Attendance not at large as football
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2023-24 Around The Valley
- Thread starter Jason Svoboda
- Start date
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And a much smaller expense than football... YET the baseball team wins conf titles, puts players in the pros and EVEN makes the NCAA Post-Season
dang auto correct got me on that one.
But i've said it before and i'll say it again ROI doesn't necessarily mean $$$$. Does $ have something to do with it? Absolutely. But it's not the end all be all. I'm willing to bet everyone on this board understands that every athletic program is going to operate in the red. We aren't looking to turn a profit on our programs; it's impossible. But we are looking for some sort of return. That return could look like donations, schools pride, alumni engagement, merchandise sales, solid attendance, sold out stadiums, national media attention, regional media attention, student applications, student retainment, student engagement, bringing people into Terre Haute, people spending money downtown, bringing people together, individuals being proud to be a Sycamore in any capacity, national perception, better positioned for conference realignment(s), etc.
But to answer your question directly. Did we give away free tickets? yes. Sponsors bought those tickets anyways so no money was lost. But i'm sure merchandise sales went up, and concession sales were the best they've been. ISU bet that once people came into Hulman Center they'd come back, and that bet was correct. We had damn near 5 more sell-outs AFTER the "free" ticket giveaway. That sounds like a pretty good ROI to me. Now as far as long term ROI from that free ticket giveaway; how many little kids fell in the love with the Sycamores and will be lifelong fans? How many residents connected with the university and would come back in a heart beat? The past 2 seasons of baseball and basketball did more for the university than the last 50 years of football.
Here's the attendance figures for this school year. For basketball I didn't count the NIT games since those aren't guaranteed games.
Football: 20,440 / 5 games= 4088 per game
Basketball: 80,212 / 14 games= 5729 per game
Baseball: 20,858 / 18 games= 1159 per game
Football: 20,440 / 5 games= 4088 per game
Basketball: 80,212 / 14 games= 5729 per game
Baseball: 20,858 / 18 games= 1159 per game
This is just flat out incorrect.
You're absolutely delusional.
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And you're a troll. Get a life and quit obsessing over me. It's starting to get weird.
What I was getting at is that people on thjs board are always spouting off about ROI. I have asked numerous times what the ROI is for football, basketball and baseball. No one seems to know but they just keep throwing ROI around. I have to wonder if they even know what it means.
Just not going to let you spout nonsense over and over lol think of it as accountability!
As you said, there's always the ignore button
I could ignore you except it won't stop you from continuously quoting me and popping up in my notifications nonstop. Shouldn't expect any less from someone that's username is based off of a franchise intended for children.As you said, there's always the ignore button
zville Isu fan
The White Level
Isu Baseball has been wildly successful over the past 5 years garnering national attention. Basketball team has completely been renovated with no guarantee of even being a valley contender next year. The fact that you are even saying that baseball is taking money from basketball is ridiculous because the way the baseball team has rallied the Haute and got national attention consistently is priceless. The baseball team has been ranked more in more polls this year than the basketball team has since the beginning of that programs existence.
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This has been discussed ad nauseum and you continue to try to focus on one facet of the discussion like you've uncovered some smoking gun. Athletics ROI, as @treeman was alluding to, isn't simply a dollar figure. There are both tangible and intangible benefits of college athletics. But since you continue to be maliciously obtuse about this fucking topic, lets just rehash again.
College athletics can do several things for a school:
1) University Marketing - Self explanatory and usually the benefit here comes either after a sustained period of success OR significant local/regional/national media coverage like having a historical season or advancing in the NCAA Tournament. There have been updated Flutie Effect studies that show that this doesn't move the needle long term outside of the P5 with regards to football. Some studies show FCS football has no marketing value and while I don't think it is that dire, I do believe it is miniscule. Unlike the NCAA tournament, the FCS playoffs don't go on cable TV until the quarters.
2) Fostering College Affiliation - The development and growth of an individual's affiliation to a school. There needs to be some payoff to this and is generally gauged by the donations made back to the school. You can see the individual sport donor breakdown on the Give To Blue website. The Spirit Squad had more individual donors than the football program did in 2024.
3) Program Revenues - This would be everything the respective program can bring in to offset the expense. That is ticket and merch revenue, brand licensing deals, media rights revenue, payouts from NCAA/CFP proceeds, net proceeds from money games, etc.
4) Provides Higher Education Opportunities - Also self explanatory, but with the minimization of the value of a college degree in favor of moving to a professional sports model, I see this one decaying more over time. It certainly loses value at our level.
There are some other line items you could add but those are the major ones that should be focused on. So your ROI would be derived from the combination of those factors and then evaluated against the expense outlays. Only football, men's, and women's basketball are considered in any discussion or study on this topic. Every other sport is considered a sunk cost as a result of the NCAA requiring FBS schools to field 16 athletics programs and FCS schools to field 14. Your fixation on baseball and "taking away money" when it is not considered a revenue sport and NCAA mandated is pointless. If you can build a program that can somehow bring in ANY revenue, that's a major fucking win in going towards offsetting program expense.
So lets simply focus on a couple things:
1) Can football provide any marketing value to State that could lead to prospective students?
