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Football Scholarships - Still Some Gaps in Understanding
I realize that none of us knows the real story on this increasingly bleak picture, but we seem to be piecing together a version of the facts that survives the tests of rational thinking. One thing still baffles me, and I need an explanation. It's the part about budgeting for women's sports but not spending. My grasp of the situation at this point is that somehow this currently qualifies the College for some sort of compliance under Title IX. How can this be? It defies logic. Does anyone have an answer in this area?
Oh yeah, as a PS and an aside, in my muddled mind the way out of this mess, while implementing football scholarships at a level that I believe will keep pace with the competition (57+), must include drastic cuts in the number of intercollegiate athletic programs offered and, I guess, an FBS "money game" on the schedule most years. Personally, I have few problems with this even though the "money game' is the equivalent of athletic prostitution.
Franks Tanks
Re: Football Scholarships - Still Some Gaps in Understanding
carney2 wrote:
I realize that none of us knows the real story on this increasingly bleak picture, but we seem to be piecing together a version of the facts that survives the tests of rational thinking. One thing still baffles me, and I need an explanation. It's the part about budgeting for women's sports but not spending. My grasp of the situation at this point is that somehow this currently qualifies the College for some sort of compliance under Title IX. How can this be? It defies logic. Does anyone have an answer in this area?
Oh yeah, as a PS and an aside, in my muddled mind the way out of this mess, while implementing football scholarships at a level that I believe will keep pace with the competition (57+), must include drastic cuts in the number of intercollegiate athletic programs offered and, I guess, an FBS "money game" on the schedule most years. Personally, I have few problems with this even though the "money game' is the equivalent of athletic prostitution.
If we have to cut sports and play a money game to get more competitive in Footbal thats ok by me. We need to focus on our most popular and most competitive sports and get the most bang for our buck.
Also its not that I dont care about swimming or cross country. Its great that we offer a wide array of sports, but if it is no longer feasible to maintian such an array then hard decision must be made.
Lafalum
Ok here goes... there is a full explanation of this on LFN, but as it applies to us.... We satisfy title IX by making available athletic need based aid to women in the budget. Almost always that aid to women never gets used ( in fact it is all sopped up by football who has students that are more needy) If you convert to scholarships that aid is spent irrespective of need and puts those women who would be eligible for scholarships,but do not get them , disadvantaged. We are then in violation of title IX because we offer 57 scholarships in football and not the equivilent in the womens sports.
With regard to cutting sports which in principal I agree, you must have 16 sports ( with equal opportunities for women) in be a Div 1 school. So which sport to you cut and what do you save. Football actually loses money after all the expenses, fencing makes money because we get paid by the NCAA a subsidy to carry the sport. In that context alumni support, donations, school and fan support don't count.
Playing a money game is fine which helps but does not fully offset the addtional money needed. eg 4 more full scholarships to reach 57 is 200,000 dollars, the additional aid to women may be as much as 1,000,000 dollars I am told, which would be 20 additional equivilancies which is a reasonable number. A play for pay game pays about 500,000. Getting back to cutting sports...............
A logical choice to cut is track (counts as three sports) but it is relatively cheap and has a women's component. Baseball is expensive and doesn't fit the school calender (many northeastern schools have dropped it) but we have a history. So you are left with low cost sports or those sports with a female component that offsets 100 football players.
But read the LFN article. Its the most detailed I have seen.
carney2
From LFN's very informative blog (which I have now read 3 times):
"In the Patriot League, when aid is considered need-based, in the past it has been considered enough for Title IX compliance to simply put money aside in a pot for "money on women's athletics" and not even spend it. The idea is that the schools set aside (say) a certain amount for men's athletic aid, and a certain amount for women's athletic aid. If the men find themselves more needy than the women (which in general they do), then more ends up getting spent on the men. As one high-placed Patriot League official told me, "as long as the money is available, it's OK", and multiple Patriot League schools do this for Title IX compliance today."
As Dickens might have said, "the NCAA is a ass."
Lafalum
As a father of daughters I agree with the logic. The opportunities should be equal for women to get scholarships. Inconvenient but fair is fair.
RichH
I've got 2 of each,so I do not object to the issue of equal opportunity f or all. There should be some sort of weighting for football numbers as there is no equivalent girl's sport. No other equivalent team sport except track and field. Of course many schools would abuse any such system, but to be fair to all , boys s/n/b penalized because their sport has the greatest #s and no equivalency for girls. This was argued at length w/o solution and unlikely to change now. Feminists blame colleges for the situation forgetting that when football started sports was not an issue for women. ADs blame the women for the loss and restrictions of male sports. Yet , IL able to do both equally . $$$$ is central problem for which I have no answer.
