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John Wise is the WSU Assistant Director of Track and Field. I read his blog post today in which he suggests that his alma mater should drop its football program. His main point is what many of us have stated many times, a university would be better off to take the money it loses on football and invest it in its basketball program.
What I appreciated was his perspective as someone involved in a non-revenue sport at WSU. All of the athletic programs at WSU are big beneficiaries of this approach. Not only do WSU's non-revenue sports have the best budgets in the conference, but their budgets are competitive with the P5 schools in the region.
With the recent discussions of some big athletic facility improvements in the works, WSU is certainly demonstrating that this a successful model. I suspect that over time as the reality of P5 autonomy and athletic stipends come into play that we are going to see more programs drop football. However, WSU is way ahead of the curve.
Below is an excerpt from his blog:
You may or may not know but all but about 20 NCAA D1 schools lose money in football – and many lose LOTS of money, so much in fact that the entire rest of the athletic department suffers and in some cases programs get cut. Football budgets are so bloated by how much the sport costs to maintain and outrageous salaries that schools like Kent (and the rest of the MAC) feel like they have to keep up with the BCS schools and maybe become the next Boise State (by the way Boise State loses money every year too). One of the main arguments for having a football team, even though they lose money, is for free advertising on ESPN, Fox, etc. which in turn drives enrollment figures up. I don’t agree.
All that money that my alma mater loses in football every year, Wichita St uses to invest into our basketball program. We pay our head coach $2 million/year, our team flies to games in private charter jets, the assistant coaches get PAID (and thus are retained) and the athletic department marketing resources are dedicated to promoting this team that doesn’t cost near as much as a football team.
Most schools in conferences our size (MVC, MAC, Sun Belt) get around 60-70% of their athletic department budget from the university through student fees. At Wichita State we get less than 30% from student fees.
Guess what else? All the other athletic department teams are budgeted at the top of our conference and sometimes as high as our local BCS rival schools that we aim to beat. In terms of track and field we never feel that we take a back seat to anyone. Our athletes have access to the best facilities, travel budgets and coaches they can get.
http://johnwisewsu.blogspot.com/
What I appreciated was his perspective as someone involved in a non-revenue sport at WSU. All of the athletic programs at WSU are big beneficiaries of this approach. Not only do WSU's non-revenue sports have the best budgets in the conference, but their budgets are competitive with the P5 schools in the region.
With the recent discussions of some big athletic facility improvements in the works, WSU is certainly demonstrating that this a successful model. I suspect that over time as the reality of P5 autonomy and athletic stipends come into play that we are going to see more programs drop football. However, WSU is way ahead of the curve.
Below is an excerpt from his blog:
You may or may not know but all but about 20 NCAA D1 schools lose money in football – and many lose LOTS of money, so much in fact that the entire rest of the athletic department suffers and in some cases programs get cut. Football budgets are so bloated by how much the sport costs to maintain and outrageous salaries that schools like Kent (and the rest of the MAC) feel like they have to keep up with the BCS schools and maybe become the next Boise State (by the way Boise State loses money every year too). One of the main arguments for having a football team, even though they lose money, is for free advertising on ESPN, Fox, etc. which in turn drives enrollment figures up. I don’t agree.
All that money that my alma mater loses in football every year, Wichita St uses to invest into our basketball program. We pay our head coach $2 million/year, our team flies to games in private charter jets, the assistant coaches get PAID (and thus are retained) and the athletic department marketing resources are dedicated to promoting this team that doesn’t cost near as much as a football team.
Most schools in conferences our size (MVC, MAC, Sun Belt) get around 60-70% of their athletic department budget from the university through student fees. At Wichita State we get less than 30% from student fees.
Guess what else? All the other athletic department teams are budgeted at the top of our conference and sometimes as high as our local BCS rival schools that we aim to beat. In terms of track and field we never feel that we take a back seat to anyone. Our athletes have access to the best facilities, travel budgets and coaches they can get.
http://johnwisewsu.blogspot.com/
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