FB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[thescottharris]

What's the chances of Lynchburg starting a program to keep up with the Joneses?  Higher chance if Averett shuts down?

Lynchburg isn't exactly in the financial position to be adding a football program, plus the optics of adding it would look pretty awful when they keep slashing academic programs, laying off staff, and eliminating entire departments.

Also, don't think SACS would look too kindly on adding football when the school is under accreditation warning for numerous things, one of which is not operating in a "fiscally responsible manner."

And I know some of the people of power/influence in the business office who were at one point at least adamantly opposed to adding football are still there. I suppose their stances could have changed since then, but I doubt it.

I doubt football is even a blip on the radar at the moment.

[MCScots2013]

Did not realize Lynchburg was having problems. I guess it was naive of me to think they were on the up and up after gaining university status.

[Ron Boerger]

Did not realize Lynchburg was having problems. I guess it was naive of me to think they were on the up and up after gaining university status.

They didn't "gain university status"; the trustees simply voted to rename the institution from "Lynchburg College" to "University of Lynchburg" in 2018.  Any college can call itself a "university" or a "college" for whatever reason, and there are quite a few schools that have undertaken a similar rebranding simply because they think "university" sounds more impressive to prospective students and donors than "college". 

Their balance sheet, as reported in the 2024 audit, actually shows an institution in relatively good shape compared to many small colleges.  Assets of $258M include an almost fully funded endowment of $141M.  Liabilities are a manageable $66M including $54M in debt.  While they did lose nearly $6M in operating expenses, they earned over $5M in operating income to mostly offset that, a significant improvement from in 2023 when operating losses of $8.6M were only offset by $0.7M in non-operating revenue. 

In the last six years, Lynchburg had one very bad year, 2023, with significant losses.  2021 and 2022 combined showed gains that basically doubled the losses of that year and only one year since 2011, 2020, showed a loss (of $15K, basically a rounding error).  The SACS warning came after the 2023 year and given the progress shown in the 2024 audit will likely go away - at least the financial side; there are student outcome findings that also must be addressed.

There are plenty of Division III schools starting or running football programs that are in much worse financial shape than Lynchburg, as (factually or not) it is often preceived as a net positive in revenue due to student athletes being willing to pay more tuition to continue playing in college.