So, I was totally unaware that OHIO University had 35,000 students in Athens and Athens itself had 23,000 people.

0 for 2 on basic facts, he may as well create a YouTube video on pandemics now.

I came here to post a link to this article which I read at 7AM 5/11.

The article I read says, "Athens is a municipality of approximately 6000 citizens, which increases exponentially when over 19000 college students are added to the mix."

Perhaps it had been edited from the earlier version after the author logged in to read Bobcatattack!

I'm just going to come out and say it, OU was fiscally mismanaged prior to this whole situation. This goes back to when everyone's favorite president (McDavis) was running the show. I can still hear them claiming most fiscally responsible school in the state when I saw chunks of concrete falling off buildings. OU operates like the state of Michigan, keep kicking problems down the road until it blows back up in its face. In addition, the fact that the administration is severely bloated to the point of looking like a sumo wrestler makes it financially insolvent during these times. Strap in if Ohio even sniffs the light of day coming out of this.

Was talking to someone and if I ran athletics at OU, I'd do the following things to instantly save costs:

1. Go to FCS right off the bat. Saves 44 scholarships (22 football and 22 women's scholarships). Rough budget savings is $1.3 million and that doesn't include coaching staff slots that may go with women sports. I also assume a good chunk of the MAC is considering this as an option as we speak, so I cannot wait to see how this goes.
2. Outside of going to Buffalo, CMU, and NIU, everything would be bused the day of game. Forget getting a hotel the night before games, and that includes football and basketball. Sorry, the MAC is a bus league and the fact we even fly to places to me is absurd.
3. Look to see if I can get Solich and Boals to take significant paycuts. The days of coaches making over a half-million are gone in the MAC. If they refuse, well, I can always ramp up my compliance department to look for a reason to fire them and justify it and then proceed to go get a 100k head coach.
4. Tell Solich we're done with the horse crap home-and-homes with the Texas States of the world. Minimum 2 money games right off the bat and if needed do 3 money games. If he wants to keep Marshall, great. Get rid of your precious buy game for home.
5. Tell Boals we're going on the road a lot more. No offense, but Alabama A&M doesn't write checks at all.
6. Since we went FCS, that would also mean that opens the MAC TV deal and probably eliminate MACtion games. Good, move our games back to Saturday and get some revenue out of those games again. Even if it's over 12k in revenue, that's a heckuva lot more than the 3k we were getting. If the MAC moves as a whole, always willing to play chicken with ESPN and see if they still want it.
7. Figure out how to pair basketball weekends in November with football. And I mean as in make those league games right out of the gate so that I can capitalize off of the football team coming to town of our opponent. Tired of seeing too many schools
8. When it becomes "league season" in January, double-headers of men's/women's bb or wrestling (SAME SCHOOL TOO, MAC is stupid about two different schools traveling) become mandatory. I'm sorry, but for weekend games it is imperative to make a true day of these schools a requirement.
9. If needed to get road games, do neutral sites in Columbus every year. Ohio should stick its nose up at Ohio A&M and in particular take advantage of the recruiting territory that is Columbus. A lot of schools (especially Big Ten's that don't get Ohio State on the schedule for that year) would crave to have that game in Columbus. Take advantage of it. In addition, allows us to grow our base there. For those who gripe about taking games away from precious Athens, can it. Survival is the name of the game at this point and if we can take advantage of teams' desperation to be in Columbus for recruiting purposes, let's do it and spit at Ohio A&M too.
10. Everything goes out to bid and not through a stupid department on campus. I'm sorry, but printing services and other campus entities deserves to go the way of the do-do. To be frank, these departments are the greatest ponzi scheme ever concocted that rely on circular funding. Finding out how to slash costs here would be huge.
11. Go digital with everything. No reason to be mailing items or for that matter printing the living daylights out of everything. Printing costs alone would save a significant amount of money.
12. When the timing is right, ultimately have a department that almost relies exclusively on GAs from Ohio. We got a great program and with how cheap a GA is versus a full-time individual, costs could be slashed instantly and with minimal impact if set up correctly. Three year program that consists of their first two years of being GA's and then the final year being the "boss" of the department before moving on to find another job. Rather would treat this like the Oakland A's and when it comes time for them to get paid, they ain't getting it in Athens. Go find the Yankees.
13. Sell the damn stadiums out. It ain't rocket science. Lot of cracks have developed through the years and grassroots selling needs to happen again.
14. Get parking services to quit charging for parking rates that are stupid. If they do not, I literally threaten to move all my parking for events (even OHSAA events) over to the fairgrounds where they can legitimately tailgate and tell them to go pound sand. Goes back to point 11. I swear on everything holy that if they ran the tournament out of Athens they would never be forgiven. Along those lines, making a deal with the county specifically would be to my favor in terms of rates and everything else. Wouldn't have to pay parking services to use their lots for our gamedays which generate revenue.
15. Rent my buildings out as frequently as possible. Why aren't there business meetings in Peden Stadium or companies attempting to do pick-up basketball in the arena, let alone concerts. We don't sell our facilities hard enough, I think it's time to consider.
16. Raise funds for an indoor basketball/wrestling practice facility at some point in the near future AND HAVE IT BE RAN BY ATHLETICS. Sorry, personal vendetta for the football facility that the university runs Walter, which goes without saying figure out how to tell campus to buzz off finally in some way so we aren't paying them a "management fee."

