Would you support the return of football at WSU?

[pogo]

I defer to your knowledge on all subjects no matter how far reaching as you have proven by your wealth of expertise on medical science law and finance. I nominate you for Grand Poobah. But then I think you have anointed yourself well in the past.

[1972Shocker]

Just stumbled across the Collegiate Sprint Football League. Had never heard of this before. It's akin to an under 6 foot talll basketball league.

https://www.sprintfootball.com/about

Navy vs Penn on ESPN+: ://www.espn.com/espnplus/player/_/id/3a4bc007-032c-4f6c-b973-c584da68c8a1 (Final: Navy 52 - Penn 14

Sprint Football is a full-contact, intercollegiate, varsity sport and has the same rules as regular college football, except that all players must weigh 178.0 pounds or less. The league has been in existence since prior to World War II.

Sprint Football players are fundamentally sound. Execution is the focus in Sprint Football. Players are schooled on the basics and provide fans with an exciting brand of textbook football.

A CSFL athlete exemplifies hard work and dedication. Players who wish to become CSFL Athletes must weigh 178.0 pounds or less. Players must also have the desire needed to succeed in the CSFL. The league is made up of hard working players who strive to be the best in both academics and athletics. Players must first be dedicated to academics, but must also be willing to put in the time and commitment needed to help make their team a champion.

There are currently 10 teams playing in the CSFL: Alderson Broaddus University, Army West Point, Caldwell University, Chestnut Hill College, Cornell University, Mansfield University, the U.S. Naval Academy, Post University, the University of Pennsylvania and St. Thomas Aquinas College.

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I suppose this is a bit off topic as this is somewhat of a small niche league in the Northeast and is unlikely to be widely adopted. Really more of a niche club sport. But they did have a game on ESPN+. It was just something that caught my attention as I was perusing the ESPN+ listings.

[WuDrWu]

"Tag" is now on ESPN......it's clearly time for me to depart this earth.

[jdmee]

"Tag" is now on ESPN......it's clearly time for me to depart this earth.

Don't leave us yet. You might miss out on the thrilling "Thumb War" or "Staring Contests". I know I am looking forward to the "I Spy" contest after the "Spelling Bee".

[atlwsu]

Don't leave us yet. You might miss out on the thrilling "Thumb War" or "Staring Contests". I know I am looking forward to the "I Spy" contest after the "Spelling Bee".

I saw a very intense Scrabble tournament on ESPN. There was a glass wall between the gladiators and spectators. I am not sure it the wall was to prevent kabitsing or to protect the crowd from errant titles projected in anger or jubilation. It took hours for my heart to calm down after such drama. I was horse for 3 days from yelling

[WuDrWu]

There's a weird station in my cable package that sometimes carries real live Quiddich matches. I'm holding my breath for a spine-tingling tournament of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.

[1972Shocker]

There's a weird station in my cable package that sometimes carries real live Quiddich matches. I'm holding my breath for a spine-tingling tournament of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.

WSU lists Quiddich was one of their club sports.

https://www.wichita.edu/student_life/campus_recreation/competitive_sports/CurrentClubs.php

[SubGod22]

UTRGV football to begin in 2025

The increased student fees and the revenue it brings will be used to cover a large portion of the expenses. Other areas such as ticket sales, merchandise, sponsorships and donors are expected to cover the remainder of the costs.

“All of this is part of an extensive expansion of our campus life, more generally,” Bailey said. “I think what you’re going to see evolve at UTRGV is as rich a campus life as you’ll find any place like UTSA or UT Austin or any other university. This is a crucial part of that.

“Keeping students in the Valley is exactly what this referendum is about too. To provide a traditional on-campus environment and with opportunities we think will help keep our best units here.”

[SubGod22]

The student fees are only going up about $11 a credit hour and capped at 12 hours. They do have a larger overall enrollment than we do, I believe they're a little over 30k students, but there's no reason to think WSU couldn't do something similar if they really wanted to. And there would absolutely be an increase in merchandising and sponsorships that would help cover costs as well as season tickets and ticket costs in general. I have a hard time believing we couldn't afford a similar approach on top of the money that donors would definitely pitch in. Maybe not as high as some would want, but there would definitely be money there for the return of football.

That same student fee here would raise around 2.5M a year. A few buy games would get another couple of million. I don't know what kind of money sponsorships and ticket sales (SASO fees) would generate but we'd be in okay shape there. The biggest issue would be building a new stadium somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that could get worked out and someone would pony up some money for construction and naming rights.

Then on the women's side you add soccer and then whatever combination of swimming/diving, crew, gymnastics and whatever else might be necessary for Title IX. None of those would be overly expensive to add as we already have club Crew and the other two wouldn't require much up front investment either.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

Riverfront can be used for football, right? Is it big enough for FCS standards? I know it's off campus, but I think any stadium would have to be.

[SubGod22]

Riverfront can be used for football and will be next weekend for the Jayhawk Conference Championship game. I'm not sure if FCS has any size standards for stadiums/attendance but Riverfront could absolutely be used, especially as a relatively short term option for an FCS program. I do think an actual football stadium would be needed eventually and I'm not sure what the max capacity is for Riverfront in regards to football. It's possible that some sort of temporary bleacher system could be used to add seats on the side of the field that won't be near permanent seating if needed, but that's not an area I have any actual knowledge of. I'll have to go look up what the average attendance is for FCS, I know we discussed it a few pages back, but I'm pretty sure Riverfront would hold at least that. Obviously couldn't compete with the higher ends of attendance, though the big outlier on that end is moving to CUSA in a couple of years which will bring the average down a bit.

