Several meetings have taken place considering whether to keep or drop the football program according to sources in the athletic program. High expenses, low retention in the football program are some of the reasons as Limestone is struggling to keep their doors open due to the virus pandemic. If football is kept, then several minor sports will have to be dropped which will affect Title IX rules. Dropping football will keep the other programs alive which have much higher retention rate compared to football and much less expenses. (scholarships, travel, coaching staff salaries, etc.). Florida Tech just dropped their program last week and was having much success.
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LIMESTONE CONSIDERING DROPPING FOOTBALL.....
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Limestone Football is aligned with the SAC, so the conference will be losing a team. I believe this is the first of several dominos to fall in this region. Things are just starting to heat up. A projected minimum of 31% fall in enrollment this coming fall for private institutions, which are tuition dependent (no mater the size of their endowment) means major cuts being made, if they can survive. We may end up seeing a need to merge Conference Carolinas and the SAC to maintain NCAA Division 2 conference requirements.
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Originally posted by Saints62 View PostSeveral meetings have taken place considering whether to keep or drop the football program according to sources in the athletic program. High expenses, low retention in the football program are some of the reasons as Limestone is struggling to keep their doors open due to the virus pandemic. If football is kept, then several minor sports will have to be dropped which will affect Title IX rules. Dropping football will keep the other programs alive which have much higher retention rate compared to football and much less expenses. (scholarships, travel, coaching staff salaries, etc.). Florida Tech just dropped their program last week and was having much success.
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Originally posted by Eagle74 View PostLimestone Football is aligned with the SAC, so the conference will be losing a team. I believe this is the first of several dominos to fall in this region. Things are just starting to heat up. A projected minimum of 31% fall in enrollment this coming fall for private institutions, which are tuition dependent (no mater the size of their endowment) means major cuts being made, if they can survive. We may end up seeing a need to merge Conference Carolinas and the SAC to maintain NCAA Division 2 conference requirements.
We have as many as five current or future ConfCar members who either currently or are planning to sponsor football. My concern was any potential loss of football at Limestone on planned programs at Barton, Erskine, etc.
Now that Chuck has debunked the OP through his contacts, my entire point would appear to be moot as it pertains to Limestone. But, I wouldn't be shocked if, in a few years, you hear rumors of a CC/SAC merger, but also seeing the Tennessee D2 schools (plus UVA-Wise) - and this includes football and non-football schools - exploring their own all-sports conference.Cal U (Pa.) Class of 2014
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I have been away from D2 Football for a few weeks and first thing back I see Saints62 trolling again. Actually from the lacrosse blog Fanlax, someone posted a summary from a Forbes article rating the finances of private schools:
With schools starting to close or shut down athletic programs, I was interested in what laxpert and Homer posted in the D1 thread "How many schools will drop lacrosse?" and I did a little research and comparison using that Forbes list that graded each school on their financial health. For those who didn't go through it, they graded almost every private school with a gpa, highest rating being a 4.5. After reading this IL article (https://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/ ... orts/56338) about conferences opening up the door to cut non-revenue sports, I was interested to see how lacrosse programs looked going forward and how the conferences stacked up. I'm not saying that a low score will result in a program being removed, I just thought it was interesting to look at. I'm going to post each conference for D2 here, and in case anyone is interested, I'll do a similar post in both the D1 and D3 threads.
For starters, D1 has 51 private schools that got a ranking, with an average GPA of 2.81.
D2 has 65 private schools on the list with an average of 1.79.
D3 has 209 schools rated with a GPA average of 2.23.
