FB: Southern Athletic Association

[Ralph Turner]

On Monday, Southwestern announced its schedule.  Non-conference opponents will be McMurry, TLU, and Schreiner.  The new on-campus stadium is not ready so the first two home games - McMurry (Sep 5) and Trinity (Oct 10) will be held at the high school stadium that has hosted the Pirates since they resumed playing football.  The grand opening of the new "multi-purpose" stadium is scheduled for October 24, construction progress permitting.  It's been raining a lot this spring so if that continues into the summer the date could be at risk.

"Multi-purpose" in quotes because the only other sport besides football to possibly play there is lacrosse, and they will (per the release above) use the new facility as a backup.  There's no track.

Southwestern returns ten offensive and five defensive starters this year, so should be more competitive than last season's 4-6/2-5 SAA.

Will the new venue not host soccer?

[Ron Boerger]

Will the new venue not host soccer?

Not according to the information in the annoucement.  When they announced the facility last year the only athletes shown were a footballer and one or two lacrossers.  Soccer players prefer grass to artificial turf in my experience.

A video associated with an on-going fundraiser shows only clips of football and lacrosse players, and also has players from those two teams, and only those two teams, encouraging donations.

[MCScots2013]

Forbes last week published a "Financial GPA" for nearly 1000 private colleges in the US.  I could not open this in Chrome but could in DuckDuckGo (might be me).  The maximum GPA is 4.5 and letter grades were assigned.  I'll list the components used in calculating the average below, and you can read this non-paywalled edit: a now paywalled article describes the overall methodology in detail.  SAA schools are almost all in more than decent shape, and the conference overall is doing better than most.  Organized in order of GPA, the grades are:

• Millsaps - 4.5/A+
• Sewanee - 4.5/A+
• Trinity - 4.5/A+
• Berry - 4.49/A+
• Southwestern - 4.49/A+
• Centre - 4.38/A+
• Rhodes - 4.06/A
• Maryville - 2.93/B-
• Oglethorpe - 1.6/D
• Overall:  3.94/A-

Components used in the calculation:

• Endowment Assets Per FTE (15%)
• Three Year Average UNAEP to Expenses (15%) [UNAEP=Unrestricted Net Assets Exclusive of Plant (Property, and Equipment)]
• Primary Reserve Ratio (10%)
• Viability Ratio (10%)
• Core Operating Margin (10%)
• 2-Year Enrollment Growth (10%)
• Tuition As A Percentage of Core Revenues (7.5%)
• Return On Assets (7.5%)
• Net Tuition Revenue Per Student (7.5%)
• Instruction Expenses Per FTE (7.5%)

I do admit to being surprised to see Millsaps up there with the other A+ schools; good for the Majors!  Unfortunately, the full article, which may allow you to dive in for further details, is behind a paywall and I'm not motivated enough to pay $12.99+tax to find out.  Despite Oglethorpe's low grade (endowment ~$50M, losing money annually), there are literally hundreds of colleges that graded lower. 

I think Millsaps' endowment per FTE is helping them...~575 students with 100M+ endowment. Likewise, Oglethorpe has 2.5x the enrollment and half the endowment.