West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[boatcapt]

After subtracting revenues, Median subsidy for d2 athletic depts that have football is 4.5m a year.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...XkuWP1ykOJvEKf

And who funds the $4.5M?

[Columbuseer]

Great news! Viktor kovacevic' has signed a pro contract with the 2nd highest level pro league in Spain!
His one year playing wlu style of ball paid big dividends in showcasing his complete skill set.
https://hilltoppersports.com/news/20...-contract.aspx

[Columbuseer]

After subtracting revenues, Median subsidy for d2 athletic depts that have football is 4.5m a year.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...XkuWP1ykOJvEKf

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Since this is a DII board, I wonder how much support DII's give to their athletic programs, I wonder how much in additional fees students pay per year to support athletics and I wonder how forthcoming the schools are in reporting those numbers? I also wonder how much colleges in general provide to support other extra curricular student activities that do not directly impact a students GPA? Things like new Student Unions, campus wide free WiFi, etc, etc that students think are "free" really aren't free.

Skewed data...yep! Seems like each side has it's own unique data sets and they often differ wildly. I don't think either side is lying just that they have certain axes to grind and highlight data that supports their particular world view.

One thing I would probably be willing to bet a large sum on...IF a college in the MAC (or another that charges an egregiously large amount in athletic related fees) shuttered their athletic programs completely, the school probably would NOT refund the entire athletic fee to students. They may make a show of cutting the athletic fee but I can almost guarantee you would see another fee )or 2 or 3) quietly increased by a corresponding amount. Schools ain't in the business of giving money BACK!!!!!!

The 360 was the average of the yearly amount paid by students for athletic programs from the USA Today article.

As to UofMD's $40M debt (which drove their move to the BIG 10), this SI article from 2012 summarizes how they got to that point: https://www.si.com/more-sports/2012/...land-athletics

Key takeaways:

1. Poor fundraising - Maryland's athletic department, like most public university departments, is a self-sufficient auxiliary unit; no state funds can be allocated toward athletics. Scholarships are paid through donations and revenues, increasing the need for successful teams and generous donors in order for the athletic department to survive.

2. Poor performance by revenue generating teams (read football and mens basketball) - Poor results depressed donations which increased the debt. It seems AD Yow relied on pretty rosy performance projections (and the alumni donations that performance would inspire) and failed to adjust her revenue projections based on actual performance.

3. Spending on non-revenue sports - AD Yow expanded the athletic department, funneling non-bond money into non-revenue-generating sports, and she commenced a decade-long facelift to several athletic facilities including the Terrapin Softball Complex, built a new facility for field hockey and lacrosse, renovated its soccer and baseball facilities.

4. Spending on supposed revenue sports - While much of the money was provided by bonds, AD Yow built the $125M Xfinity Center primarily for the basketball programs and funded $51M for renovations to Byrd Stadium for the football program. Note, bonds don't pay themselves off!!!

They also did a complete gut of Cole Field House and re-built it in to a new indoor football facility. That was a massive project.

[boatcapt]

Last I checked, Radford does not have a football team, so it may not be relevant.

Although the article is 2014, few would argue that athletic budgets have not risen substantially since 2014. Since Forbes is a financial magazine, I suspect that they have done a better job of framing the financials than the typical "journalist".

here is 2019 article from Dayton Daily News that claims State of Ohio D1 schools are spending $181M a year subsidizing D1 athletics.
Interesting table within. Miami OH has $17,3M in student fees and $7,3M in University support for a total of $24.6M in subsidies for D1 athletics.https://www.daytondailynews.com/news...HbzhQmsXGOriO/


Meaningful data is difficult to pin down. Highly skewed populations can really mess with averages - median or quartiles are much better measure in those cases. D1 football follows an 80-20 rule - 20 of schools make 80% (maybe 90-10 LOL) of the $.

Don't know about the average of $360.41 quoted in the reference - is that average per student in USA - average charge per college, (sample size of 300), average charge per Power 5 school?

Univ of Md fees 22-23 are $1528 per year
UCLA fees are about $4k per year, with $1176 going to student services, which is where D1 athletic fees are hidden (they don't readily broadcast how much the D1 monster is consuming). Another $12K at UCLA is undergrad tuition. I picked UCLA and MD because their athletic departments were losing big $ before joining the Big 10. UCLA Ath Dept is $100M in debt. If memory serves me correctly, U. of MD was $40+M in debt before Big 10. Without UnderArmor support, things could have gotten ugly.

I wonder if the fees for the non Power 5 D1 FBS schools (like MAC schools) might be higher, since they don't have the attendance and TV contracts.
When the subset of Power 5 break away from the NCAA, a revenue stream for non P5, D2 and D3 could dry up.

Since this is a DII board, I wonder how much support DII's give to their athletic programs, I wonder how much in additional fees students pay per year to support athletics and I wonder how forthcoming the schools are in reporting those numbers? I also wonder how much colleges in general provide to support other extra curricular student activities that do not directly impact a students GPA? Things like new Student Unions, campus wide free WiFi, etc, etc that students think are "free" really aren't free.

