Flo Sports

[Ron Boerger]

I only know of one example of schools opting out of the Flo quagmire when their conference signed up - last year, four of the SCAC schools (Austin, Southwestern, TLU, Trinity) said "keep your pittance, we'll keep doing our own thing".  Two of them have since left for the (still?) Flo-free SAA, but TLU has kissed the ring and will go Flo in the upcoming season.  It was surprising that Flo allowed only a part of the SCAC to come onboard, but you have to wonder if that was a one-time offer given that half the non-participants were going away in a year.  And if Austin ends up doing the same (hopefully not, but they otherwise now find themselves on a lonely island where their supporters have to sign up to see all conference away games for which they receive zero benefit) they may have given the SCAC a year to be totally compliant. 

[Gregory Sager]

Just hire an Advancement professional (or 2). They will more than cover their costs and bring in more than the $30k from Flo and also develop long term relationships within the community and alum (ni, nae, nus - I always get those confused)

alumnus = male graduate or former student (singular)
alumna = female graduate or former student (singular)
alumni = male graduates or former students, or all graduates or former students in general (plural)
alumnae = female graduates or former students (plural)

In an era in which the number of people with even a cursory knowledge of Latin is tiny, it's to be expected that most people don't know the differences between these four nouns. So I always explain it thus:

* Everything you did in college was backwards. Therefore, the 'i' in "alumni" stands for all of us, while the 'us' in "alumnus" only stands for me, myself, and 'i'.

* A woman who went to college is an "alumna", because she likely said "naah" if I ever asked her out on a date.

* They are collectively called "alumnae", because they all voted 'nay' to date me.

[WUPHF]

alumnx or alumnux = all graduates and or former students (gender neutral) of a UAA institution.

[Gregory Sager]

alumnx or alumnux = all graduates and or former students (gender neutral) of a UAA institution.

[CNU85]

Thanks GS. The issue is that I will forget 20 minutes after "learning" it yet again!

I'm going to blame it on age.

[Ron Boerger]

Thanks GS. The issue is that I will forget 20 minutes after "learning" it yet again!

I'm going to blame it on age.

's OK.  The only thing I remember from two years of high school Latin is that my SAT verbal scores shot way up.

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks GS. The issue is that I will forget 20 minutes after "learning" it yet again!

I'm going to blame it on age.

's OK.  The only thing I remember from two years of high school Latin is that my SAT verbal scores shot way up.

I now have a mental image of you finishing the SAT and jumping out of your chair while yelling, "Veni, vidi, vici!"

[Ralph Turner]

I am grateful to my 10th grade Latin II teacher, Mrs Bates, who Julius Caesaer's personal secretary. She demanded mastery of the material, which served me very well for the rest of my life.

I always chuckled at the under-the-table list of feminine 4th declension nouns that we compiled.

[CNU85]

I also took a Latin class in 10th grade. Sometimes it helps when watching Jeopardy!

[ronk]

 Somebody said recently that in the past 100 years we've gone from taking Latin and Greek in high school to remedial English in college.

[jknezek]

Somebody said recently that in the past 100 years we've gone from taking Latin and Greek in high school to remedial English in college.

It's from about 2010 and a Conservative Anti-Semite know as Joseph Sobran, it just became popular again as a meme as certain people have been attacking colleges lately.

Sobran, of course, was going for a splash, and didn't account for the fact that most high schools require at least some foreign language to graduate. So yes, not so much Latin and Greek and more Spanish, French, and Chinese. As for remedial English in college, given the "fog a check" nature of a huge swath of college admittance requirements, that's probably true. Back when there were fewer college admittance slots and not every job required a college degree to apply, there probably were fewer students going to college who weren't academically prepared.

Pre-Covid almost 70% of high school graduates enrolled in college. That number has since dropped to closer to 60%. In 1950 it was about 30%. Given that only 50% of students can be "better than average" at English, if you are enrolling more than 50% of high school graduates in college, some are going to be below average and require remediation.

In other words, it's a fun sound byte, as so many things are these days, but it's an easy statement for anyone with a decent college education to put into context. It's not that students are dumber, as the quote is trying to point out or that college is failing, it's that the environment has changed.

[y_jack_lok]

Sadly many schools are... not good... at fundraising. FLO provides a solid, dependable (provided Flo stays in business), small revenue stream. For many schools, that is probably attractive. For schools like those in the UAA? Yeah, I don't get it at all.

Personally I hate this model. Monetizing D3 sports is a bad idea. Not only is it a bad idea, it's a loser of an idea. These aren't scholarship kids. They are paying to play. Now parents have to pay to watch? I just want to grab these admin heads and bang them together and point out how stupid this is.

Either your athletics department makes money because you bring in student athletes that pay tuition, adding numbers to your student body, or it brings in prestige because it brings in student athletes that otherwise would have gone elsewhere for a better experience. Either way, the school benefits from the athletic department and shouldn't be nickel and diming these kids and parents to squeeze even more blood from the stone.

If your athletic department does neither of those things, if it costs you money or doesn't add value to your student body, and you feel the need to nickel and dime student athletes, then it is time to give up on your athletics department.