In short , while NCAA rules make inconsistent sense they are only game in town and not likely to change.
We all better find some alums with some serious loose change
TheRock90
The reality is, scholarship football is not a financial burden at the larger schools. Its really their cash cow. It often pays for most, if not all, of the athletic program. Title IX is not a problem for them.
There needs to be some provision for the smaller schools that do not break even or lose money with football. Perhaps it could be based on the enrollment, stadium size, average attendance, etc.
I don't think taking football out of the equation would be a workable solution. There would be too much cheating.
RichH
A balancing based on fb profit/loss in FCS could certainly be a workable plan with overall picture of athletic and school population and opportunities.
Q is whether NCAA wants to put in effort to evaluateall these programs and tailor Title IX requirements for each. They and the Feds like broad self enforcing rules
Lafalum
Separating football will not happen, it is all about the money for most schools. I read somewhere in Div 1 there may be only 12-15 schools that actually make money and those are the programs with bowl posibilities and final four opportunities, the rest including the FCS programs for the most part don't cover thier expenses. However, for most of us it is important because it generates alumni loyalty and donations. Does anyone really believe that Lafayette or Lehigh would be better off without football? It would be a PR and financial disaster. The question is really does the incremental money for scholarships add to or subtract from the attraction by alumni and how little can the schools get away with.
carney2
RichH wrote:
We all better find some alums with some serious loose change
Methinks that most of the Lafayette loose change has been converted into a whole new Fisher Stadium. It's hard to believe that kind of largess still lurks out here in alumni land, particularly when it would be the cash hole that would need to be refilled year after year. As I said earlier, the most obvious way to have football scholarships at a competitive level is to drastically restructure the athletic offerings and begin scheduling money games. It will not, as someone pointed out, solve the problem, but it would put a sizable dent in it. On the other hand, it is not inconceivable that some of us (Holy Cross?, Georgetown?, Bucknell?, Lafayette?) decide that there is no payoff in continuing on the D-I football treadmill and get off. The Patriot League would be gone and Colgate and Lehigh would become pinatas for the big kids who have the resources to take this seriously. Too ugly to think about.
Lafalum
I don't think that is going to happen but we have to as a school rethink our footprint....we are too small and we should rethink strategically about how we can reshape ourselves for the 21st century. A school of 2300 will not cut it with all things we want to be.
Instead of us thinking about diversity deans etc. we should be tackling the big fiscal issues. THIS BOT MUST GO!!.
There is beginning to be a nastiness coming back in relations with some of our large donors and how they wish to spend their money vs how some at the school want them to spend it. All I can say right now there are clouds brewing.
As an aside I have heard that Massa (the new PR and enrollment VP) who is located in the Fretz house wants $1,000,000 to refurbish Fretz at a time we barely have money to pay asst coaches and officials in the budget!! We'll see how that sorts out!
Also remember that to be Div 1 in basketball, and if you play football it must be div 1 as well, so for the schools you mentioned, bucknell,holy cross, georgetown, dropping to div 3 won't happen. In fact it's the reason they are in the Patriot League. They can play Div 1 basketball but not have to spend the enormous sums on football everyone else must.
carney2
Lafalum wrote:
Also remember that to be Div 1 in basketball, and if you play football it must be div 1 as well, so for the schools you mentioned, bucknell,holy cross, georgetown, dropping to div 3 won't happen. In fact it's the reason they are in the Patriot League. They can play Div 1 basketball but not have to spend the enormous sums on football everyone else must.
It was late and I was doing more or less a stream of consciousness thing. Still, just because you have a football program doesn't mean you have to truly support it. Look at Georgetown.
There are any number of ways this could play out, with the 4 schools I mentioned sinking more or less into permanent football mediocrity - even mediocre by PL standards. My guess is that when Femovich and her herd of do-nothings give the word, Colgate and Lehigh are going to run with it. My guess also is that the other 4 will trundle along, mostly at lesser levels, with more hope than foresight, and trusting mostly to luck.
Pard4Life
We do need to cut sports. I said this during the winter. We should focus on basketball, football, baseball, field hockey, lax, soccer, softball. No schollie baseball and schollie softball and womens soccer would give us about 20-25 football shollies. Both lax programs should be schollie. This is a high profile sport and we have one of the best leagues in the nation.
Cut everything else. Build a nice tennis complex at Metzger and charge usage fees to the town. Tennis could support itself.
DFW HOYA
carney2 wrote:
It was late and I was doing more or less a stream of consciousness thing. Still, just because you have a football program doesn't mean you have to truly support it. Look at Georgetown.
Hmmmmm...
Georgetown is basically funding 13 men's sports on $5 million and one on $8 million. The support for the 13 teams is there if the dollars are not. If Georgetown didn't want to support football they could have folded the tents with the rest of the MAAC.