Here are the conferences ranked:
Sunshine - 1.94 (Highs: Embry-Riddle - 2.65, Palm Beach Atlantic - 2.43 Lows: Saint Leo - 1.48, Florida Tech - 1.03)
ECC - 1.93 (Highs: Mercy - 2.68, St. Thomas Aquinas - 2.00 Lows: Roberts Wesleyan - 1.62, NYIT - 1.55)
SAC - 1.87 (Highs: Queens - 3.23, Anderson (new program in 2021) - 2.68 Lows: Newberry - 1.15, Lenoir-Rhyne - 0.98)
NE10 - 1.86 (Highs: Southern New HAmpshire - 2.79, Bentley - 2.63 Lows: American International - 1.14, Saint Rose - 1.11)
GLVC - 1.76 (Highs: Lindenwood - 2.61, Maryville - 2.44 Lows: Shorter - 1.11, Quincy - 1.01)
G-MAC - 1.71 (Highs: Davis & Elkins - 3.36, Walsh - 2.08 Lows: Alderson-Broaddus - 1.04, Lake Erie - 0.98)
CACC - 1.62 (Highs: Wilmington - 2.72, Georgian Court - 2.00 Lows: Caldwell - 1.09, Chestnut Hill - 1.04)
Carolinas - 1.61 (Highs: Lees-McRae - 2.57, North Greenville - 1.91 Lows: Mount Olive - 1.17, Belmont Abbey - 0.97)
RMAC - 1.45 (2 private schools: Westminster -1.91, Rockhurst - 0.99)
1 current independent school is Davenport - 1.62 and 1 future is Flagler - 2.27.
Again, I'm not sure that this really means anything, just something to do while sitting at home. But it is interesting to see what schools could potentially be in danger in each conference.
Limestone is just not in any serious trouble financially at this time. But the numbers for LR surprised me a lot. (As did Lees-McRae being as high).
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Limestone may be utilizing their new SAC option on no scholarship minimums for their sports programs, including football. Hopefully this doesn't turn into another Brevard situation, where it was said that they were trying to compete as a competitive D2 Football program while only dividing a few scholarships.
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Originally posted by Eagle74 View PostLimestone may be utilizing their new SAC option on no scholarship minimums for their sports programs, including football. Hopefully this doesn't turn into another Brevard situation, where it was said that they were trying to compete as a competitive D2 Football program while only dividing a few scholarships.
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Educational annalist are saying that early signs show that there's going to a 31% drop in enrollment for private colleges / institutions this coming fall. Most D2 private schools are heavily dependent on tuition - fees / books / room & board, etc. For Limestone, that equates to around $42,736.00 per student (without grants, scholarships, etc). Now based on figures, this means that Limestone could potential see it's enrollment drop by almost 1/3, or from 630 to 700 less students this coming fall. Do the math, that's a lot of much needed revenue that will not be coming in.
It's very easy to see, that for the school's survival, major cuts will need to be made. Unfortunately, Athletic programs and scholarships they entail are easy pickings when looking at ways of trimming the fat.
Don't be shocked when you hear about different schools making major changes, including with football, scholarships, and other costly programs.
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A drop of 31% is speculation that is more connected with the programs who will go entirely/mostly online and subsequently lose that large a fraction of students. Don't think that number will happen if schools are meeting in person.
You also have some numbers wrong with respect to Limestone. Roughly 2400-2700 or so total students, but only around 1100 are residential/commuter day students (and those students are the only ones participating in intercollegiate athletics. The rest of the students are taught mostly/completely online and are primarily working adults. The MBA program is almost all online as well (there are a couple of weekend get-together weekends where special project classes are taught). Tuition for the evening/online students is substantially less than that for the day program.
So a drop of 31% would only equate to a loss of around 330 or so students. And while total costs are around $41K, the average paid amount after scholarships/grants is more like $24K. Until final decisions are made regarding changing the fall semester (as far as I know on campus is what is planned) what you are saying the analysts are saying is not likely to happen (at least at that level of loss).
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Good post Eagle 74. I am sure at Florida Tech and even Furman, everything was just fine until the hammer came down on football at Florida Tech and to 4 sports at Furman...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...us/3109052001/
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/sto...ms/5216396002/
Remember at Limestone, 2 years ago they had their All-Sports Banquet and Ceremony at the end of the school year. The Athletic Director Cerino gave out awards to members of the men's and women's swim team, then the next day and without any warning to the coaching staff and swimmers, announced he was dropping both programs. So don't let any denial fool you.... All I know, there is strong consideration taking place......
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Originally posted by Saints62 View PostGood post Eagle 74. I am sure at Florida Tech and even Furman, everything was just fine until the hammer came down on football at Florida Tech and to 4 sports at Furman...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...us/3109052001/
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/sto...ms/5216396002/
Remember at Limestone, 2 years ago they had their All-Sports Banquet and Ceremony at the end of the school year. The Athletic Director Cerino gave out awards to members of the men's and women's swim team, then the next day and without any warning to the coaching staff and swimmers, announced he was dropping both programs. So don't let any denial fool you.... All I know, there is strong consideration taking place......
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