Skewed data...yep! Seems like each side has it's own unique data sets and they often differ wildly. I don't think either side is lying just that they have certain axes to grind and highlight data that supports their particular world view.

One thing I would probably be willing to bet a large sum on...IF a college in the MAC (or another that charges an egregiously large amount in athletic related fees) shuttered their athletic programs completely, the school probably would NOT refund the entire athletic fee to students. They may make a show of cutting the athletic fee but I can almost guarantee you would see another fee )or 2 or 3) quietly increased by a corresponding amount. Schools ain't in the business of giving money BACK!!!!!!

The 360 was the average of the yearly amount paid by students for athletic programs from the USA Today article.

As to UofMD's $40M debt (which drove their move to the BIG 10), this SI article from 2012 summarizes how they got to that point: https://www.si.com/more-sports/2012/...land-athletics

Key takeaways:

1. Poor fundraising - Maryland's athletic department, like most public university departments, is a self-sufficient auxiliary unit; no state funds can be allocated toward athletics. Scholarships are paid through donations and revenues, increasing the need for successful teams and generous donors in order for the athletic department to survive.

2. Poor performance by revenue generating teams (read football and mens basketball) - Poor results depressed donations which increased the debt. It seems AD Yow relied on pretty rosy performance projections (and the alumni donations that performance would inspire) and failed to adjust her revenue projections based on actual performance.

3. Spending on non-revenue sports - AD Yow expanded the athletic department, funneling non-bond money into non-revenue-generating sports, and she commenced a decade-long facelift to several athletic facilities including the Terrapin Softball Complex, built a new facility for field hockey and lacrosse, renovated its soccer and baseball facilities.

4. Spending on supposed revenue sports - While much of the money was provided by bonds, AD Yow built the $125M Xfinity Center primarily for the basketball programs and funded $51M for renovations to Byrd Stadium for the football program. Note, bonds don't pay themselves off!!!

[Columbuseer]

Couple of points, first the Forbes article is from 2014. Doesn't mean it is wrong, just that it is a little stale and a number of the links in the article now link to other information (if I want to know how to stack dormatory beds, I now know were to find that information!). One of the links that was still live is from an undated USA Today article that includes information from one student that at the end of her 5 years at Radford, she would have $5,000 in athletic fees. That appears to be a big number until you consider that this same student will rack up over $11,000 in other fees during her 5 year Radford stay including. A sublinked table to the USA Today report that shows the D1 data used in the article shows that the average fee amount charged by D1 schools that go to athletics is $360.41/yr.

To clarify, the 80% is the upper end of the percentage of fees that go to athletics and only present at a few universities.

Last I checked, Radford does not have a football team, so it may not be relevant.

Although the article is 2014, few would argue that athletic budgets have not risen substantially since 2014. Since Forbes is a financial magazine, I suspect that they have done a better job of framing the financials than the typical "journalist".

here is 2019 article from Dayton Daily News that claims State of Ohio D1 schools are spending $181M a year subsidizing D1 athletics.
Interesting table within. Miami OH has $17,3M in student fees and $7,3M in University support for a total of $24.6M in subsidies for D1 athletics.https://www.daytondailynews.com/news...HbzhQmsXGOriO/


Meaningful data is difficult to pin down. Highly skewed populations can really mess with averages - median or quartiles are much better measure in those cases. D1 football follows an 80-20 rule - 20 of schools make 80% (maybe 90-10 LOL) of the $.

Don't know about the average of $360.41 quoted in the reference - is that average per student in USA - average charge per college, (sample size of 300), average charge per Power 5 school?

Univ of Md fees 22-23 are $1528 per year
UCLA fees are about $4k per year, with $1176 going to student services, which is where D1 athletic fees are hidden (they don't readily broadcast how much the D1 monster is consuming). Another $12K at UCLA is undergrad tuition. I picked UCLA and MD because their athletic departments were losing big $ before joining the Big 10. UCLA Ath Dept is $100M in debt. If memory serves me correctly, U. of MD was $40+M in debt before Big 10. Without UnderArmor support, things could have gotten ugly.

I wonder if the fees for the non Power 5 D1 FBS schools (like MAC schools) might be higher, since they don't have the attendance and TV contracts.
When the subset of Power 5 break away from the NCAA, a revenue stream for non P5, D2 and D3 could dry up.

[boatcapt]

i think you are correct. But fees from regular students is used to feed the d1 arms race for many d1 schools. Besides tuition, there are fees to attend college, which run between $2k and $5k per year and are rising at a rate that is 13% higher than tuition increases. Upwards of 80% go to fund d1 athletics ( per Forbes ).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/20...etic-programs/

With the billions of $ spent on essentially a minor pro league, i expect parents to revolt on being charged.