Growth in football's budget has to come from alumni giving, but an extra $3 million a year doesn't come overnight.
Lafalum
Pard4Life wrote:
We do need to cut sports. I said this during the winter. We should focus on basketball, football, baseball, field hockey, lax, soccer, softball. No schollie baseball and schollie softball and womens soccer would give us about 20-25 football shollies. Both lax programs should be schollie.
Cut everything else. Tennis could support itself.
That is not 16 sports. So you cut track save yourself maybe 100,000,cut golf save nothing, cut fencing lose money( that is subsidized), volleyball save maybe 75k? Swimming ...another 75k Where is the money? 20-25 is not enough football schollies to make us eligible for a BCS money game..you need 58.
The bottom line here is that athletics has not been adequately funded. If it wasn't for 3 or 4 large donors it would be worse. We need to be a bigger school. We need to attract more full pay students. (colgate's discount is 20pct our's is 40 pct that frees up 30 mio in extra revenue.)
Start thinking strategically...something this BOT has not done in 30 years at least and is not capable of now... obviously. Add 400 students and you probably add another5-8 mio net to the bottom line. Stop trying to reduce our student faculty ratio by 3 pts and you have another 1.5 mio. Forget about diversity deans and trim the fat in adminstration and there's probably another 500,000 found.
That list is 30- 40 mio in found money that could do a lot besides fully fund our athletic program!!
cr
If i were a Pard I would go with that agenda!!
carney2
cr wrote:
If i were a Pard I would go with that agenda!!
Hey, cr. Different topic, but this site's link to the Colgate Sports Forum (http://colgatefootball.webs.com/apps/forums/) takes us to a site that has not been accessed by anyone in 3 or 4 months. Have you moved, or has everyone in Hamilton gone north to look for 'gate weather?
RichH
Site started out OK, but posters stuck with Voy which still has a problem with obscene posts on occasion.
Carney did you happen to glance at HC's 2 deep. They 've got to have biggest OL I can ever recall in PL. Size reminds me of some of those Grambling teams.
carney2
RichH wrote:
Carney did you happen to glance at HC's 2 deep. They 've got to have biggest OL I can ever recall in PL. Size reminds me of some of those Grambling teams.
For those of you who haven't seen this or, like me (usually), are too lazy to look it up:
Starters: 348, 278, 282, 292, 298 Avg. = 300, but without the 348 guy, 288
2nd Team: 295, 280, 270, 270, 300 Avg. = 283
Frankly (no pun intended), I think that most of Tavani's O-lines over the last 5 or 6 years were larger than this. Still, if Gilmore doesn't protect Randolph, this season is in the hopper.
Andy
Carney, looks like they have a new website with an updated depth chart. 6-4 360, 6-3 289, 6-1 285, 6-6 310, 6-5 320. Four of five returning starters, four seniors, two all-PL. Four '09 OL recruits among their class of 28.
Anything less than a championship for HC will be a huge disappointment.
cr
carney2 wrote:
cr wrote:
If i were a Pard I would go with that agenda!!
Hey, cr. Different topic, but this site's link to the Colgate Sports Forum (http://colgatefootball.webs.com/apps/forums/) takes us to a site that has not been accessed by anyone in 3 or 4 months. Have you moved, or has everyone in Hamilton gone north to look for 'gate weather?
The Lehigh pervert seems to have left our regular voy page so we are back there and very active. Check it out.
cr
Andy wrote:
Carney, looks like they have a new website with an updated depth chart. 6-4 360, 6-3 289, 6-1 285, 6-6 310, 6-5 320. Four of five returning starters, four seniors, two all-PL. Four '09 OL recruits among their class of 28.
Anything less than a championship for HC will be a huge disappointment.
If they win I will wager a hefty amount that Gilmore will flee!
RichH
cr
I agree guy is a pervert, unnecessary to add Lehigh Heonly seems to post on your board
Guest
Pervert?
A LU pervert?
cr
Re: Pervert?
808Lehigh wrote:
A LU pervert?
Rich,
I say Lehigh pervert since I believe he showed up first on your old board and when you got a new registered board he fled to our board. Sorry about that.
TheTruth
Lafalum wrote:
Pard4Life wrote:
We do need to cut sports. I said this during the winter. We should focus on basketball, football, baseball, field hockey, lax, soccer, softball. No schollie baseball and schollie softball and womens soccer would give us about 20-25 football shollies. Both lax programs should be schollie.
Cut everything else. Tennis could support itself.
That is not 16 sports. So you cut track save yourself maybe 100,000,cut golf save nothing, cut fencing lose money( that is subsidized), volleyball save maybe 75k? Swimming ...another 75k Where is the money? 20-25 is not enough football schollies to make us eligible for a BCS money game..you need 58.