2) Can football turn current students, alumni, and the local community into donors for State?
3) Does football have any revenue generating brand value for State?
Once you come up with some answers to those questions, they need to be evaluated against the operational expense and derivatives (like Title IX) for the program. THIS is where many of us have pivoted over the last handful of years, especially with the consolidation via realignment and the introduction of NIL, which will only increase program expenses. Especially when winning at the FCS football level does not have any potential financial payout like college basketball does.
Here are the ballpark expenses we know as of today:
1) $5-6m annual program expense
2) $1m annual NIL expense to be competitive
3) $20-$50m Memorial Stadium replacement or massive renovation
4) Title IX equal opportunity expense (63-100 headcount match)
For sake of simple math, I'll toss out the Title IX expense. Football needs $6m every year and a second set of donors to drop $20m+ on facilities. Football averaged 4,088 at home so dividing that means everyone needs to cut a check for $1,500 for yearly and then a minimum of $5k or more towards a stadium fund.
Are you willing, as a fervent football supporter, to make that commitment today? Are you, as a faithful football fanatic, to then put on your recruitment cap and work towards counting down that 4,088 donor number when Give To Blue Day saw football have 35 individual football donors?
Simple YES or NO to each question. If not, lets just finally agree to disagree on this topic and stop pointing to something that has no fucking bearing on the meat and potatoes of the issue. You will either put your money where your mouth is or you'll continue to be a freeloader off the back of poor college kids funding it currently.
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Jason, why do you keep demanding that the football fans 100% fund the program when you don't demand the same for the rest of ISU's sports? You don't seem to care so much about "the poor college kids" when it comes to basketball spending or the other $13M we spend on rinky dink sports like volleyball, track, softball, etc. If you want ISU to drop all of their sports and become like Northeastern Illinois University then I'm all ears.
Because it is the biggest cost center to the athletics budget where we are paying over $1 MILLION DOLLARS per win (significantly more if I include Title IX expense) and getting little to no benefit from. The "demand" is simply the alternative to dropping the program entirely. Again, you bring up other sports but with the elimination of football, I will be able to drastically reduce headcount and field smaller, cheaper sports, many of which can use existing facilities.
But keeping this simply football versus basketball:
1) Unlike football, basketball has a smaller "built out" footprint in attempting to be successful when you remove compounded Title IX costs.
2) Unlike football, basketball has greater potential for earning the school revenue with postseason play.
3) Unlike football, basketball has a chance to positively impact enrollment through a March Madness berth.
4) Unlike football, basketball has brand recognition through the association of Larry Bird and John Wooden.
5) Unlike football, basketball has a chance to positively impact college affiliation with sustained success.
This is simply about adapting to the new college athletics landscape and giving programs that have revenue opportunity or historical success a better chance to achieve.
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EvilleSycamore
The All-MVC Level
Honestly it comes down to most everyone here is sick of paying for losing. Not a dig, not a bitch, not a shot at you Isaac. The program is at a junction right now, keep shelling out for losing AND how the hell you going to pour more money into someplace for them to play? You must either fix current or build new and you yourself said taxpayers shouldn't burdon that, and that is basically where you are in essence either the taxpayers in the long run pay it thru state money or the students pay it through raised fees. Those "Rinky Dink" programs are not facing decaying facilities in the future so they are not eating anything, but very soon the football will. I speak for myself I have nothing against football, for me it comes down to the barrel of the gun this program is looking at with spending and its a good chunk now and soon to be unrealistic with the stadium. It's like if you are not making enough to pay your bills you have a couple of choices, cut something out of the budget, make more money, or suffer when it gets to the point of bein unbearable and that sir is ISU right now. The most logical is cut something out of the budget wouldn't you say? And the biggest gorilla in the room right now is football. again not a shot at you, everyone has opinions sorry but the majority don't fit your opinion, nothing wrong with that, but we are now where something has to be done and I don't think the something is going to be positive for the football program sorry dude.
doesn't look like basketball or baseball has led to prospective students. With the success of both of those teams our enrollment has dropped in half. I know most of this was due to Dirty Debbie but still those successes had no bearing on our attracting students. basketball only averages a little over 1000 butts in the seats than football. baseball not even close. If it weren't for the Hulmans and the Gibsons basketball would still be played in a depressing outdated Hulman Center. I don't think any of those 5000 souls donated $5000 to the renovation of Hulman. Someone would have to develop a relationship with the monied people of Terre Haute and the monied alums to address Memorial stadium. Did you donate your $5000?
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We have paid for losing basketball for years. None of you were calling for dropping basketball. We have two good years, lose the coach and the team and we are probably back where we were before $hits. It really doesn't matter that the majority here doesn't fit his opinion because no one on here has a say or an influence on those decisions. Just a bunch of know it alls that like to hear themselves talk.
How much money have they brought in. Their donations look pretty meager even against football.
Jason, for all that is holy...
PLEASE RETURN TO ISU AS A DEVELOPMENT/FUNDRAISER FOR THE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN THE INFO TECH/CYBER FIELD
RETURN TO TERREDISE
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It's like a monkey fucking a football