HBO Real Sports - Rutgers sucks, and so does EMU
Did anyone else catch Real Sports the other night? They did a piece about the massive amounts of money Rutgers (and EMU) are wasting on athletics, football in particular.
It was pretty great. Rutgers has lost $312 million over the past decade and EMU $52 million over just the past two years.
Michigan wasn't mentioned but the piece did refer to a "couple dozen" programs that make money or at least break even.
was in attorney fees for their AD and coaches.
I've never understood EMU not dropping down to FCS or even division II as they're up against a heavyweight in their own local area. With the scale of those losses it seems to make even less sense. Rutgers at least has potential to do better.
FCS seems right for them. Michigan is saturated with D2 schools, but dropping to FCS would give them an edge in the market. They would basically become everyone in the state's favorite FCS team by default.
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But they have a much better chance to be competitive in the FCS, where every school has a small fanbase.
But dropping to FCS isn't that great since joining any conference other than the Pioneer Leauge (no football scholarships) would result in increased travel costs vs the MAC. Plus you have to imagine that as an FCS school they probably won't get as many payday games as they do as and FBS school.
- First, people like athletics, even when it is fiscally dumb. There are literally thousands of examples (e.g., giving Mike Ilitch, a multi-billionaire, over $200 million in tax money to build his arena, which will make him even more rich).
- Second, EMU considers it's comparable schools CMU, WMU, Ball State, Toledo -- all of which are in the MAC. It would be a considerable hit to pride if EMU says, "Well, we're really more like Ferris State or Saginaw Valley.
I agree EMU needs to suck it up and fix football. Trust me, that day is coming, whether the regents like it or not.
Secondly, hell yes they should drop to a lower level or the sport altogether. They don't have the support to play at this level.
Michigan and MSU's system of statewide elected trustees/regents is pretty ridiculous. I don't think that position should be politicized and at the mercy of the political parties. The university should control the method in how their trustees are appointed.
MSU's board of trustees has now become a football booster club with a former football coach, 2 former players, and a big-time booster making up half the board.
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no, now we know why their academics are garbage
that right there is the biggest reason to privatize. I would much rather that only alums can vote on who runs their school
Subjecting to the whim of the public - about 60% of whom have no degree much less one from UM/MSU - is just asking for trouble
end up with the trustee-dickweed mess they have at penn state.
Stapleton was appointed (twice) by former Gov. Granholm. What does he do for a living? Well, he's a lawyer (formerly at one of the biggest firms in Michigan) who has parlayed his skills into helping other people (who are not as politcally connected) get public funds.
How do I know connections are his value? Here's his company's "website":
http://www.manta.com/c/mtmdqrp/b-r-consultants
In other words, he doesn't have one. Not a Facebook page, Twitter account -- nothing. Why have a public presence when all the deals you are involved in are behind closed doors?
...called the Michigan football team a racist organization for not hiring Ron English after Lloyd Carr?
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There's no way the EMU football program has lost $52MM in two years. Bunsis is pulling those numbers out of his bunsis.
No!!! All my savings was in there!!!!
The working number is that EMU atheltics is about $11 million in the hole, each year.
HOWEVA...
Not included in that $11 million are the price of scholarships, which also come from the general fund, so that's another $8 million a year.
Plus, there was $4 million for the practice bubble (which I'm guessing comes from another fund) and I'm sure other costs. So that's at least $20 million a year.
I'm not sure where he got $52 million/2 years, but he is correct that EMU students (which number about 21,000) definitely pay about $1000, per year, in an atheltic "tax."
That's $26MM a YEAR?!?!
The numbers in this article are slightly dated (June 2013), but a $10.73MM operating budget and $7.1MM in athlete scholarships still only sum to $17.83MM in expenses. And even if EMU's revenue isn't great, it's not zero either. Football buy games, MAC distributions, the few people who attend sporting games, they have a deal with Pepsi where Pepsi buys a whole bunch of football tickets every other year (to help with FBS football attendance requirements).
So --- how does that math work? Maybe it's cost-of-attendance, but still --- $26MM?
http://www.annarbor.com/news/eastern-michigan-university-fiscal-2014-at…
Could be a cost allocation issue, where athletic deprtment overhead is assigned to the football team as a proportion of it's costs that's making up the slack there, but thats a lot of slack. Now that you're listing out the numbers, something seems......off.
