Malone Drops Football -Immediately

[boatcapt]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

It'd be easier to find your keys.

Hahahahaha!!! You'd think so. Of course, I did "lose" my keys in my hand once soooooooooo...maybe not!

[WVIAC-F-EVER]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

Those studies are slanted so the expert gets paid and the president can move onto the next job

[JDonAB92]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

With Malone dropping football, it leaves the G-MAC with 8 conference members that sponsor football. That means only 7 conference football games and will leave schools with 4 OOC scheduling slots to fill. Will the conference look to expand before June 30? Will the conference wait to expand until 2020?

Some decisions are going to have to be made in my opinion. 8 football schools is not real ideal situation.

Which schools will be targeted to fill the G-MAC expansion? D2s? D3s? NAIA? I don't see one of the current football schools starting football. I know Ashland said they would re-evaluate in 2020. That doesn't mean they would join.

[Brandon]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

You know what I've never been able to find? Well...According to my wife, my keys! But for the sake of this thread, an honest independent cost/benefit analysis of what a football program really costs. Seems like the "studies" that schools commission tend to sque to what the college administration wants to hear...If the President wants football, the cost is very low and if the President doesn't really want football, the cost is through the roof. I know there is a lot of variability but there should be a median cost projection for starting a football team.

In Malone's case, it seems more appropriate to find out what it costs to maintain a program. I think if we worked through it we could come pretty close.

[BlueBlood]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

The more I've read (news article and even just tweets) and heard (their coach and athletic director did interviews with a sports talk show host), it sounds like:
1) Football was always fighting an uphill battle at Malone (from both a cultural and funding perspective). Some folks are claiming that many at the school (including administration) never wanted football and never warmed up to it.
2) The school needed to make a big dent in their deficit and realized that this was probably the quickest and "easiest" line item deletion to get there. By their math, they are wiping out most of the $2.5M deficit by eliminating two years of football. By all accounts, their math seems very favorable to them and ignores obvious side/counter effects. But, that's what distressed entities do in order to achieve a desired fiscal look.

Seems like issue #1 helped make #2 an easier decision.

As to the second point - I'm guessing that they needed a snapshot of their projected fiscals to impress someone (a lender or accreditor perhaps). I'm also guessing that the snapshot likely shows all the savings from eliminating FB and no anticipated diminishment of tuition/room/board $.

[WVIAC-F-EVER]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

If your tuition, room, board, and supplies has no wiggle room for error/ unexpected cost, a football program can bankrupt and close s school...

The costs of recruitment, up keep, equipment, supplies, electric, facilities, travel, coaches, trainer, weight room, etc can easily over run a school...

The old days when football brought people to campus as students and fans are over....

[WVIAC-F-EVER]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

If your tuition, room, board, and supplies has no wiggle room for error/ unexpected cost, a football program can bankrupt and close s school...

The costs of recruitment, up keep, equipment, supplies, electric, facilities, travel, coaches, trainer, weight room, etc can easily over run a school...

The old days when football brought people to campus as students and fans are over....

The profit margin is very slim

[Michael Whitfield]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

Come on back.:wink:

It is always unfortunate when a University drops its football program. The only good news is that it creates some open dates on their opponents next season schedules. The GNAC & LSC can look into these open date possibilities for future games.

[Fightingscot82]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

You know what I've never been able to find? Well...According to my wife, my keys! But for the sake of this thread, an honest independent cost/benefit analysis of what a football program really costs. Seems like the "studies" that schools commission tend to sque to what the college administration wants to hear...If the President wants football, the cost is very low and if the President doesn't really want football, the cost is through the roof. I know there is a lot of variability but there should be a median cost projection for starting a football team.

It honestly depends from which perspective. If the goal is the grow enrollment, then yes, football can be worth the cost. At a private school, the average student is paying $27,000 after grants and scholarships. If you start Division II football, you're looking at a $1.5 million budget. 90 kids at $27,000 each brings you to $2.43 million. But from the strict balance sheet perspective, the programs are only seen through revenues and expenses. Division II football doesn't bring in a lot of revenue, so you're looking at maybe a couple hundred thousand in revenue (donations, sponsorships, etc) so yeah its a huge money loser. But you have to go back to the fact that with football that's 90 students attending who weren't coming before you started football, so its overall tuition revenue positive.

