How much institutional support does the GTAA receive?

[orientalnc]

In this story on app.com dated today, Rutgers University's athletic department received $28.6 million for fiscal year 2015. How much does the GTAA get from student fees and the Institute? That must be a public record.

http://www.app.com/story/sports/col.../rutgers-athletic-subsidy-rose-2016/97043458/

 

[RonJohn]

In this story on app.com dated today, Rutgers University's athletic department received $28.6 million for fiscal year 2015. How much does the GTAA get from student fees and the Institute? That must be a public record.

http://www.app.com/story/sports/col.../rutgers-athletic-subsidy-rose-2016/97043458/

About $7million in 2015. Pretty much the average of ACC public schools. GT is EXTREMELY low on ticket sales and contributions as compared to other ACC schools.

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

 

[steebu]

That number is just categorized under "Total Subsidy". Is that supposed to refer to only student fees, etc.? Or is it inclusive of other things?

 

[RonJohn]

That number is just categorized under "Total Subsidy". Is that supposed to refer to only student fees, etc.? Or is it inclusive of other things?

If you click on a school you will see a breakdown of: Ticket Sales, Contributions, Rights/Licensing, Student Fees, School Funds, Other, and Total Revenue. The subsidy is the total of Student Fees and School Funds. Other takes into account such things as revenue from endowments along with other things that don't fit easily into one of the other categories.

I would warn anyone who wants the school or student fees to pay for more to sort that list by "% Subsidy". We are the 41st school from the bottom at 9.42% now. How far up that list towards Louisiana-Lafayette and South Dakota State do we want to go? They other ACC schools have something like $20million in ticket sales and $20million in contributions. GT has $9million in ticket sales and $11million in contributions. If we want to make a real difference, that is where we need to concentrate.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

If you click on a school you will see a breakdown of: Ticket Sales, Contributions, Rights/Licensing, Student Fees, School Funds, Other, and Total Revenue. The subsidy is the total of Student Fees and School Funds. Other takes into account such things as revenue from endowments along with other things that don't fit easily into one of the other categories.

I would warn anyone who wants the school or student fees to pay for more to sort that list by "% Subsidy". We are the 41st school from the bottom at 9.42% now. How far up that list towards Louisiana-Lafayette and South Dakota State do we want to go? They other ACC schools have something like $20million in ticket sales and $20million in contributions. GT has $9million in ticket sales and $11million in contributions. If we want to make a real difference, that is where we need to concentrate.

I've recently come to the conclusion (and I have been bad about this myself most of the time), that the alumni that are engaged, active fans of Georgia Tech need to give more sacrificially to make up for the large percentage of folks that we all know are 'different' and not engaged at all with sports (much less the school either after graduation).

Being Tech grads, we are all rational people. Not only do most of us probably prefer to hear 'if we got X more money we could do A, B, and C' (ie, specifics), but if someone said, 'and lets face it, a lot of people at Tech are different, and so we need the folks that are sports fans to give more sacrificially to make up for that', we would know exactly what they meant.

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

If you want to walk the walk.......

But "institutional support" can happen in many ways & forms - ours generally sux.

 

[18in32]

What I hate about these kinds of analyses is that they are usually fodder for people to rail against 'big-money' in college sports... which completely misunderstands what these analyses really reveal.

People's interest in football and men's basketball means those programs generate a huge amount of money (as we all know) at virtually all P5 schools, and many G5 schools, too. And because they are the primary generators of money, it only makes sense to invest heavily in them, too. So the football coach is usually the highest paid public employee in many states. He makes the school the most money, so of course he's paid the most.

But for every dollar you spend on men's programs, you've got to spend dollars on women's programs. So the schools are required to increase athletic budgets, sometimes at the expense of academic budgets, to pay for all the money-losing women's sports. So all this talk of how wrong it is to take money from academic budgets to fund 'big-money' college sports is completely wrong.

I don't have any objection to schools subsidizing women's money-losing sports (no more than I would object to academic budgets subsidizing a school's money-losing drama program). I just get annoyed that people are under the impression football players are taking dollars out of the mouths of struggling librarians. The economics of that view are completely backwards.

 

[smathis30]

I've never liked these kind of topics, but I really really think people overestimate how much "the hill" impact athletics. Engineering schools tend to be in cities and also tend to be smaller due to size constraints. This means other schools that have the room to add land and buildings and dorms tend to be larger in alumni base. Larger alumni bases means more exposure and better branding. Heck, can you go through any power 5 state and find a single predominately engineering school that is the biggest brand in the state or extremely successful? Oregon state? NC state? Illinois is big but ain't very successful. Texas Tech? Purdue? Lol. Michigan is the only one that is close to qualifying for this, but they are the bigger school. The only thing that can change is alumni donations, where tech ranks 7th in the public ACC schools. The next time you hear someone blame the hill, just simply ask "how will Tech do this? Where will the money score from? What space will be needed? Do we need to convert green space? How do we conserve the green space on campus?

 

[RonJohn]

But for every dollar you spend on men's programs, you've got to spend dollars on women's programs. So the schools are required to increase athletic budgets, sometimes at the expense of academic budgets, to pay for all the money-losing women's sports. So all this talk of how wrong it is to take money from academic budgets to fund 'big-money' college sports is completely wrong.

