ISU FB line is 30.5 on FanDuel…do w that what you will. We lost by 27 to EIU at home…
Expected it to be 40+
Expected it to be 40+
Become a Supporting Member to remove this ad and help support the site.
Just curious - Keep football or don't?
- Thread starter bent20
- Start date
WANTED: Passionate Sycamore Fanatics. That You?
Register NOW to join our community of die-hard Sycamore fans.
- Status
Become a Supporting Member to remove this ad and help support the site.
LOL... you wish. We already have to give the tickets away which is part of the damn problem.
When you can get season tickets for $60, you don't have a sustainable business model. That is essentially free loading fans.
Not wishing, just know that it'll never happen.
For 2023 these schools price their fball season tickets as follows:
southern illinois $165 for "best" seats, requires additional $150 'seat donation'; cheapest seats $60
illinois state $150 for "best" seats, requires additional $1,000 'seat donation'; cheapest seats $110
eastern illinois $75 - flat rate, all seats
western illinois $100 best seats, $80 remaining seats
youngstown st $300 best seats, $110 remaining seats; $55 'young alumni'
north dakota $140 all seats
south dakota $170 with $75-$100 seat donation, $170 remaining seats
murray state $125 for "best" seats, requires additional $100 'seat donation'; cheapest seats $60
Last edited:
$500K FBS game
+$250K ticket sales
-------------------------------
$750K Total
Add in concessions and the fact that we also play Ball State (have no idea what they're paying us) and it's $750K-$1M. I thought you had a degree? I guess it wasn't in accounting or anything math related.
^ Also who's been the loudest voice on this thread saying that all ISU athletics are a money drain subsidized by the students? I think that would be me.
My position is that if ISU is going to blow money on Division 1 athletics that they should sponsor the three major American sports that people will actually come out and watch.
Frankly if I was interested in watching a national brand I wouldn't have chose to root for ISU. I became an ISU fan because I'm from Terre Haute and my dad graduated from there, and I enjoy attending the games. I'm a diehard, but I'm also not delusional and I understand ISU's place in the college world. When you guys start talking about Final 4's that's when I realize that I'm arguing with delusional fans that think it's still the late 70's.
I pretty well demonstrated that if ISU dropped football that our spending would only increase by about $1M max for men's basketball which would only put us at Bradley, UNI, and MO State spending levels.
Butler, Gonzaga, Wichita, Creighton, Loyola, VCU and schools like that have resources that ISU will never have, whether we have football or not. Comparing our situation to theirs is ridiculous. They all have deep pockets and/or very wealthy donors that prop them up.
Frankly if I was interested in watching a national brand I wouldn't have chose to root for ISU. I became an ISU fan because I'm from Terre Haute and my dad graduated from there, and I enjoy attending the games. I'm a diehard, but I'm also not delusional and I understand ISU's place in the college world. When you guys start talking about Final 4's that's when I realize that I'm arguing with delusional fans that think it's still the late 70's.
I pretty well demonstrated that if ISU dropped football that our spending would only increase by about $1M max for men's basketball which would only put us at Bradley, UNI, and MO State spending levels.
Butler, Gonzaga, Wichita, Creighton, Loyola, VCU and schools like that have resources that ISU will never have, whether we have football or not. Comparing our situation to theirs is ridiculous. They all have deep pockets and/or very wealthy donors that prop them up.
Become a Supporting Member to remove this ad and help support the site.
Literally nobody cares about any of those schools or their football teams.
Every one of those schools was in the same position as Indiana State with respect to conference affiliation, amount of money spent on basketball, etc.
but each one of them also had people who supported the programs that had a vision. Each one had people who could see the benefit of additional funding and what a strong, well funded basketball program could do for the school. And they were right.
What they probably didn’t have was a bunch of people who wanted to maintain the status quo, talk about how all the other schools had better luck then them, list all kinds of reasons why trying something different won’t work so why bother trying.
Your attitude and lack of vision is exactly what SSOM is talking about when he says football will never be successful. There are too many issues behind the scenes that need to be dealt with but many people at ISU want to ignore them or just make lame excuses like “well ‘they” have a bunch of rich donors and we don’t” or “they’ got lucky and we didn’t.”
So instead we will continue to burn cash in a football program that very few care about instead of fully supporting the one program that ISU has that can generate eyeballs on the school and earn money for the program through tournament credits.
And when these facts are pointed out we get “well, we aren’t them!” You know why we aren’t them? Because those schools sacked up, and made tough decisions to avoid being like everyone else. And the best part is they already made a roadmap to follow. We just don’t have anyone at ISU with the guts to make the choices needed to follow it.
We have spent over $30 million (probably a lot more, sadly) on football for the last decade. And we have what to show for it? A crumbling stadium, a program that can’t win a game in their conference and no one outside of Terre Haute even knows the school plays football.
Imagine if half of that money was taken and divided between baseball and basketball with the rest going to the other sports. Imagine what those teams could do with it. I know this, they couldn’t have done worse with it than football has over the last ten years (a .350 (roughly) winning percentage). Show me one program at ISU that couldn’t do a lot better than that with the money football gets?
And even if you don’t take a dime of that money and give it to the other programs it still keeps us from spending money we don’t have on a program very few want
Last edited:
There aren't enough eyes watching NCAA Div I FCS to qualify it as "major American sport"
Who's said ISU is going to the Final Four without the football albatross?
You've demonstrated nothing, other than a narrow view that football (regardless of quality of play/program; ROI) is "necessary to be a Div I team
Those schools have chosen to make MBB their flagship sport and that decision has paid off for them; FWIW - schools with "deep pockets" need no 'propping up'
most of those schools have deep pockets because they have tons of doctors, lawyers, other highly compensated professionals in their alumni ranks -- simply because most of them have Dental, Law and Medical schools. Hell, VCU's entire reason for existence was a merger of virgina's early medical schools
Adding cognitive distortion.