Higher education needs to realize their value proposition is getting thinner and thinner. Small, expensive, not highly regarded liberal arts schools, the type that make up a good percent of D3, are especially vulnerable. Nickel and diming students and parents even more is not going to fix that, and only makes it more expensive. Stop betting on losing models.

As for the UAA schools, which are some of the cream of D3 institutions, you are just cutting off your nose to spite your face and no amount of justifying how much they will make can change my mind on this. There is 0 reason to put your sports behind a paywall. You are some of the best, and most expensive, schools in the country. You choose to associate with a very expensive, geographically diverse, conference, for prestige purposes. This is a pathetic slap in the face to student athlete parents and the few alums that support and love student athletes.

And when the ODAC takes this path, as I suspect most D3 conferences will eventually, I will be just as scathing about W&L, though far more understanding, even if I think it's still a bad idea, for other schools in the ODAC.

I hope you are wrong about the ODAC. Like W&L, RMC shouldn't need the revenue. But I suspect some of the ODAC schools might. If the ODAC goes this route I won't subscribe. If there is still separate audio available for RMC games I'll probably tune in for some of them. But I'm just as likely to do something else with my time.

As I said in an earlier post in this discussion: "I'd be very interested in having someone from one of the conferences or schools that has signed on with FloSports come on here and explain in some detail (not a "Tweet") the rationale for the decision, the pros and cons that were weighed in making it, the perceived benefits to the conference/institution and athletes, how/why they think it will be better for fans/viewers, and some information about the dollars and cents of the deal -- does it represent an actual increase in revenue for the athletic department/conference, etc., etc.."

[Kuiper]

I assumed that students got FloSports for free, but apparently that isn't the case, or it isn't the case at all schools/conferences or in all deals. 

You should read this op-ed from a Pitzer student who just graduated and was the Editor-in-Chief of The Student Life, the student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges.  You should read the whole thing.  It's really well done.  (you should also click the link below to read it directly from the website so they get whatever money or benefits they get from clicks, but I cut and pasted a snippet to give you a preview.)

https://tsl.news/i-dream-of-free-streaming-how-flosports-is-buffering-my-5c-fandom/

During my sophomore spring, my high school best friend and I — both sports editors of our respective campus papers at the time — compared our processes for reporting on games. As a Division I journalist, he viewed the action from the private media section and had to filter his post-game questions through the team's PR manager. Meanwhile, as a Division III reporter, I would just plant myself in the stands right next to the players' parents, walk onto the field and grab a few players for an interview.

This is why I love sports at the 5Cs: They're the most accessible higher-level sports you may ever get. Every student can watch hundreds of live games among over a dozen sports from two of the top DIII programs in the country — for free. And when I learned that this extended to free streaming for all sports, I thought I was set for life.

But that was until this year.

Last summer, the SCIAC signed a five-year contract with FloSports to make the platform its sole streaming home, effective this season. FloSports is a streaming service with a dubious history of data collection and privacy violations that houses several DI, DII and DIII conferences in addition to a number of niche sports. However, this means that instead of watching every game for free, students are now being charged $9.99 a month, or $5.99 if they commit for the whole year. For parents, alumni and everyone else, it's even worse, coming in at a whopping $19.99, or $8.99 if you subscribe for the whole year.

Why make this move? Well, if you ask SCIAC Commissioner Jenn Dubow, it's all about a new "quality streaming experience."

"FloSports has demonstrated a significant and sincere commitment to providing funding and exposure for small-school college sports in a collaborative way that can help each of our institutions' unique approach and goals to streaming and athletics communications," Dubow said when announcing the partnership last June.

As my available time for attending games progressively diminished throughout college, my reliance on SCIAC streaming surged. Lacrosse during Wednesday night classes, baseball during beer league and football at house parties — I was locked in and I loved it.

This year though, I have not streamed a single game. That's because, as I've said before, paying to watch DIII sports directly opposes why they are so great. Yes, subscribing also comes with the entire FloSports package, including plenty of college and other obscure sports goodies — but I don't care about those. I care about the teams of people I go to school with: my friends and the parasocial relationships I've developed with athletes I've never met.

[IC798891]

Exactly this.

This is a perfect example of how putting up a paywall diminishes connections between your programs and your constituents. Lasting, perhaps irreparable, long-term damage to your brand. For $30,000.   

[Ron Boerger]

I assumed that students got FloSports for free, but apparently that isn't the case, or it isn't the case at all schools/conferences or in all deals.

The standard Flo deal for students, as mentioned in the very fine article you provided, is $5.83/month if you sign up for an entire year ($69.99) ... only there are no D3 sports for at least three months out of the year which makes it more like $7.77.  And there's darned little in May, mostly NCAA playoffs which are (still) broadcast freely, so in reality it's more like $8.75 a month.  And the effective price for non-students if paid annually ($107.88), using the same metric, would be either $11.99/mo (9 months) or $13.49/month.

Schools could obviously pay for student subs, but that would eat up that $30K pretty quickly, wouldn't it?