The bottom line here is that athletics has not been adequately funded. If it wasn't for 3 or 4 large donors it would be worse. We need to be a bigger school. We need to attract more full pay students. (colgate's discount is 20pct our's is 40 pct that frees up 30 mio in extra revenue.)
Start thinking strategically...something this BOT has not done in 30 years at least and is not capable of now... obviously. Add 400 students and you probably add another5-8 mio net to the bottom line. Stop trying to reduce our student faculty ratio by 3 pts and you have another 1.5 mio. Forget about diversity deans and trim the fat in adminstration and there's probably another 500,000 found.
That list is 30- 40 mio in found money that could do a lot besides fully fund our athletic program!!
I hate to keep bringing up this point. you articulated why I was very disappointed when Weiss decided to lower the number of incoming students and increase the number of faculty members to improve our faculty to student ratio.
After the fiasco that was the athletic "study" in 1999 or 2000, the BOT decided to incrementally increase the number of incoming students to increase the school size to around 2500. Their study showed that we could maintain our current Admission profile even with increasing the student body. The additional monies from these students would help fund things like athletics, additional faculty and necessary curriculum changes. Instead we chose a path to improve our academic ranking as determined by US NEWS and World Report, the very magazine we criticize each year when the rankings come out.
What we are discussing is the very issue that Eve Atkinson tried to address with her proposal to cut sports back in '98. This has been a problem since Rotberg graced us back in 1991 and cut the athletic budgets by 10%. Burying our heads in the sands won't work this time. And the College can't afford to throw money at the problem like they have done with so many issues in the past. We need to cut sports but also trim down the administration. We also have to do a better job with fund raising for sports which I believe the school is addressing.
Lafalum
TheTruth wrote:
I hate to keep bringing up this point. you articulated why I was very disappointed when Weiss decided to lower the number of incoming students and increase the number of faculty members to improve our faculty to student ratio.
After the fiasco that was the athletic "study" in 1999 or 2000, the BOT decided to incrementally increase the number of incoming students to increase the school size to around 2500. Their study showed that we could maintain our current Admission profile even with increasing the student body. The additional monies from these students would help fund things like athletics, additional faculty and necessary curriculum changes. Instead we chose a path to improve our academic ranking as determined by US NEWS and World Report, the very magazine we criticize each year when the rankings come out.
What we are discussing is the very issue that Eve Atkinson tried to address with her proposal to cut sports back in '98. This has been a problem since Rotberg graced us back in 1991 and cut the athletic budgets by 10%. Burying our heads in the sands won't work this time. And the College can't afford to throw money at the problem like they have done with so many issues in the past. We need to cut sports but also trim down the administration. We also have to do a better job with fund raising for sports which I believe the school is addressing.
I don't see the point in cutting sports if there isn't a lot of money in it and when the big money is really in the college's business model which obviously doesn't work!! I'm for cutting when appropriate and where there is a reasonable saving or payback. The big money is in this bloated administration, our discount rate, and the size of the school. Tackle that first and then go for the nickles and dimes.
This current strategic plan is dead. It depended on raising 400 mio dollars( not going to happen) and the value of the endowment going to at least 1.3 bio( not going to happen). So to this clumsy BOT, get on with business and design a plan that makes sense in the present circumstances or resign.
Pard4Life
Lafalum, you are right that the plan is dead. I think all of these special program initiatives are too ambitious in this climate. ps where can we see the original plan?
If Weiss cannot offer an alternative or does not deviate from the plan, I think he should go. After celebration of this fact, including myself, his academic background is a hinerance. Diversity dean pfff.. another salary.
Then again who will the BOT hire? They are more at fault than Weiss.
Increasing students is a must. Bucknell is an adequete size of 3000. We have to have a good brand though to attract quality students. Attracting more students who can pay has me worried though, it would add to monotony that already exists in our profile.
TheTruth
I don't see the point in cutting sports if there isn't a lot of money in it and when the big money is really in the college's business model which obviously doesn't work!! I'm for cutting when appropriate and where there is a reasonable saving or payback. The big money is in this bloated administration, our discount rate, and the size of the school. Tackle that first and then go for the nickles and dimes.
This current strategic plan is dead. It depended on raising 400 mio dollars( not going to happen) and the value of the endowment going to at least 1.3 bio( not going to happen). So to this clumsy BOT, get on with business and design a plan that makes sense in the present circumstances or resign.
I agree.
I think the non-Marquis society donors only saw the broad overview of the strategic plan rather then the specifics. Other then adding faculty and modifying financial aid, not sure of any other specifics like capital projects, curriculum changes, etc.
