OT: Permanent College Closing Tracker

[CALUPA69]

Which schools are you thinking about? Akron is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

The ZIPS were 24-7 in MAC MBB with a good chance at MARCH MADNESS before everything shut down so I'd say no they won't be moving down.

[chapmaja]

Could we see a few MAC schools drop to Division II?

Nope, too much money lost by making that move, not to mention the reputation hit a school in the eastern US would take from moving down like that. the MAC is an FBS conference and going FBS to DII is completely unheard of, and would be a financial disaster for those athletic departments (due to money football and basketball brings in). I know of only 1 FBS school to even drop to FCS. that was Idaho, who did so as much because of problems finding a conference as anything. They were lost in the shuffle that went on out west, but had a ready made all sports conference available. Since football revenue wasn't coming from a conference at the time (unlike the MAC), the move actually made since. Going to FCS still allows "guarantee games", but also allows a conference schedule of Big Sky football opponents within decent travel distances.

[chapmaja]

The ZIPS were 24-7 in MAC MBB with a good chance at MARCH MADNESS before everything shut down so I'd say no they won't be moving down.

People talk about the March Madness money like it is the end all be all. It really isn't, unless your conference actually wins some games.

March Madness money is split into a few different things. Much of it goes into the NCAA General Fund, which is distributed in about 10 different grants to schools. Among these are grants to help pay scholarships to student athletes.

The part people think about as the March Madness Money is the "pool" money.

Who is the pool money distributed? This is based on units. A unit is given to the conference for each game a team from your conference wins during the NCAA tourney. Seems simple right? It's not that simple. Why? Some games don't count as units. Those include the first game played by the conferences automatic qualifier in the tourney. Additionally, the national title game doesn't earn units either. This means if a conference qualifies 1 team each season, and that team is 1 and done, the conference collects zero units for that season.

Units carry over for a 6 year period, playable each 6 years.

For the MAC, they have not done well in the NCAA Tourney. For the years 2014-2017 they earned ZERO units. They get one unit for 2018 and 1 for 2019 (thanks to Buffalo). Each unit was worth $280,300 for the conference. This means the conference would get $560,600 based on the existing units. Remember that money gets split among the conference membership and the conference office. Each school is getting less than $50,000 from that pool.

The other money that comes from being an NCAA D1 member, and FBS member is a much larger impact on the budgets. Much of that money does come from the NCAA Tourney, but in a much more indirect manner.

Now, with all that said, some conferences absolutely do count on the Tourney Pool to help the conference. For the non-football conferences, it can be much more of an impact. For the FCS conferences it can be much more of an impact. Given the way conferences split the money, having a successful run by a team can be a nice windfall for a conference.

I actually did a spreadsheet showing the number of units for each conference as part of my Sports Management Master's program.

The ACC leads the way with 133 units over the last 6 years. The Big Ten is second with 99, while the Big 12, SEC, Pac 12, and Big East all have 58 or more units (at the end of 2019). those 6 conferences have earned their position as the major conferences, and do have the money to go with it. The ACC's units brought in 33.35 million to the conference. That is a nice chuck of change, but still only a portion of the individual schools budgets.

The second tier schools are the American, A-10, West Coast Conference (thanks to Conzaga), Missouri Valley and Mountain West, which all have between 10 and 26 units.

Tier 3 is the "low-mid-majors" these conferences include all except the 5 I will list in tier 4. These 16 conference have between 1 and 4 units. This means between $280,300 and $1.1 million for the conference and its members per year. (Remember it gets split up). For example, the $1.1 million is Conference USA, which splits that money 15 ways (14 schools, plus the conference office). The MAC falls into this category.


Tier 4 is the conferences currently collecting ZERO units. They have had their automatic qualifier lose each time the last 6 tourneys, and have no wins from at-large qualifiers. These conferences are the MAAC, WAC, Horizon, Big Sky, and CAA. They collect ZIP from pool fund, but still benefit from the other money handed out by the NCAA to schools and conferences.

