An unstated assumption re: expansion - what good is the money?
There have been many, many posts concerning the financial wisdom, or lack thereof, in adding Maryland and Rutgers to the conference. There have also been many posts concerning the moves from the standpoint of, you know, being a fan (spoiler: this is unequivocally bad, unless you are a big lacrosse fan.)
But regardless of who is right or wrong in their largely ass- or thin air-derived predicitions concerning TV rights and media markets, there's one question that's not been discussed much: Why should we, as Michigan fans, care about the added revenue? Does it really make a lot of people feel better to know that our conference's revenues are big, throbbing revenues that make other conference revenues feel insecure?
Can someone explain to me the precise mechanism through which having some kind of edge in terms of revenue with relation to other conferences improves the fortunes of the conference as a whole? Has the BTN largesse made a significant impact on the quality of the texisting eams in the conference?
The Michigan athletic department doesn't need any more revenue than it already has. We are, eventually, going to run out of new facilities to build, as Brian has pointed out. What then, will we do with the hypothetical money that expansion is supposed to add?
Again, why should we care, at all, about the financial implications?
November 20th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^
I agree. Somehow, college sports have forgotten the "college" part. Shouldn't these teams in some way benefit the schools themselves if they're raking in so much damn money? How much of this money goes to General Scholarship? How much will we lower the tuition because of this mint? (Rhetorical questions)
November 20th, 2012 at 2:58 PM ^
Michigan is on the back half of a huge spending spree on facilities. Despite this I found a report that indicates the athletic department had a profit of $26.6 million in 2010-2011. At this point the athletic department appears to by finding anything they can upgrade to make use of the money. I would have less problem with this money grab if we were using it to fund the main mission of the institution which I think is still supposed to be educating people.
So what could you get for $26 million?
- You could cut everyone’s tuition by $608 or around 4%
- You could pay the tuition of 1,799 students (4.2 percent of the student population)
- You could provide a full ride scholarship to 946 students
- If you used the money for a scholarship fund (earning 6%) you could provide tuition only scholarships to 108 students or full rides to 57 students for the foreseeable future
November 20th, 2012 at 3:00 PM ^
This is the only way I think the money can be used and have these AD's be able, at all, to credibly claim to represent a University - you know, a school.
Same with all this stuff with CIC - which just seems to be vast sums of money getting moved around...and very little of it impacting students. What's the point of these places?
November 20th, 2012 at 3:22 PM ^
Well, the Rutgers prez actually made the first practical point about how the CIC thing benefits students (other than just MONEY MONEY MONEY) with his example of Big Ten researchers now gaining access to Rutgers bioscience database. But, by and large those benefits are invisible to the average LSA undergrad.
November 20th, 2012 at 3:25 PM ^
I don't deny that it helps "Research".
My contention is that "research" is not education, and it impacts a sliver of the population.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:03 PM ^
"Research" determines what it is that students are educated about. Those textbooks don't write themselves. So, yes, "research" is education. And it affects everyone being, you know, educated.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:41 PM ^
Is this funding research in Literature? Foreign Languages? History? Any Social Science? Hell, Engineering?
Research dollars impact the life of Graduate Students in hard sciences. Period.
November 20th, 2012 at 5:18 PM ^
When you make obvious over-generalizations you sound like a stoopid hick, not a Michigan Man. I'm...I'm just WHAT?!
non-science majors utilize funding just as much as hard science majors. It pays for research for things like:
1.) Legal research
2.) Business research
3.) Psychology
...need I go on?
I can understand you saying "economics/laws/psych don't need research money." I don't agree, but I can understand. What I don't get is the thought that the business/psych et al programs don't use money. Are you kidding me? Michigan is somewhere around the top 10 in Psych research, and has an amazing business school. What, did you think this was all free?
November 20th, 2012 at 5:23 PM ^
Making personal attacks off the bat makes you sound like an asshole.
I'm not a "Michigan Man" because you disagree with me?
What money does adding Rutgers provide to any academic program? This money is possessed by the AD, not the University.
November 20th, 2012 at 5:34 PM ^
Adding Rutgers and Maryland to the CIC adds to research in hard sciences when they get big grants (and they both have gotten a lot over the years)
but on the whole we agree
November 20th, 2012 at 6:49 PM ^
Are you serious, brah?
Research is what seperates the Harvard's and MIT's of the world from the likes of Notre Dame. In fact, the joke is that the better your school is at teaching undergrads the more likely it is that your professors are not the best in their field. Not saying I think this "joke" should prove true, but that's just the way things seem to work.