I do agree with you, fundamentally EMU should be a FCS school. Football in the MVFC, Olympic Sports in the Horizon.
But these numbers seem exaggerated to "strengthen" a point. Being honest and saying ~$10MM per year (seems more likely) makes the same point.
Any savings in dropping 22 scholarships will be wiped out with the increased travel costs of the MVFC. If anything they should drop to FCS Pioneer league and get rid of all football scholarships since they aren't going to be tearing up FCS even with the full scholarship allotment.
yes, it's no scholarship --- but that league literally ranges from San Diego to Jacksonville to Des Moines to Upstate New York! The USD Toreros had 4 cross-country road trips each of the last 2 years: how do they budget that?!?
If it is clustered anywhere, the league is clustered in the Ohio Valley area (Valpo, Drake, Butler, Dayton, Morehead State). But the other half of the league would still be a plane trip for EMU. I think 1/3 of the MVFC (the Dakota schools) would be a plane trip if EMU joined.
Yeah, no real good solution other than staying in the MAC. You'd hate to see savings from cutting scholarships wiped out by increased travel costs.
no the entire MAC and every other non P5 should be dropped to FCS. They are systematically denied any chance to compete for a title, ever since 1984. This isn't little league and there's no "participation award" like 5th grade science fair. Compete where you're allowed to compete, or don't bother. Evidently many can see that or else the attendance wouldn't be so awful. Costs isn't the only reason to drop
Where do you draw the line with independents? ND is clearly a P5 and Army is clearly not, is BYU a P5? Are UCONN, Cincy, and USF just unlucky that they couldn't convince a P5 conference to take them like other former big east programs Pitt, Louisville, WVU, and Syracuse did?
greatly inflates the numbers. While there are some out of pocket costs that go with a scholarship, counting tuition, room and board and fees is misleading at a school like EMU. It is not that the football players are taking spots that would otherwise go to others who would be full-paying students. Everyone who wants to go to Eastern can get in. Eastern is not missing any student generated revenue by having a football team.
Tell that to the 31.2% of applicants who are rejected, according to US News.
Cost of scholarship is definitely an inflated number, the actual cost a replacement student would pay is probably quite a bit less, but it's not like those students wouldn't get replaced.
$25-30 million per year to support those teams? That is insane. If I were an EMU student, I would be pretty upset about my tuition money funding the football program. If I were a Rutgers student, I'd be pretty upset about...well, life, I guess.
It's hard to imagine a school the size of Eastern Michigan willing to sustain the hit it takes on athletics and the football program in particular forever, or at least I think so. We had the latest financial high-level figures in a thread the other day, and revisiting EMU's numbers, you see $33,956, 234 in revenue and expenses (same figure for both) which is bolstered by about an 80% subsidy, so the actual take would be about $5.7 million without the subsidy. That's pretty hideous - all the MAC schools have highly subsidized departments, but not all of them are in as uniquely a bad position as EMU when it comes to typical on-field performance - historic and present - of the football team.
should drop to D2 and join the GLIAC.
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PSL Championship Game @ Ford Field featuring King vs. EMU...opening line is King -7
The author implies that the loss is due to the football program, but provides no evidence to support this.
Also, if EMU drops football, they are also going to drop 85 women's scholarships to keep the numbers even.
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That sounds fair and equal.
The point of Title IX is to encourage the support of women's sports, which are less profitable for the University. There's no need to mandate equality in favor of men because there's no incentive for schools to go in that direction.
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Actually there are some men's sports that do not have the ability to offer scholarships so those 85 could be shifted to another current sport or to a sport that would be created (Men's soccer, Lacrosse, Hockey)
That's not how Title IX works, is it? I think you're allowed to have more scholarships for women than for men, but not fewer.
Was that the university charges the athletic department usage fees and that they can make the athletic department make or owe money based on this, whichever is to their advantage.
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I'd like to personally congratulate Rutgers on finding the one thing that makes them stand out in the B1G. May their money bonfire burn forever.
I didn't need HBO to tell me that Rutgers and EMU suck. All I needed was a set of eyeballs, a TV and some common sense.
But in all seriousness, I was unaware that EMU had that kind of money to begin with. They're pretty much the real-life version of the SCLSU Mud Dogs.