Just some off the wall ideas, but these alone should slash a significant amount off the budget. Feel free to chime in with other ideas as needed.

That's funny because right after several people here in town posted that to their FB page, I commented on one that his numbers were way off. Guess somebody told him. Here's his profile.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmgavazzi

Points 1 and 2 I think are going to happen here shortly. A few MAC Members are going to move down and we can realign in a hurry. You don't think Youngstown State would be open to joining the FCS version of MAC too? They would really consider it for travel costs. Otherwise, MAC could very well split with in my opinion Toledo, Miami, Buffalo, and potentially NIU wanting to stay up. Western and Central would be borderline schools, and BGSU would want to stay up, but their hand may be forced.

In theory, I think Akron, Kent, Ohio, Ball State, and Eastern would consider going FCS in a hurry. Add YSU to the fray, and right there you got a circuit immediately.

Here's looking at the other side of the coin:

10.I thought O.U. implemented a school wide purchasing system for various types
of supplies a few years ago.
That's a start.
You also have to careful not to "throw out the baby . . ."
Unfortunately,given Athens' location,having certain things ,like printing, done "in house" may be the most practical option.

11.I agree with increasing O.U.'s use of digital media.
But,I know a lot of Municipalities that tried to go paperless.
You still need hard copies of lots of documents.

15.This is worth exploring,but I don't know legally,how it would work.
O.U. is a public institution.
So I'm sure there are restrictions on how they can use facilities for other then
O.U. sponsored events.
Any outside group would also have to have all kinds of insurances.

16.The only reason Walter got built,was because the University runs it.
They tried to do it all with donations,but fell way short.

I don't know of any complaints as to how its being used/run.
In fact,last time I was out at O.U. in November,we kept hearing how well used
the facility is.

An indoor wrestling/basketball practice facility would be great.
How are you going to pay for it ? (building and operation/maintenance)

Say athletics does run the place.
Do they then hire a separate staff for maintenance and repairs ?
Seems a lot more cost effective to use the staff you already have.

Trying to build it with donations,even with a big donor paying a big chunk
of the construction cost hasn't worked in the past,why would it now ?

Work with the school to build and run it.
Just make sure your athletic teams get priority in scheduling.

A couple of points need to be cleared up before we go big picture. President McDavis didn't neglect physical maintenance/upkeep, and why athletics is under the microscope when we have so much administrative bloat (salaries and number of positions) is beyond me.

Now I am hardly one of those guys who says we should expand Pedan or try to compete with power conferences, that is a pipe dream that is beyond our reach. We can't even fill Peden or the Convo with self-admitted sports fans, who are busy watching power conferences games on TV, when we are playing. I wrote about that when I visited one of our local watering holes before the Purdue game last December.

Goodness does anyone think people will come to Peden if we go IAA? I mean lightning could strike the stadium during a IAA game and no one would get hurt, because no one would be there. This talk about window dressing pay cuts and bus trips is just plain silly. That's like being in a six figure financial hole and you decide you are going to pay off your Dollar General charge card. It makes no sense. Something tells me that we are millions in the whole, because of the number of administrators making six figure salaries in colleges and departments that needed to be downsized years ago.

I have talked to administrators at state schools and Ohio 5 schools and none of them are big sports fans. They don't even bring up athletics because the waste in athletics is a drop in the bucket compared to other parts of the university. We hardly have the athletic budget of a Power 5 football or basketball program.

Alan has long talked about a professional marketing strategy to bring in students that may not know some of our prestigious programs or little touted successful programs that might interest them. We need to listen to him. An administrator from a small Ohio college told me that they decided a few years for a different approach. She told me the following; "we decided that the pretty co-ed and funny guy approach wasn't telling students and their parents what we needed them to know for their college day tour." She went on to say that they have a professional approach from the moment a student and or their parents show an interest in the school. It starts with their outreach to high schools and progresses to the college's visits to the high school, their interaction with parents and students, all the way to their campus visits and subsequent meeting with faculty members.

We need a serious approach to match the serious times we find ourselves, window dressing cuts aren't going to help our beloved Alma mater.

Sorry, how do you think we're going to go FCS but still schedule two or three money games every year esp when power conferences are upping their conf schedules?

Very simple, because we aren't going to be the only league dropping down to FCS in the near future I think.....especially if universities actually want to be fiscally responsible.

As an FBS program we are more likely to get priority on buyout games being scheduled. If we drop to FCS, we just another fish in a growing pond. Those two things won't go together.

Massillon?

Actually it was 45,615 and that's because we were playing the number 13 and undefeated Western Michigan Broncos. That figure is more than double the average attendance of all MAC championship games so what's your point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_Football_Championship_Game