November 20th, 2012 at 3:30 PM ^
Because U. Michigan is a public institution, the athletic department every year is required to release an accounting of it's numbers. FY 2013's numbers are here:
http://www.regents.umich.edu/meetings/06-12/2012-06-X-19.pdf
This includes an outright contribution *to* the University's general operating fund, which currently averages about 2 million dollars a year.
As the department already runs a significant surplus, if there were to be net additional income once the dust settles, it would be up to the Regents -- who are elected -- to decide how to direct Brandon to use that money. Every million additional dollars, for example, could pay for ~ 75 full ride scholarships.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:11 PM ^
I would assume that any additional surplus funds would go toward retiring the long-term debt that we are carrying for renovating Michigan Stadium and Crisler.
November 20th, 2012 at 3:41 PM ^
meant to reply to different post.
November 20th, 2012 at 3:46 PM ^
Two words: Greg Mattison.
You get what you pay for, and we can pay for.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:02 PM ^
November 20th, 2012 at 4:19 PM ^
Um, the point is that we were able to make these kind of hires that we never did in the past because we have the money to do it. Remember when the Athletic Dept. was under water? There could have been no Mattison hire back then.
The OP question was: What tangible good is all that money? The answer is that money = wins.
The new money from expansion, and yes there will be new money, will benefit facilities and upgrades to coaching staffs. Which helps recruiting. Which helps wins.
It's a dirty secret in the "pure" world of college sports, but money = wins. Ask Oregon.
I don't really like it, but I'd rather be a "have" than a "have not" in today's cynical world of college sports.
It would be great if someone would step in and stop the madness, but until they do, the Darwinian rules of the game are pretty clear. Eat or be eaten.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:33 PM ^
I understand that money is important. I'm glad we have it. I'm glad we're not Maryland. That would be bad. Let me know if you find someone who wants the athletic department to operate on a barter system.
My question is why we need more money. We are already significantly in the black. There's nothing to suggest that the trend was going to reverse prior to expansion.
And, of course, this was already the case when we hired Mattison.
So to return to my original point: why do we need additional revenue?
November 20th, 2012 at 5:10 PM ^
do you NEED football? No, just food water and shelter.
Does the conference NEED money. No, but why not grab it?
I understand that you're mad and since there is no NEED, you think it's silly. But think about it from the commis' perspective:
1.) You ain't gonna boycott football games just because we expanded,
2.) He gains additional revenue.
Therefore, he's gonna do it. It's not NECESSARY, but it's a damn good thing in his mind.
Again, it's not NECESSARY. You're not gonna get an answer there buddy; look to why it's "a good idea" instead of "necessary"
November 20th, 2012 at 7:38 PM ^
Go read the Chait article. If you don't understand it, that's okay I guess.
November 20th, 2012 at 4:23 PM ^
November 20th, 2012 at 4:37 PM ^
part of the surplus goes back to the university's general fund.
November 20th, 2012 at 5:05 PM ^
In a competitive market, he who makes the gold, makes the rules.
If you assume this is a zero-sum game with limited resources, then the people who make the most money are going to survive, and the people who make the least money (including going in the red) are going to lose out. So, in an attempt to maintain, you try to make as much money as possible. This happens in almost every market.
For example: having extra money to throw around allowed the B1G to experiment (and it was very much an experiment at the time) with the BTN. Having extra money allows you to build bigger stadiums, have more advertising, gamble on more experiments, etc. It's a "If the competition can build larger stadiums, we want to be able to build the largest" mindset.
More resources is never a bad thing, and sometimes, just sometimes, the people in charge think it's worthwhile to gamble to get more resources. Maybe they're wrong, but are you gonna boycott the BTN because Rutgers got in?
/Don't Shoot The Messenger
November 20th, 2012 at 6:06 PM ^
In order to get into the key markets, people have to care about Rutgers and Maryland. No one cares about Rutgers and few people care about Maryland. Way to go Big Ten! We can't even count right.....
November 20th, 2012 at 7:07 PM ^
In my view it only serves to further collapse the remaining rationales for watching college sports.
November 20th, 2012 at 8:51 PM ^
I was looking forward to the tomato cans until I found out that they both will end up in the "other division" and make Ohio's job easier every year. One factor that has been ignored here is that Illinois, who has just been moved from Ohio's division to Michigan's, hates Ohio almost as much as they do Michigan, and had a history of playing them tough and physical, pulling off the occasional upset.
The end result here is that Ohio gets to play PSU, Wiscy, and four tomato cans within their division, while Michigan gets Sparty, Nebraska, and Iowa, with intermediate team NW, while their tomato can slots are filled by two teams that see Michigan as a "rivalry game:" Illinois and Minny.
Gordon Gee must have an impressive collection of photos and videos of Big Ten presidents and administrators.