I wondered if they were trying this type of weasel wording. It's interesting that that same thought occurred to you. It's a sad day when the country's flagship educational institution resorts to this kind of word trickery that would even make a snake oil salesman blush. Well, maybe not, but you get the point.

I want to say a new president came in with this mission sometime in the last 10 years. So I think your daughter had bad timing.

+1

At the end of the day, that's all that matters!

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works/f...

Harvard's endowment is so massive that people are starting to question why one would donate to the university, and why they retain tax-exempt status.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/take-away-ha...

How can some of you read this article and say "well, its hard to argue with the facts"? THESE facts are dubious and blatantly deceitful. You can't used ONE season as proof of mediocrity, especially when that one season is below a 10 year average. UAB hasn't had a winning record since 2004, they've only been a program since 1991, the differences between the two are numerous and significant.

And since when is 15K "pretty typical" for attendance at Peden? Why don't they mention the steady growth in attendance year over year since investments have been made in the program, why not mention ticket REVENUE reached a record high for the second year in a row???




and what is the variable for this less than scientific poll anyways? 13 spots one way or the other over 5 years doesn't sound like a lot to me. Are we to believe that moving from 135 to 122 would be a significant indicator of academic success by the university? c'mon.


I could go on, but what's the point. If these worthless hacks wanted to actually do some good for the academic side of the university they would lay out the case for the criminal distribution of revenue that gives their beloved OSU a piece of 70% of the pie while OU gets a slice from the 27% piece for playing in the same league. Fair distribution of league revenue would benefit for our university greatly.

5864

The credibility issue lies with the authors. There's a way to frame their argument that is truthful but they chose not to go that route in the name of self-righteousness. Again, the better argument is to show OU football on its merits, and then point out the disparity between the Ohio States of the world. Then you could maybe begin to have an honest conversation about what is the driver of these inequities and what reasonable responses should be considered.

Instead they chose to go with the lazy and intellectually dishonest theses of "you suck, you should quit". Its garbage.

Trying to correlate athletic spending/prioritization to academic reputation derived from a subjective ranking is clearly a lost cause. The authors would be wise to avoid that angle.

That said, it's a sad state of affairs when the burden of proof is on the academics to show that operating a football program (at an institution of higher learning) that is yearly millions in the red is a bad idea. Particularly given the rising cost of higher Ed.

It's a dumb idea. Period. No reasonable person can argue that any of this is sensible. And asking the students for 17(?)M per year to keep the thing afloat is unsustainable and arguably immoral.

Looking at the full $17m fee is just a wrong number, period. Of the $17m, how much would it be reduced if there were no football? UAB will provide a case study that may or may not answer that. Football has substantial costs, but also produces a fair amount of revenue from money games, from TV, from the conference, from ticket sales, from concessions, etc, unlike most sports. How much football loses depends in part on whether you also charge football for the cost of the additional 4-5 women's sports which must be sponsored to offset it from a Title IX basis.

My guesses are:
1. If UAB drops an offsetting 4-5 women's sports (with 85 scholarships total), too, they may save $5m or so.
2. If they drop only football, perhaps they will save $1-2m.
3. If they add back other men's sports to stay in compliance with Title IX rather than cutting women's sports, their overall costs will rise, probably by $3m or so, not fall.

For me, therefore, the correct number that should be used with regard to the "cost of football" is probably the $1-2m number, the actual savings from dropping football, without any other changes. Even then, to save that, and to keep all other things the same, UAB will have to:
1. Add 85 additional students that pay the full tuition so that they actually have the same Overall revenue, but not the "cost" of the scholarships
2. replace any walkons that leave with other students that actually pay
3. Maintain sufficient affirmative action so as not to see an overall shift in the demographics of the student base, and do it without incurring additional costs

What would have to be done in order to save the full $17 million? I presume that every sport would have to be eliminated, including all varsity, club, and intermural sports. I presume that in addition all athletic facilities would have to be sold off and/or converted to other uses so that they no longer required maintenance.

Note that I'm not saying that $1-2 million is the correct number; it's just a guess. I'm certainly open to some serious effort to ascertain the actual number. What I'm not open to is seriously considering the arguments of anyone who uses the $17m number, because it's ludicrously off, and anyone that uses it is obviously not making a serious effort to address the issue at all.

Go prove that. I'd love to see the data. Miami makes a nice case study as they dont seem to be suffering one bit due to poor performance of their football/Bball teams. They also tout record numbers of applications, best incoming class, etc... Was Miami doing substantially better in the late 90s/early oughts when their sports teams were getting national attention? Almost certainly not.