If you notice, the SWAC and MEAC, which are traditionally the lowest ranked conferences both have units. They normally have their lone qualifier play in the play-in game. If they win, the next game they play, as a 16 vs 1, will earn the conference a unit. Being in the play in game can help a conference.


This begs the question, why does a school want to be D1, if the money from the tourney really isn't all that? The answer is the point fund money isn't all that, but the other money is much greater at D1 than D2 or D3. Something like 95% or NCAA revenue goes to the D1 level.

[chapmaja]

Odd choices by Akron unless they just wanted to eliminate sports. CC, GOLF AND TENNIS seem like sports that could go on even with social distancing. WRESTLING and SOCCER certainly make sense. Truly weird decisions in some places.

There could be several reasons why these sports were chosen.

First is NCAA scholarship limits.

I mentioned in another post about the NCAA paying schools a certain amount based on the number of scholarships they offer. This is done in a tiered manner. So a school offering between X and Y scholarships will get say $5000 per scholarship offered, while schools less than X will get $2500 per scholarship offered. A school wants to avoid cutting scholarships to drop them down a tier. They will look at what sports to cut, but keep the school within the same tier.

A second factor in this is the percentage of athletes actually on the team that get a scholarship. Some sports allow split scholarships while others do not. D1 football and basketball scholarships are required to be full ride by NCAA rules. there are other full ride sports as well, and I will get to that later. Cutting sports will a higher percentage of scholarship dollars will reduce the schools budget issue better than cutting a sport with a lower scholarship percentage. (both other factors do impact the cost savings).

Looking at Akron's position, they cut men's golf, men's cross country, and women's tennis. What impact would that have. Men's golf has a scholarship limit of 4.5 scholarships, and Akron had a roster of 8 athletes. This means they are cutting 3.5 non-scholarship athlete enrollments. (this is money the students pay to attend that isn't scholarship covered). How about men's cross country. This decision is interesting, because in theory, they haven't cut anything. The NCAA comes Cross country and track for scholarship purposes. Akron can still over 12.6 scholarships just during the track season. The only likely cut here is a coaches salary and team expenses (Akron does have a separate men's and women's XC coach position) I can't speak to Akron's scholarship organization, but this doesn't appear to cut much considering they still offer a women's team that will have to travel.

Where Akron does appear to make some money is cutting women's tennis. why? The tennis team had 9 members. The NCAA scholarship limit is 8. Remember the other sport I mentioned that doesn't split scholarships, women's tennis is one. That means that only 1 non-scholarship spot is being cut by eliminating this team. Additionally, the team makeup of women's tennis is telling. Akron's 9 members come from Florida (2), New York (1), Portugal (1), Mexico (1), Israel (1), and Germany (3). This means not only are they paying the scholarship money (out of state tuition unless the school has a waiver to pay instate for athletes -some do, some don't), but substantial expenses for recruiting overseas. This was the same issue EMU had as none of the EMU players were Americans.

I know Akron said cuts of 4.4 million dollars based on these cuts. I suspect there are a lot more cuts coming (not with teams, but with other expenses) to get to that level). The cuts so far will not get a school to 4.4 million in cuts.

[bigmrg74]

The ZIPS were 24-7 in MAC MBB with a good chance at MARCH MADNESS before everything shut down so I'd say no they won't be moving down.

It would be far more likely to see some of the MAC schools drop to D1-AA football than to go D2. Depending on how things shuffle out, that could be the trigger to have GVSU move up, as we currently don't really have a good local D1-AA conference to move to. All in all, I think that this could set off another big round of conference reshuffling. Might not hit the Power 5 programs much, other than maybe the Big 12 taking a run at adding some other programs to help keep Texas happy or at least save the rest of their butts if Texas ever took off on them. But the MAC could very well see big changes happening, maybe they have a few members drop down to D1-AA and then they are ripe for the other group of Five conferences to grab what they can from there. Heck, a lot of those schools could be thinking the same thing about going D1-AA as well. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that most of the Sun Belt itself where D1-AA programs.

