American Athletic Conference

[Rlh04d]

According to this study UAB Football was not a money loser.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...ey-study-finds

Alabama officials manipulated the numbers to get rid of an in-state football program? I'm shocked.

They must have run out of terrible Alabama alumni to force UAB to hire as a football coach.

[UABlazin]

The new report also states that if forced out of C-USA, UAB hopes to place M and W basketball in the MVC with all other sports in a more regional league. That could help alleviate some travel cost concerns the MVC members might have.

[Manhattan_Shocker]

I would be perfectly fine with that. When will C-USA decide UAB's fate?

[UABlazin]

C-USA meetings are June 8th.

[SHOCKvalue]

Gotta feel for UAB fans. While the MVC is a pretty clear step-up from C-USA in basketball, to get there via subtraction has got to be a knife to the heart.

What's happening to UAB is very similar to what happened to UNO football when they went from D2 to D1. Football powers that be forcing the little guy out so they have no competition. It is like Wal-Mart coming into a little town and simply decreeing that henceforth all local retailers will cease operation just because they said so.

Imagine what would happen to our University if we were UKW (University of Kansas - Wichita) instead of an independent, equal footing member of the Kansas Board of Regents? The twiddle-dicks up in Lawrence would probably try to disband our entire athletic department.

[pinstripers]

a pretty clear step up?

[SHOCKvalue]

a pretty clear step up?

Are you unfamiliar as to what has happened to C-USA the past 2 years? The MVC would have to fall even further than they already have to match what C-USA has become.

[pinstripers]

a step up maybe.......but SIU would be a doormat there as well, no?

[SHOCKvalue]

a step up maybe.......but SIU would be a doormat there as well, no?

In the past 2 years C-USA has lost these 7 schools:

Memphis
SMU
Houston
Tulsa
Tulane
UCF
ECU

Then, in the line of reasoning that says X+Y is better than simply replacing X with X, no matter if all available options suck, C-USA added these 9 new members to take their place:

MTSU
UNCC
UNT
UTSA
FAU
FIU
LTU
ODU
WKU

You are forgiven if you need to google every single one of those abbreviations in order to figure out what the hell the letters stand for, save WKU and ODU.

C-USA is like the Sun Belt that Missourah State so desperately wants to gain admission to: An athletic conference forgettable in every way, except for the fact that they make up the basement of FCS - a basement akin to the bottom floor of a underground missile silo. It is sad, because C-USA used to be the best non-BCS conference, bar none, including the help of a solid UAB. UAB is a respectable athletic department that got left out to dry in the AAC deflections of 2013 and 2014.

[Dupe]

I would add that basically any financial studies done prior to all the big moves would have to be completely different than what things are like now or at least trending towards.

In other words, if you barely make money before, you are toast now. Please come join MVC basketball and help us fix this conference. The mvc may not be great, but there are way fewer teams and oddly enough, those bottom ones are ALL teams that WILL get better. The mvc will live again. UAB needs to be a part of that.

EDIT: not sure how my phone turned "oddly enough" into "odd KU enough"... I came back and saw that and it took me a second to figure out what happened.

[im4wsu]

I would add that basically any financial studies done prior to all the big moves would have to be completely different than what things are like now or at least trending towards.

In other words, if you barely make money before, you are toast now. Please come join MVC basketball and help us fix this conference. The mvc may not be great, but there are way fewer teams and oddly enough, those bottom ones are ALL teams that WILL get better. The mvc will live again. UAB needs to be a part of that.

EDIT: not sure how my phone turned "oddly enough" into "odd KU enough"... I came back and saw that and it took me a second to figure out what happened.

Freud strikes again. You've been outed!

[Dupe]

Freud strikes again. You've been outed!

I think that was what bothered me most about it.

[shox1989]

According to this study UAB Football was not a money loser.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...ey-study-finds

If a school plays FBS football even at the lowest level of FBS they seem to do okay financially, even without much home attendance. The media money for FBS football make it viable from a cost stand point. That is definitely not the case with FCS football. FCS football is nothing but a money drain. That is why schools like Missouri St and Illinois St are looking for ways to get into FBS football. It is also why conferences like CONFERENCE USA and the AMERICAN keep putting football first.

[Shocker-maniac]

I think that the latest UAB football study is suspect. According to this 2011 Business Insider article, more than 40% of FBS football programs lose money:

"Naturally, football is by far the biggest factor, generating 45 percent of all revenue, which then must pay for the rest of the athletic teams. However, nearly 51 football programs in the FBS (43%) fail to turn a profit."

http://www.businessinsider.com/ncaa-...-report-2011-6

According to this 2014 NCAA study, only 20 FBS athletic programs have revenues that exceed expenses:

"Expenses exceeded generated revenue at all but 20 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The average loss among the five highest-resource conferences was $2.3 million, but was much higher — $17.6 million — at all other FBS schools. From 2012 to 2013, median annual generated revenues (all athletics revenues excluding those allocated through the government, the school or through student-activity fees) increased by 3.2 percent, yet median total expenses rose by 10.6 percent."

“If the trend of athletic spending outpacing institutional spending continues, institutions will need to be able to justify that spend to the university community and the general public,” said NCAA Chief Financial Officer Kathleen McNeely.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/...enue-increases

A very interesting 2014 article from Ethos Review even challenges the profitability of college football programs:

"For example, at Marshall University—a smaller top-tier program with a storied history—the expenses of the football team ($7,083,399) nearly wash out their revenue ($7,760,381). The remaining “football” revenue only marginally supports the expenses of other sports. Or, at Texas State University-San Marcos, a far less competitive football program at a university with enrollment numbers comparable to the University of Alabama, the revenue and expenses were both reported as exactly $5,633,155. The point is that once you get out of the upper echelon of the top tier—let’s call it the football 1%—the sport is hardly profitable for itself, much less for universities."

This article even points out that most football programs even in the P5 do not generate net revenue for a universty:

"To put that more starkly, even within the so-called top tier, 82% of college football teams actually take away money from the university’s budget, rather than generate net revenue. (The NCAA’s figures are, perhaps predictably, less damning with just over half the teams generating profit.) Benedict and Keteyian’s figures suggest that the overwhelming majority of top-tier athletic departments require their universities to allocate funds from elsewhere in the school’s budget for the sake of football. Thus, the myth that college football generates revenue for universities is a lie 82% of the time among the highest grossing “tier” of teams."

http://www.ethosreview.org/intellect...ll-profitable/

Obviously these studies were done prior to the cost of attendance measures being implemented which will put even more strain on many football budgets.

[Dupe]

One thing I know about making money is you usually don't have to run an elaborate study to figure out if you are making money if you really are making money...

If you can't tell, or if you think you might not be, you probably aren't.