A New Type of NIL

[WstateU]

Shocker Hockey anyone?

[1972Shocker]

I've been thinking about that for a while now. Golf made sense when the campus had a golf course right next to the campus. However, those 2 sports and all the travel cost the with no $s coming in (correct me if I'm wrong) and little interest just doesn't seem best. Granted, women's soccer (maybe men's someday) may cost more but should draw more interest, on lookers, and funds.

Golf and Tennis raise a small amount of money and donations with their fund raising with various golf and tennis activities they have for that purpose but that is not a lot. Ticket and admission revenue has to be next to nothing as well, especially for golf. Not sure if they charge admission for home tennis matches or not but even if they do that attendance is very sparse.

The Shocks have not be especially competitive in these sports since the move to the AAC. Perhaps more so in golf than tennis. It seems to me like the primary purpose of these sports is to maintain compliance with NCAA Division I membership requirements and with Federal Title IX requirements. Primarily what they bring to the table are generally high quality student athletes from an academic standpoint and in the case of tennis, you might argue some diversity in the student body as the great majority of these athletes are international students.

Soccer would seem to be the #1 option for creating some revenue opportunities.

NCAA D-1 membership requires sponsorship of 14 NCAA sports. That can either be 7 male/mixed sports and 7 female sports or 6 male/mixed and 8 female sports. Once the Shockers add Women's bowling to the mix in 2024-25 Wichita State will have 7 male sports and 9 female sports. For NCAA purposes, without the addition of any new sports, WSU could drop 2 female sports or 1 male and 1 female sports and still maintain their D-1 membership. However, when you apply the Title IX requirements you may or may not have that flexibility.

WSU could drop men's golf and tennis and add soccer. The number of scholarships are about the same. 4.5 each for golf and tennis (9 total) vs 9.9 for soccer. All are Equivalency sports where scholarships can be divided into partial scholarships.

WSU could also drop women's golf and tennis and add soccer. Scholarship limits are 6 for golf and 8 for tennis (14 total) vs 14 for soccer. Tennis is a head count sport while golf and soccer are equivalency sports which I don't see as all that significant.

So if WSU was to do this they would end up 6 male sports and 8 female sports which would meet the minimum requirements for NCAA D-1 membership.

I would note that this is only possible beginning next year with the addition of women's bowling otherwise WSU would be short 1 female sport if they did the soccer for golf and tennis swap. I wonder if this fact was part of the equation for moving women's bowling over to NCAA varsity status.

[1972Shocker]

Shocker Hockey anyone?

That would seem like a relatively expensive sport to add compared to soccer. Which isn't really something we need to be doing right now.

Double the scholarships of soccer on the men's side at 18 to 9.9. Equipment and facilities rental would be much costlier that soccer. Recruiting, scheduling and resulting travel expenses would be a challenge.

Plus I think we could become competitive in soccer in fairly short order.

The season is 6 months long (October through March) so your competing for fans with the last 2 months of volleyball, MBB, WBB and the first 1.5 months of baseball an softball as well as the Wichita Thunder.

Seems like a pretty clear non-starter at Wichita State.

[WuDrWu]

Old men on this board I’m sure will also vote for beach volleyball

Been ringing that bell for almost a decade here......

[Kel Varnsen]

Been ringing that bell for almost a decade here......

[shock]

Old men on this board I’m sure will also vote for beach volleyball

Not just the old men. I’ve been a vocal proponent of the Greatest Sport on Earth for a while now.

[shock]

Been ringing that bell for almost a decade here......

Must have been you he was referencing there…

[WuShock16]

Been ringing that bell for almost a decade here......

Not sure what it says that you were the first person I thought of when I read his post.

[TrackSuitAndTie]

Would like to see the WSU collective run something like this if a donor is willing to match funds.

[WstateU]

Would like to see the WSU collective run something like this if a donor is willing to match funds.

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[WstateU]

[shock]

I have a used mainstays cast iron pan that I can donate to the white elephant NIL fundraiser. Does anyone know what address I can send it to?

[Dan]

Screw it, I put in my $500. I still wanna see more transparency. If they can improve things, my annual amount will go up. I’m doing this for the kids coming back, not to buy a player.

[Downtown Shocker Brown]

Been ringing that bell for almost a decade here......

As someone who has been to multiple beach volleyball games, I can say the following about attendance.

1) There are old men
2) There are more old women
3) There are even more young men
4) There are mostly young women

Seems like a win for everyone.

[Overtime]

I just pledged $50 per month, $600 per year. I have no idea if it is possible, but 5000 small donors pledging $50 per month as per ADKS’s suggestion, would be in excess of $2.5 million per year. That seems like a really good start. I don’t like what is happening with college athletics, but as Kennedy says, it’s the system we have to operate under if we want to compete.