[laker]

It would be far more likely to see some of the MAC schools drop to D1-AA football than to go D2. Depending on how things shuffle out, that could be the trigger to have GVSU move up, as we currently don't really have a good local D1-AA conference to move to. All in all, I think that this could set off another big round of conference reshuffling. Might not hit the Power 5 programs much, other than maybe the Big 12 taking a run at adding some other programs to help keep Texas happy or at least save the rest of their butts if Texas ever took off on them. But the MAC could very well see big changes happening, maybe they have a few members drop down to D1-AA and then they are ripe for the other group of Five conferences to grab what they can from there. Heck, a lot of those schools could be thinking the same thing about going D1-AA as well. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that most of the Sun Belt itself where D1-AA programs.

I think that would make a great FCS conference. Youngstown State could join then. The Missouri Valley Football Conference could split then and a Summit Football League could start with the Dakota schools. Teams could still have their D1 basketball connection and their payoff games.

[bigmrg74]

I think that would make a great FCS conference. Youngstown State could join then. The Missouri Valley Football Conference could split then and a Summit Football League could start with the Dakota schools. Teams could still have their D1 basketball connection and their payoff games.

Maybe, but a lot could happen between now and then. There's programs that could just drop football all together and things could get weird.

[laker]

Maybe, but a lot could happen between now and then. There's programs that could just drop football all together and things could get weird.

Yes, anything could happen. Heck, I look at Crookston and St Cloud dropping football. UMC was no surprise but it wasn't that long ago that SCSU was a playoff team. I didn't think that they would go.

[Tech Boys]

I think that would make a great FCS conference. Youngstown State could join then. The Missouri Valley Football Conference could split then and a Summit Football League could start with the Dakota schools. Teams could still have their D1 basketball connection and their payoff games.

On the flip side, dropping to FCS can have a huge impact on finances. A bodybag game payout to a FBS team can be up to $2M but the payout to a FCS team is almost never above $700,000. An Idaho person on the CSN board posted this in April.

For what it's worth, the move to FCS has been an unmitigated disaster for Idaho. Ticket and contribution revenue declined by 50% the year after the move, and the athletic department now faces a $1.5 million annual deficit that's only going to get worse -- we're still getting FBS money for a couple more of our bodybag games, which will go away soon. This past football season was the worst-attended at least since the 70's and probably even further back than that. All interest in Idaho athletics has been comprehensively stamped out. Nobody but nobody cares anymore.

Idaho's FBS problems were already well-documented but Idaho in FCS is dead as dead can be.

[bigmrg74]

Yeah, but picture this. Its september 2021 and the nation and the world is finally past the Corona. We've been all cooped up for over a year, and there wasn't a 2020 NCAA football season. I'm thinking that maybe by then a lot of people would be really wanting to get out and do something normal in a crowd after all that time, and heck, a football game in Idaho just might be the ticket.

[laker]

NCCAA Nebraska Christian to close.

https://www.nechristian.edu/news/202...campus-closure

[laker]

On the flip side, dropping to FCS can have a huge impact on finances. A bodybag game payout to a FBS team can be up to $2M but the payout to a FCS team is almost never above $700,000. An Idaho person on the CSN board posted this in April.

That is why I said they could keep their payoff games. FBS teams still need home games to fill their schedules. The SEC even does that late season.

[SW_Mustang]

-Furman has dropped baseball and MLAX

-Cal Community Colleges got endorsement from system president to hold online only in the Fall, although this hasn't been mandated system wide as far as I can tell.

[SW_Mustang]

Some more updates:

-Wells College in New York is on life support, may close if it cannot reopen in the fall
-Expect Eastern Carolina to cut some sports shortly - although it's unknown how many or which ones.
-UWashington and WSU are working on disaster plans, but no plan to cut sports

Here's a good article about all the cuts being made so far:

https://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/2...-the-list.html

[UMary1]

https://www.catholicregister.org/hom...inancial-punch

A great read as many Catholic colleges are really feeling the pandemic. At this point it is a game of closing now or hoping variables get better sooner rather than later.

Holy Family College in Manitowoc, WI closed.