5 schools ranked lower:
http://www.bobcatattack.com/messageboard/topic.asp?FromPa...

The second one is one where I show that endowment growth is strongly correlated to football success:
http://www.bobcatattack.com/messageboard/topic.asp?FromPa...

In the first post I point out that the average ranking of schools, by conference, (giving an arbitrary ranking of 250 for schools that are unranked) is:
Ivy League - 7
ACC - 54
Big Ten - 57
Pac Twelve - 81
SEC - 97
Big Twelve - 112
AAC - 144
MAC East - 132
CUSA - 196
MWC - 209
Mac West - 211
Sunbelt - 250

Other than the Ivy league, which is a whole separate world, this relationship leads to the chicken and egg question, does football promote giving which in turn leads to success academically, or does academic success lead to plenty of money, which in turn makes a school a football power? Certainly some schools like the Ivy League, U. Chicago, MIT, etc which have had success in maintaining high academic rank without football, but there are many, many liberal arts colleges out there that do not play football, and do not have a high academic rank.

In the second link I look at the relationship between endowment growth and football. I find that the endowment growth rate is related to football as well. I compared endowment growth from 2005-2012 for universities with large endowments and found the following growth rates:
Schools playing FBS football 5.6%
Ivy League - Avg 4.5%
Others not playing FBS football - 3.9%

Again, we can lead to the chicken and egg question: Does playing football increase general giving, or does a high rate of giving make a school more likely to play FBS football? Of these two, the first seems plausible (albeit stupid), while the second seems unlikely.

I haven't updated the data for either table in recent years, but I suspect that if I did I would find the relationships unchanged. At first glance, the data certainly supports the hypothesis that football success leads to closer ties to alumni and more giving, which in turn leads to a larger endowment, and that in turn leads to longer term academic improvements. Is that a valid conclusion? Is there some other conclusion?

I think the burden is on people like Ridpath or Vedder that would like to see college football go away to address the data, and come up with some other explanation. If they just ignore the data, they aren't going to ever succeed in chasing away football.

The chain of events in Ohio’s case is in the early 90’s major improvements were made to Peden. The tower and landscaping when it was first done is beautiful and a very nice place to watch a football game. At the same time Ohio was a hot school in the 90’s with the beginnings of renewal in Athens. Suddenly Ohio was selling out for homecoming at 19,000 on reason of the atmosphere alone. From that point the athletic department found ways to tap into this and build a consistent season ticket base. For this reason I’d say the development of the football program at Ohio was a reflection of the university, not a cause for it. Ohio truly has a student-centric athletic department. Homecoming and family weekends drive the game day buzz as it’s what you do on those weekends. Family weekends are significant on a campus where cars are not allowed for underclassman and a majority of students are from 2-3 hours away. Keep in mind there are about 10,000 more students on campus than the 80’s so it’s made the made the family weekends all that more intense. It’s the uniqueness of the school more so than winning which has allowed large crowds to take root. The academics are what motivate students to travel 2-3 hours away in high enough numbers to supply a school in the Wayne National Forest with 24,000 attendees.

Everyone, I know the Ohio Sports Management Program is high respected across the nation. However, I must admit to being somewhat ignorant on any bias they may have such as pro-anti college football, sports funding in general, their outlook on the future of college sports-television deals and particularly the MAC. It seems David Ridpath has been getting a fair amount of national media attention. Is his viewpoint standard for the department? Does anyone else know?

Thanks, L.C. The % change re other universities--what group is that 'other'? All public or all private or both...what type of schools (2 year, 4 year, with grad schools or not, etc)?

I took the comparative data from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_univer...
It lists only Universities with over $1b in assets in their endowments. One advantage that Ohio may have is that it is probably easier to get a large percentage increase when you start with a smaller base. Ohio's endowment is only about half the size of others in this group.

I used the Wiki to determine average endowment growth rate from 2007-2015. The data includes 86 Universities, and I added Ohio in as well. Those over 7% a year are:
1. Virginia Commonwealth 22.2%/year
2. U Cal San Francisco 11.9
3. Penn State 10.9
4. Michigan State 10.1
5. Ohio University 10.0
6. Washington & Lee 9.9
7. UCLA 8.4
8. U. California Berkeley 8.2
9. Texas Tech 7.9%

I sorted the schools by conference, and found the endowment growth rate by conference to be:
Big Ten - 5.5%
Big Twelve - 5.3%
Pac Ten - 3.8%
ACC - 3.6%
G5 - 3.4%
No FBS Football - 3.0%
SEC - 2.5%
Ivy - 2.3%

This data is incomplete, though, as it doesn't include schools not on the wiki page.

It is logical that basketball also impacts giving, and note that this is non-athletic giving. This is giving to the general fund, which can later be used for research, professor salaries, scholarships and other things. People like Vedder and Ridpath wonder why schools keep playing sports, when it makes no sense to them. If they really want to stop football, they are going to have to show that this relationship is not true, and then convince University Presidents and Athletic Directors.

I understand the issues donating and trust me, with a name like mine you think my money goes to Columbus.

That said, the tickets I buy are non-donor there. I also own a block of seats in Athens. I have told people in Columbus to kiss my @$$ when it comes to money because they keep pissing me off when I tell them I'm not ready to donate yet along with me not getting into graduate school there. Consistently, they didn't understand what I'm doing in my career and I have yelled at them. The only thing that gets my money in Columbus is my old fraternity house (and it's worth way less than the amount of ..... books I consumed there in my time).

Athens on the other hand, gets my donations without hesitations. The athletic dept and the Sports Ad always have a donation coming from my way. It's the least I owe that place for what it has given me in terms of friends within the community (who by the way I still visit with consistently and spoil me in my time there). I owe it for the time on Court St. (where $10 puts you under) and most of all owe it for the chance I got there versus Columbus. So from here on in, the money I get in my career will always be going to Athens.

Sorry for that, but I feel it should be known where my loyalty lies on this.

To the first part, I am not sure of his position on this. As to the 2nd there is no stated position, other than we have an alum running the show up in Cleveland and support him in his position.

Buckeye to Bobcat and L.C. thank you for your insights, just trying to understand the mindset(s) of the Sports Administration Department and particularly Professor Ridpath.