Any ideas about how Nellis affected sports here?

Nellis was very supportive of Jeff Boals' salary. We will see if the next Prez looks at things that way.

He does have a pretty fierce spiral ride on the mat....

I think you are spot on with the idea that they are fulfilling his contract. Cash is tight so no buy out and this probably is anchored by a covenant not to sue the university.
He came in at a difficult time and McDavis would be hard to follow. Students wanted a liberal diverse administration.Declining enrollment and CoVID were huge challenges.
I was pretty neutral on him but he has detractors. He seemed to be comfortable supporting athletics and turning out for events.
Jim tressel is a superstar at YSU. Has a lifetime contract now. Great fundraiser and a very positive force in every way. As a non academic president it was considered very unusual at that time.
Is OU ready for a non academic charismatic president who is an alum or worked for a long of time in Athens?

Only if I can live in the "bat house."

I'd be surprised if a new president would shake the apple cart on athletics considering how little the program spends compared to its peers in FBS.

The ideal situation is to have not just programs but coaches in place. Solich has that in football and Boals is on that track in men's basketball. Could Ohio find MAC level coaches for $200k less, sure but they would be starting from scratch. I could see that type of move more likely in football going the route of promoting from within at least initially until the coach proves their worth for raise and extension.

The biggest effect on sports is declining enrollment. I'm not sure what the number is but let's say for the sake of the discussion, that a student pays $750 per year in fees that go to athletics. For every 1000 students we are down, that's $750K. From 2016 to 2024, the projection is to go from 18,200 to 12,600 undergraduates on the Athens campus. That's a reduction of $4.2 million per year in the athletics budget. Where is that money going to come from to simply maintain.

Freshman class had a last minute surge and is actually increasing for first time in several years.

Ture but total undergraduate is still projected to be down.

Or vaccine bump? My son wasn't planning to come back in the fall if there was only remote learning. Now that he's had his shots and it looks more and more like a semblance of normal for next fall, I think he'll be going back. When he was there in the fall of 2019 he didn't care for the classwork but liked the interaction with other students. I think a lot of high schoolers who did all remote learning or even hybrid were postponing decisions about college this fall until universities made decisions on remote vs in-person classes.

3,600+ deposits for next year is not bad. Over 4 years and figuring an extra 10% for transfers and 5th year students that puts you at annualized 15,840. The projections of 12,500 undergrads were worst case scenario assuming the university continues to get outsold.

https://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/late-surge-in-conf...

The main story is the university has failed to keep up with the P5 universities from a financial perspective which has resulted in a drop off in relative academic quality which I believe started around 2005. Research dollars dropped off around that time after looking promising. Peer university list by university metrics at one point included North Carolina but was demoted in the 2010's and now it seems like moving forward its going to be an average MAC school.

The university has done so much over the last 25+ on the facilities side. Buildings that could be difference makers like a rec center, student union, new hubs for journalism, medical, engineering, business colleges etc. Athletic mall with Peden/Convo upgrades, new stadiums, IPF and Academic Center were significant additions. We talk about the basketball practice facility at some point but there is not that much left that can be done to make Ohio relatively more attractive. I guess some of the new improvements like the physical sciences building and medical school we have yet to play out. Before all of these improvements students still loved the campus as it was.

I continue to think the name OHIO is a brand advantage over attending a city school and a college town experience is superior to a city college experience it should be as desirable as Miami to attend. Many who attended in decades past were looking for a liberal Miami when picking this school and increasing the enrollment to an unsustainable level, putting focus on transfers in might have been good financial sense but drove away the snobbier students. Social progress at the expense of elitism.

The university is not a trend setter. It follows other trends with a lag. Promote the food scene and farmers market. That was done 10 years ago at colleges. When Alden was here the university was trying to build an intellectual identity at that stage. Today we can't rely on that over UC or Kent St because you can get it online. They need activities on campus that will appeal to higher tier students if they're going to compete with the higher tier universities.

Don't underestimate the impact of the coverage of the death of the young man from Dublin, Ohio. Can't hold the university responsible for the irresponsible actions of fraternities.

I was told by a university administrator several years ago that the well publicized time-change riots outside Court Street bars were traced to the loss of 500 incoming freshman the next year. Our image problem is caused by students themselves. I'm not sure how we can blame administrators. About 30 years ago, I was surprised to see an article on the front page of the Akron paper concerning the launch of an art-film festival in Athens. The Akron reviewer spent much of the article bemoaning the fact that there were drunk and loud students in some of the showings he attended. The paper's editors decided to support the text with an illustration of a drunk "hippie' wearing an OU T-shirt. I was pissed, to say the least, and called to complain, but the damage was done.

Bottom line, too many students demonstrate too little respect for their own school during their time in Athens.