Proving the value of specific advertising is always, and has always been, difficult. One problem is that no one ever advertises their "product" in only a single way, so it's difficult to tell what effect came from what cause. How much of Miami's strength came from sports success? How much from promoting themselves as "preppy"?

Another problem is questions concerning the longevity of advertising. If sports success does promote more applicants, is it only for one year? Or does the effect last longer? Is Miami still benefiting from successes of a decade ago?

In the end you probably have to resort to circumstantial evidence rather that proving direct causation. For example, ask what is the average academic rank of P5 teams, what is the average academic rank of G5 teams, and what is the average academic rank of FCS teams? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that they come in that order. Would that be a coincidence?

Next, look at the question of giving to the general funds of the various schools. No one ever argued against the numbers that I presented a year ago, and two years ago, that showed that schools with football success showed significantly higher rates or growth than those without. The top schools in general fund growth were the super-elite schools, schools so famous that they don't need to be advertised (Harvard, MIT, U. Chicago, etc.). Next came P5 schools. Next came G5 schools that had been successful recently. At the bottom came schools with no Division I football. Is this a coincidence?


I think is the right approach, but a wrong comparison because when you compare schools in totally different geographic areas you get a lot more differences than just football success. What you should be doing is comparing schools in the same general area, but with different levels of success. For example, how does Alabama compare to Mississippi State, two schools in the same conference and area, but with different levels of success? How about compared to Tulane, a school that used to be in the SEC, but which dropped out, and ended up a G5 school? Or, to S. Alabama, a school in the same area that was FCS until recently? (I have no idea what the answer is in such a comparison, but I think it would be a better test data set.)

Clearly there are many here such as you who's opinion I respect (although do not agree with) regarding the nature of deficit spending on items within a university budget. I do want to point out that none of us here know how much of a deficit Basketball, or any of the other sports is run at, but I can intuit that they all do run a deficit. So I do want to make the point that football should not continue to be the sole focus of the deficit spending issue, although it is convenient considering the recent UAB decision which can be logically argued was politically motivated, not simply a financial decision. I could argue that it is immoral in a deficit situation that we spend in the middle of the MAC pack on football but choose to spend 50% more than the closest MAC school on hoops.

However, there is a clear correlation to the theme above and an argument of making each individual educational program on campus justify their existence by showing that they cash flow, as it is not a dissimilar notion from ICA. I always hear the same, esoteric rationalization of "yeah, well it is an institution of higher learning, so who cares if each program cash flows?" and "well we are a liberal arts institution, so we have to offer these niche programs, or otherwise we would just be a vocational school!" arguments. Should a Business student be financing the Theatre and Dance programs? Or Photography? Or Pottery?

In both the academic and ICA instances, the answer to both questions is the same: The President and the Board of Trustees are entrusted by the State of Ohio to make these decisions on behalf of the taxpayers. In my case, I choose to let them make those decisions. I don't feel there is a burden of proof for either of the two, however you may disagree. Many here may disagree, and if so you should voice your opinions in the proper forums if you wish to see change.

As it relates to the USNWR ratings, and the example someone else cited recently regarding UC having run up the charts of ratings, clearly UC has been doing substantial deficit spending to prop up their sports programs over the years while also improving their academic mission:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/n.../
And they are pouring tons of money into facilities upgrades:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/17-insanely-expensive-colleg...

As has been pointed out, the ratings are highly variable and unpredictable. Since the USNWR rankings are a gauge of the academic mission of the University, do we feel that each and every administrator, the board, faculty and staff should be called to the mat to explain the trends over the last ten years relative to our perceived peer institutions the same way that ICA is regularly called to task to justify its existence, despite only comprising less than three percent of the University's budget? Or is it easier to continue the red herring and avoid the item of higher gravitas? Is it easier to just point to Rod as the root cause because he is the face of the institution, or is the root issue the State of Ohio continuing to reduce the amount of state support? Hundreds of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance that was allowed to accrue under the Ping and Glidden regimes? Escalating amounts of tenured professors who hung on longer than their contributions proved to be valuable to the academic mission of the University?

In my view, there are far larger fish to fry. But that's just me. As I stated earlier, I don't spend my time worrying about whether or not the present state is sensible, as the significant decline in state support of Ohio universities is far less sensible, and which I feel is a far more morally objectionable issue than how we fund ICA. I live in Massachusetts and the state is significantly INCREASING their support for their institutions of higher learning and they are flying up the rankings as a result. They are also spending tens of millions of dollars annually both locally and regionally on traditional advertising as well as increasing their support of athletics on both the Amherst and Lowell campuses. Why can't Ohio do the same thing, and see all of its institutions benefit?