Division III schools have a lot more sports than scholarship schools for this very reason: they drive enrollment. Jeffrey Docking, president at Adrian College in Michigan, wrote a book several years back on this very strategy.

[boatcapt]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

It honestly depends from which perspective. If the goal is the grow enrollment, then yes, football can be worth the cost. At a private school, the average student is paying $27,000 after grants and scholarships. If you start Division II football, you're looking at a $1.5 million budget. 90 kids at $27,000 each brings you to $2.43 million. But from the strict balance sheet perspective, the programs are only seen through revenues and expenses. Division II football doesn't bring in a lot of revenue, so you're looking at maybe a couple hundred thousand in revenue (donations, sponsorships, etc) so yeah its a huge money loser. But you have to go back to the fact that with football that's 90 students attending who weren't coming before you started football, so its overall tuition revenue positive.

Division III schools have a lot more sports than scholarship schools for this very reason: they drive enrollment. Jeffrey Docking, president at Adrian College in Michigan, wrote a book several years back on this very strategy.

What I'm kind of talking about is the total effect on the college's bottom line. At the end of the day once all the tuition is totaled and the football expenses are tallied, is there more money in the college kitty or less?

[boatcapt]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

If your tuition, room, board, and supplies has no wiggle room for error/ unexpected cost, a football program can bankrupt and close s school...

The costs of recruitment, up keep, equipment, supplies, electric, facilities, travel, coaches, trainer, weight room, etc can easily over run a school...

The old days when football brought people to campus as students and fans are over....

Sure, some of these costs go away (coaches salaries for example) but not all. Unless the school is doing away with athletics completely, they are still going to have a weight room, athletic trainers, facilities and facility up keep and recruitment costs for the other programs.

As for tuition/room/board, losing 100 students will have more negative effect on a colleges bottom line than a lack of wiggle room.

[Fightingscot82]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

What I'm kind of talking about is the total effect on the college's bottom line. At the end of the day once all the tuition is totaled and the football expenses are tallied, is there more money in the college kitty or less?

Theoretically - there should be more. Now at a private school they discount tuition rather than award cash scholarships. That eats further into the bottom line. What may be shocking to many is that out of 1,700 campuses there may be 1,400 different accounting models. Some schools count discounts as depreciation. Others just go off of net revenue. There's not a standard model.

[Brandon]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

Sure, some of these costs go away (coaches salaries for example) but not all. Unless the school is doing away with athletics completely, they are still going to have a weight room, athletic trainers, facilities and facility up keep and recruitment costs for the other programs.

As for tuition/room/board, losing 100 students will have more negative effect on a colleges bottom line than a lack of wiggle room.

You are the only one that seems to get it.

If you have 100 students, and 25 are on full rides, that equals a "profit" of 50 students.

Using the numbers the numbers that Fightingscot82 used, that's $1.3 million in revenue that the school is losing. What were the costs SOLELY associated with the program? Coaches' salaries/travel/meals/equipment/recruiting/stadium rental?

[BlueBlood]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

You are the only one that seems to get it.

If you have 100 students, and 25 are on full rides, that equals a "profit" of 50 students.

Using the numbers the numbers that Fightingscot82 used, that's $1.3 million in revenue that the school is losing. What were the costs SOLELY associated with the program? Coaches' salaries/travel/meals/equipment/recruiting/stadium rental?

$1,624,894

https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/details then type in Malone

[Brandon]

Re: Malone Drops Football -Immediately

$1,624,894

https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/details then type in Malone

I have been using that website for year and years. The thing I have learned about it is that not everyone accounts the same. In addition, the number you quoted would include scholarships.

Likely will cause the enrollment to fall from 1,092 to under 1,000.

Football had 118 participants. Add $486,000 to the $1.3 million that I quoted before.

Lists operating expenses for football as $237,105. This would not include scholarships and coach salaries.

It looks like most of the coaches have dual roles at the school?