EvilleSycamore
The All-MVC Level
I wanted add one thing to this. Example Appalachian State Bought their way into Prominence the same way Ball St is doing. in the 90's and early 2000's it was the cool thing for top 10 teams to schedule Appalachian St. as a tune-up game early in the season and beat the shit out of them. Well guess what they got paid and look at the exposure they got in doing so. If they didn't do that and became a standing joke of "playing Appalachian St." would you know who the hell they were, and they got paid by top 10 schools to do it!!!!! That my sir is a smart AD!!!!!
Become a Supporting Member to remove this ad and help support the site.
@Sycamorefan96, @Bobbyk60, or others... Lets get down to brass tax.
5203 is the average home attendance for the last decade.
5 x 5203 = 26,015 paid tickets
That means a Sycamore football season ticket would need to cost to sustain:
$5m budget = $961/seat ($192.20 per game)
$4.5m budget = $865/seat ($173 per game)
$4m budget = $769/seat ($153.80 per game)
So current season tickets are $60/seat. Are you (and others) willing to pay to fund the program so it can be self-sustaining from the fans that actually want it?
If not, what are you willing to PAY for Sycamore football?
5203 is the average home attendance for the last decade.
5 x 5203 = 26,015 paid tickets
That means a Sycamore football season ticket would need to cost to sustain:
$5m budget = $961/seat ($192.20 per game)
$4.5m budget = $865/seat ($173 per game)
$4m budget = $769/seat ($153.80 per game)
So current season tickets are $60/seat. Are you (and others) willing to pay to fund the program so it can be self-sustaining from the fans that actually want it?
If not, what are you willing to PAY for Sycamore football?
Last edited:
If football doesn't bring in MORE than it's spending, it's still a negative return.
b/c most mid-major college sports are money losers, the goal should be MINIMAL losses; piling up more $$ losses just to say there's Ind State football is insanity.
The Athl Department, the Varsity Club needs to asking the question to their donors - how much will your donation drop b/c of no football and that answer needs to be communicated across the ISU community.
Again, if the blowhards, diehards and delusionals "demand" ISU have football, then that community needs to up their game and support it, from the wallet to the asses in the stadium.
You couldn’t pay me $961 to go watch them play every home game this season! I’d have to pass.
But wait aren’t all these games against IU and Ball State bringing in a billion dollars a year?
Become a Supporting Member to remove this ad and help support the site.
That is why I did the $4m to $5m range. To offset up to $1m in FBS buy games. We'd need two each year but you'd have to then run the FCS table to make the playoffs essentially. So do they want to pay more and have a chance at the playoffs or do you want to have FBS subsidies and likely no playoffs.
The Freddie Freeloader Conundrum.
Your math is not believable as there's far too much "wishing and hoping" -- to your credit, you do continue to cite math vs. arithmetic. Sadly, ISU sports is far more of an exercise in arithmetic than math.
Will ISU clear $500K in both FBS games?
How much is Ball St paying ISU? Certainly not what IU is paying - will it cover the cost of traveling to Muncee for the game?
Will ISU collect $250K in ticket sales?
Concessions? The last Sycamore football game I attended was a pretty sad 'state of affairs' -- the concession stands were pathetic; not sure how anyone can legitimately include ISU football concessions as a revenue stream
I heard from a guy who knows a girl who said her uncle's neighbor said it was several billion dollars a year
From my perspective (and I know no one cares), the issue is this. We simply cannot recruit the players we need when we have to go up against the rest of our conference foes' facilities. Memorial Stadium is a dump. We might have a high quality kid loving ISU, and I guarantee you, when they take him to the stadium, he checks out. The place is awful. For the love of Pete, it's literally falling apart. You look at Illinois State, Southern Illinois, the Dakotas, or pretty much any FCS Top 25 program's facilities, there is simply no way we can compete. And, for better or worse, bright shiny things matter to recruits.
We do not have, and will never have, the financial resources to build a competitive football facility anywhere in Terre Haute. We couldn't even upgrade and do necessary maintenance work on Hulman Center without the State of Indiana paying for it. Where in a cold hell are we going to come up with $20, 30, or 40 million for a football stadium? It simply isn't going to happen.
So, we're stuck with a very expensive program that has no hope of being successful, because we'll never be able to sell recruits (at least the ones we need to compete in the MVFC) on our facilities, and we have no way of upgrading those facilities. Therefore, the program will never be able to sustain anything even close to a winning record for more than a year or two, especially now that we have to deal with NIL.
There is no path to making ISU football a success. Since it literally cannot be a successful program, we should stop playing around the edges and have the balls to drop the sport and invest in those sports which can be successful and generate marketing for us. A losing program that simply drains money and will never generate any positive marketing for us is a total and complete waste of limited resources.
We do not have, and will never have, the financial resources to build a competitive football facility anywhere in Terre Haute. We couldn't even upgrade and do necessary maintenance work on Hulman Center without the State of Indiana paying for it. Where in a cold hell are we going to come up with $20, 30, or 40 million for a football stadium? It simply isn't going to happen.
So, we're stuck with a very expensive program that has no hope of being successful, because we'll never be able to sell recruits (at least the ones we need to compete in the MVFC) on our facilities, and we have no way of upgrading those facilities. Therefore, the program will never be able to sustain anything even close to a winning record for more than a year or two, especially now that we have to deal with NIL.
There is no path to making ISU football a success. Since it literally cannot be a successful program, we should stop playing around the edges and have the balls to drop the sport and invest in those sports which can be successful and generate marketing for us. A losing program that simply drains money and will never generate any positive marketing for us is a total and complete waste of limited resources.
- Status