The disparity in private funding for full ride academic scholarships compared to athletic support sadly reflects the priorities of the nation.
No wonder other countries are dominating our PhDs awarded and we have to import the best and brightest for our high tech R&D jobs. D2 and D3 are much closer to the term student athlete

Couple of points, first the Forbes article is from 2014. Doesn't mean it is wrong, just that it is a little stale and a number of the links in the article now link to other information (if I want to know how to stack dormatory beds, I now know were to find that information!). One of the links that was still live is from an undated USA Today article that includes information from one student that at the end of her 5 years at Radford, she would have $5,000 in athletic fees. That appears to be a big number until you consider that this same student will rack up over $11,000 in other fees during her 5 year Radford stay including. A sublinked table to the USA Today report that shows the D1 data used in the article shows that the average fee amount charged by D1 schools that go to athletics is $360.41/yr.

To clarify, the 80% is the upper end of the percentage of fees that go to athletics and only present at a few universities.

[Columbuseer]

Fyi
Audrey Tingle got the MEC Female Athlete of the Year for all sports.
Congrats Audry!
She and Bryce Butler made it a wlu sweep of the award!

[Columbuseer]

To this point, I believe in a number of states (I believe WV is in that group), athletic schollys are funded outside of the school budget so they have little if any effect on scholly money that high performing students receive.

i think you are correct. But fees from regular students is used to feed the d1 arms race for many d1 schools. Besides tuition, there are fees to attend college, which run between $2k and $5k per year and are rising at a rate that is 13% higher than tuition increases. Upwards of 80% go to fund d1 athletics ( per Forbes ).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/20...etic-programs/

With the billions of $ spent on essentially a minor pro league, i expect parents to revolt on being charged.

The disparity in private funding for full ride academic scholarships compared to athletic support sadly reflects the priorities of the nation.
No wonder other countries are dominating our PhDs awarded and we have to import the best and brightest for our high tech R&D jobs. D2 and D3 are much closer to the term student athlete

[boatcapt]

Not at all.

For many commits, GPA is conspicuous by its absence.
As u know, n hs, one can take college level courses and get college credit. Great deal financially. Some kids come out of hs as sophs in terms of college credits. I think if you get an A in colllege credit, it counts as 5.0 not a 4.0 course.

trouble is the college courses are very time consuming especially if held on college campus. So regular grades may suffer.

If you don't have 4.0 but 3.5+ AND took challenging courses, active in clubs, volunteering, it may carry more weight than a 4.0+ bookworm in terms of scholarship. $.
First hand experience.

What is sad is # of d1 athletic full rides relative to college funded academic full rides. Many high performing students only get modest, if any help.

To this point, I believe in a number of states (I believe WV is in that group), athletic schollys are funded outside of the school budget so they have little if any effect on scholly money that high performing students receive.

[Columbuseer]

OT: Anyone else see a GPA less than 4.0 and wonder what is wrong with the person? Used to be 4.0 was PERFECT but now days, with GPA ballooning well past that figure toward 5.0, anything less than 4.0 seems...deficient.

Not at all.

For many commits, GPA is conspicuous by its absence.
As u know, n hs, one can take college level courses and get college credit. Great deal financially. Some kids come out of hs as sophs in terms of college credits. I think if you get an A in colllege credit, it counts as 5.0 not a 4.0 course.

trouble is the college courses are very time consuming especially if held on college campus. So regular grades may suffer.

If you don't have 4.0 but 3.5+ AND took challenging courses, active in clubs, volunteering, it may carry more weight than a 4.0+ bookworm in terms of scholarship. $.
First hand experience.

What is sad is # of d1 athletic full rides relative to college funded academic full rides. Many high performing students only get modest, if any help.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

OT: Anyone else see a GPA less than 4.0 and wonder what is wrong with the person? Used to be 4.0 was PERFECT but now days, with GPA ballooning well past that figure toward 5.0, anything less than 4.0 seems...deficient.

Used to be at Slippery Rock all five starters' GPAs wouldn't add up to 4.0

[boatcapt]

Imho great potential. Great fundamentals that is rare at 6-7. 3.92 GPA

OT: Anyone else see a GPA less than 4.0 and wonder what is wrong with the person? Used to be 4.0 was PERFECT but now days, with GPA ballooning well past that figure toward 5.0, anything less than 4.0 seems...deficient.

[Columbuseer]

• Bowie State had some talent, but the pressure really disrupted them. Wlu forced 28 turnovers and 16 steals.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Bowie State may not be good every year ... but, man, do they play a brutal schedule every year.


This coming year, they play:

East Stroudsburg
(at) IUP
(at) Bloomfield
U of District of Columbia
(at) Shippensburg
(at) Millersville
(at) Augusta
Wilmington
West Liberty



ESU and Ship were both NCAA-level teams last year despite not making it. Millersville made the tournament. And, we know what IUP, Augusta and West Liberty are all about.