UAB Football To Be Shut Down - Repercussions For State School D3 Programs?

Started by smedindy, November 30, 2014, 06:22:38 PM

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Gregory Sager

Quote from: Just Bill on May 07, 2015, 09:33:25 AM
Travel expenses for bowling and rifle are actually pretty high. The rosters are small, but the travel is a killer. There's not many sponsoring schools in those sports so teams have to travel across the country to compete.

That's most likely true for UAB. But, surprisingly enough, bowling can actually be a light-travel sport (relatively speaking) for small colleges, depending upon where in the country they're located and the gender that's playing the sport. Here in the midwest, for instance, there's only three D3 schools that have intercollegiate women's bowling programs: Alma, Elmhurst, and UW-Whitewater. But there are eleven NAIA schools in the lower part of Michigan's mitten, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and eastern Iowa that offer the sport. It's actually feasible for D3 schools located within 200 miles of Lake Michigan to offer women's bowling and have it not be much more of a travel hassle than other sports, if you're willing to play the NAIA teams. (In the NCAA, all three divisions play in one division in women's bowling.)
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

sunny

I'd have to read the full report, but I would wonder if fundraised money/donations are included in the equation and I wonder how they define "making money?" I'd imagine in bowling and rifle, with limited scholarships and perks, all it takes is a couple or so deep-pocketed donors to those programs counted as revenue for their revenue to out-pace their budgeted cost.

Of course, claiming that that is profitable or break even from a university-wide perspective would be completely misleading. Unless the bowling and rifle programs are turning around and giving a large chunk of their revenue back to the school, what's happening is that they are using up all of their allotted funds from the university and then using donations to fund the rest of their expenses - any donated money that they are rolling over to the next fiscal year is probably being counted as "making money." Only issue with that is, without the bowling program existing, the university need not budget ANY money to bowling and the university at large isn't seeing any of the revenue from the bowling team to begin with.

Of course, the value of intercollegiate sports in a true co-curricular context (Division III) can go beyond dollars and cents, but from an accounting perspective, the bowling program can look like it "made money" and still potentially positively impact the balance sheet of the institution with its discontinuation. 


HSCTiger74

TANSTAAFL

jknezek

Quote from: HSCTiger74 on June 02, 2015, 12:15:37 AM
Quote from: monsoon on June 01, 2015, 05:52:23 PM
Maybe UAB football was only mostly dead:
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/12991674/uab-blazers-football-return?ex_cid=sportscenterFB

There must be someone named Max involved in this story in some way.

Nah. Just a ridiculous Board of Trustees and a president that completely misunderstood the p.r. realities. I'm not going to say the BOT strong armed him, because I legitimately think Dr. Watts, like most previous UAB admins, doesn't care for anything but the Med School, but he went along with what the BOT wanted quite happily. It blew up in his face and the p.r. nightmare was spreading to the whole school, including the Medical School. In order to stop it he had to eat crow and the BOT let him take the fall.

Unfortunately UAB is in an even worse place now than it was 12 months ago. They still have no BOT support. They still have some of the worst D1 facilities in the nation. They haven't raised enough money to fix the facilities, but they have raised enough money to limp the program along. And any and all good players that helped them get to 6-6 last year, the first non-losing season in a long time, have left. So they need to completely rebuild the program with no facilities, no players, no assistant coaches, and still no hope of getting any money from the BOT. They may have gone 6-6 last season, but I bet they don't reach that mark again for at least 5 years, and that's only if Coach Clarke pulls off a miracle.

The program should have been better supported by the BOT over the last 25 years, but it wasn't because the Tuscaloosa focused Board never cared. It shouldn't have been cancelled, but it was because the BOT finally found an excuse. Having been cancelled, it shouldn't have been brought back. It's going to suck, and it's all the BOT's fault and they will be quite happy that it sucks and will slyly and whenever possible point out that they were right and it should have been cancelled.

Just Bill

"So instead of sending you to the electric chair, we're going to dangle you off a cliff by a rope and see how long you can hold on. Sound good?"
"That seems silly and pointless..." - Hoops Fan

The first and still most accurate description of the D3 Championship BeltTM thread.

jknezek

Quote from: Just Bill on June 02, 2015, 10:39:09 AM
"So instead of sending you to the electric chair, we're going to dangle you off a cliff by a rope and see how long you can hold on. Sound good?"

More or less. But the thing to remember is how many people are in support of UAB football. They aren't thinking of it as hanging off the cliff even though that is the reality. They were willing to accept anything but the electric chair. UAB needs probably 50MM to 100MM in facilities upgrades to look like a decent D1 program. A new fieldhouse, coaches offices, practice turf, and a legitimate stadium. Legion Field is an ancient mess. Those upgrades are in addition to the 17MM the school said was needed and was raised to keep the program 5 more years. I think they raised commitments for about 10MM of that 50-100. Good luck getting the rest.