i posted this on the odac football board, because, to be honest, i didn't realize this board existed
$88 to $94 million (the numbers i've seen associated with their endowment) is not a terribly small endowment - it's more than approximately half of the other odac schools...and they have over 3,000 acres of land, which is an endowment of sorts if they were to sell some of it off - from what i've read, it seems as though the folks at sbc just gave up and threw in the towel - there are a number of schools that have been in much worse situations that have found a way to remain a going concern - i immediately think of mount olive in NC...they were on the brink of closing (i think they actually lost accreditation), but through branch campuses/distance education, they are, by all public accounts, relatively healthy and able to sustain a smallish enrollment on their main campus - sbc seems to have been more concerned with a clean exit strategy than they were with exploring options - i read that they have over 300 employess, yet just over 500 students - how about letting go of 1/3 to 1/2 of your employees? not fun to do, but it beats letting go of 100% of them, along with all of the students, doesn't it? - clearly sbc had some financial management issues, but those things can be fixed without shuttering the campus if you ask me
to put a sports spin on this, you don't just stop playing a football game when you're down 28-0 after the first quarter - it wasn't over when the germans bombed pearl harbor, was it? how can sbc seemingly give up so easily?
it will be interesting to see if any of the sbc athletes make an impact on other campuses in the odac and possibly even usasac - their teams aren't very competitive, but i imagine they have individual athletes on each team that could contribute to other programs - will the ncaa grant them an immediate release and do coaches start contacting them? it will be interesting to watch...
i also found
this article - some interesting stuff - among the highlights, they've got about $20 million in endowment funds that are unrestricted - there are a good many d3 (and maybe even d2) schools whose total endowment isn't much more than $20 million, let alone the unrestricted portion - per the article, sbc has been operating at around a $2 million per year loss...to me, that gives them another 8 to 10 years to downsize and figure this out - they owe about $40 million to creditors, which is one of the big issues...inability to service debt is not good, but at the same time, that $2 million loss includes debt service - i also imagine that the college could have approached the donors (or the estate of the donors) and asked for the restrictions to be lifted in order for the college to remain a going concern - i imagine a good percentage would have done exactly that if the options were "lift the restrictions or we'll have to close" - perhaps much of this went on behind the scenes, but it seems that if it had, there would have been more talk of sbc struggling to keep its doors open