It will be interesting to see how attendance is next weekend and it would be helped if Butler manages to make it there as they have a pretty strong fanbase just up the road.

Ideally, we could save some up front costs by using Riverfront as we plan and raise money for an independent football stadium. I've always thought that you build one with 15-20k seats with the ability to expand if needed. I see no reason why we couldn't average 10k for FCS football. Even as an FCS team, we could probably become the 2nd best team in the state pretty easily.

I can't find football seating capacity for Riverfront, but it has 10,025 fixed seats, a baseball capacity of 12k and a concert capacity of 18k. My understanding for the Juco game next week is that the field will essentially run down the 3rd base/left field line, more or less.

[SubGod22]

I'm trying to find out what they have as maximum capacity for football.

Also looks like the playoffs are down to Hutch, Indy, Butler and Garden City. Hutch plays Indy and Butler plays Garden City. A Butler v Hutch title game would probably be the best case scenario for attendance. Though being on a Sunday afternoon and competing with the NFL could hamper that some. The Chiefs will have the late afternoon game against Dallas that day. Title game is scheduled for a 1pm kickoff.

The Wind Surge FB page would only state that the bowl holds approximately 10k. Though some of those seats would be pretty horrible I would think based on the way the field will be setup. But I could be wrong and those seats won't be as bad as I'm imagining. I'd also assume that they could sell standing room tickets like they do for baseball which I guess would max out attendance at 12k.

[SubGod22]

Stumbled across some football expense data and found a by conference breakdown. It only shows FBS data, but just for the sake of general comparison on expenses at different levels of FBS to give an idea of what yearly expenses might be, the average AAC team spends 15.7M a year on football related expenses.

The MWC average is 11.38M

CUSA was 9.45M

MAC is 8M

Sun Belt was 7.39M

These were based off of I believe five years of data before Covid. So operating an FCS level program wouldn't cost more than 8M a year if that. We would need to at least double that to be in the AAC range of expenses if we moved to FBS. Costs will fluctuate with time, but the general principle is still there. I believe this includes everything from coaches salaries, expense of scholarships, medical, advertising, recruiting and so forth.

Again, I have a hard time believing that we wouldn't be able to make football viable.

UCF is the biggest AAC spender at a little over 20M a year. Colorado State leads the MWC at around 17.5M. Rice was leading CUSA at about 12.5M. And again, there are just FBS numbers. FCS would be less expensive.

Fun fact picked up from this site, Kansas averaged nearly 11M in costs per win. Their ROI is not good.

Found some FCS data from the Knight Commission and apparently my estimate for FCS was definitely high. You can look at individual schools and from what I can tell, we already outspend more FCS schools as a whole, but I've pulled up North Dakota State since they're the current gold standard of FCS and they spend about 6M on football a year.

Jacksonville State, who is getting called up to FBS was spending about 7M a year.

James Madison, who is getting called up as well was spending around 10.5M a year.

Sam Houston, also getting called up was spending a little over 4M a year, and I believe they're the defending FCS champs.

Our former Valley foes are as follows

Illinois State, 26.7M total, 4.4M on football
Indiana State, 17.2M total, 4.3M on football
SWOMO, 28.8M total, 4.2M on football
SIU, 31.8M total, 4.3M on football
UNI, 21.7M total, 4.3M on football

According to this site, we spend 30.16M total on athletics. Based on what I've seen from the schools I've looked at, you're talking about increasing that to anywhere from 35M to 40M for FCS football. And then again only to 45M to get to FBS spending at the AAC level. I really do think between SASO donations with season tickets, general ticket sales, merchandising, sponsorships and a couple of buy games, those expenses are mostly covered and that's before we even talk about a small increase in student fees.

Ok, I'm done for today.

[SubGod22]

Screw it, one more post on this just because all of the numbers I've seen today make me even more optimistic about the ability to get it done, if we ever get an administration that has the backbone to do it.

The following will be the Top 25 teams in FCS as of this week and their overall and football expenses based on the Knight Commission linked above.

1 - Sam Houston - 18.54 and 4.1
2 - James Madison - 52.7 and 10.6
3 - Montana State - 23.22 and 7.7
4 - South Dakota St - 23.08 and 7
5 - North Dakota St - 27.49 and 6
6 - UC Davis - 39.56 and 5.7
7 - Eastern Wash - 18.34 and 6.7
8 - Villanova - Private School
9 - Montana - 22.07 and 5.7
10 - Kennesaw St - 27.58 and 5.4
11 - E. Tenn. St - 23.45 and 4.6
12 - Sacramento St - 30.57 and 5.6
13 - Tenn. Martin - 14.02 and 4.6
14 - SE LA - 13.88 and 3.7
15 - Southern Ill - 31.8 and 4.3
16 - SWOMO - 28.8 and 4.2
17 - Incarnate Word - Private School
18 - Jackson State - 9.56 and 2.6
19 - South Dakota - 20.1 and 4.2
20 - UNI - 21.7 and 4.3
21 - VMI - 13.92 and 3.7
22 - Chattanooga - 18.19 and 4.5
22 - Dartmouth - Private School
24 - Prairie View A&M - 19.49 and 4
25 - William & Mary - 29.36 and 7.1

So James Madison leads the way, but they've also been building to be an FBS program. The FCS average is a hair over 4M and the top 25 (22) average is about 5.25M.

[bleed yellow]

I just have a hard time believing everyone at WSU is sitting on their hands, not thinking about football at all. I mean, if we really are stuck in the AAC for eternity, bringing back football wouldn’t hurt. If anything they could bring it back and see where it takes us conference wise