I don't have any objection to schools subsidizing women's money-losing sports (no more than I would object to academic budgets subsidizing a school's money-losing drama program). I just get annoyed that people are under the impression football players are taking dollars out of the mouths of struggling librarians. The economics of that view are completely backwards.

That isn't exactly correct. Title IX requires equal scholarships and equal quality of equipment and facilities, but does not require equal dollars. The travel budget for women's sports does not have to equal the travel budget for men's sports. However, a school cannot send the men's basketball team to Notre Dame in a private jet and send the women's basketball team to Notre Dame in Yugos.

My complaint is not that academic money is being spent on big money sports. My complaint is that student and institutional support of GT athletics is in line with other ACC schools, but fan support of GT is WAY behind other schools. GT fans complain about ticket prices and required donations. GT fans don't match other schools ticket sales or donations. However, the fans complain that the school doesn't pay enough to provide facilities to the big money sports and that the school doesn't pay enough for the AA to hire personnel to assist in recruiting. The facts are that the students and school are doing as much as Clemson, FSU, and UNC. The fans are not. If fans really want more money for the AA, they should buy more, donate more, and assist the AA in raising money. It is much easier to blame a nameless faceless "hill" than it is to look in the mirror and take action.

 

[GT Chillin' It]

I've never liked these kind of topics, but I really really think people overestimate how much "the hill" impact athletics. Engineering schools tend to be in cities and also tend to be smaller due to size constraints. This means other schools that have the room to add land and buildings and dorms tend to be larger in alumni base. Larger alumni bases means more exposure and better branding. Heck, can you go through any power 5 state and find a single predominately engineering school that is the biggest brand in the state or extremely successful? Oregon state? NC state? Illinois is big but ain't very successful. Texas Tech? Purdue? Lol. Michigan is the only one that is close to qualifying for this, but they are the bigger school. The only thing that can change is alumni donations, where tech ranks 7th in the public ACC schools. The next time you hear someone blame the hill, just simply ask "how will Tech do this? Where will the money score from? What space will be needed? Do we need to convert green space? How do we conserve the green space on campus?

I think you hit the nail on the head. We are not a big school. According to the Tech factbook (only alumni with known locations are included) we have roughly 135k alumni world wide. Roughly 61k live in the state of Georgia. You probably arnt getting many ticket sales and donations from the 55% of our alumni base which isnt local. Once you take into account the 'different' people that @bwelbo mentioned earlier, it becomes really easy to see why we struggle so much. Comparing us to someone like UT who has nearly 500k alumni is just irrational. I havnt done the legwork but I would suspect that the vast majority of the big state schools would have similar numbers.

I'm personally hoping that TS can come up with some ideas to energize the local fan base as well as bring in some more sidewalk fans. I also wouldn't mind seeing something similar to the IPTAY program that they use at Clemson. Create an organization that only requires a small donation to join and pitch it hard to all the students starting freshman year as well as advertise it regionally throughout the South East. This way you build your own list of donors. You have the small contributions coming in annually and when you need something with a higher price tag you throw it out to everyone and hope a big donation comes through.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I think you hit the nail on the head. We are not a big school. According to the Tech factbook (only alumni with known locations are included) we have roughly 135k alumni world wide. Roughly 61k live in the state of Georgia. You probably arnt getting many ticket sales and donations from the 55% of our alumni base which isnt local. Once you take into account the 'different' people that @bwelbo mentioned earlier, it becomes really easy to see why we struggle so much. Comparing us to someone like UT who has nearly 500k alumni is just irrational. I havnt done the legwork but I would suspect that the vast majority of the big state schools would have similar numbers.

I'm personally hoping that TS can come up with some ideas to energize the local fan base as well as bring in some more sidewalk fans. I also wouldn't mind seeing something similar to the IPTAY program that they use at Clemson. Create an organization that only requires a small donation to join and pitch it hard to all the students starting freshman year as well as advertise it regionally throughout the South East. This way you build your own list of donors. You have the small contributions coming in annually and when you need something with a higher price tag you throw it out to everyone and hope a big donation comes through.

They are actively looking at what changes they might make to the current AT Fund a la Clemson. I get the sense they think the current structure provides a strong foundation to build from, but that there might be a lot of positive changes they can make.

 

[33jacket]

I think there are alot of number games going on here. Student fees for athletic tickets is charged and part of the AA ticket fees for students for all events. The cost of that fee is dictated by the AA. Its basically a ticket sale for the aa.

This is not the same as the school providing more support on top of it...this is where generally at gt we are behind.

The other big wall or barrier is the one the school and alumni association puts up between roll call and the at fund. Roll call hit 250 million last year alone!!!!!!

But because the money goes there the AT fund is way lower; people already donated. The politics behind this are rich. I dont want to get into it. But gt donations are some of the healthiest in all the land. It just happens that the school walls out and doesnt offer athletic donations as part of the overall mission of funds and insists that the aa do it on their own and separate. This is vastly different than othwr schools where donations and donation programs are more central and less opinionated

 

[RonJohn]

I think there are alot of number games going on here. Student fees for athletic tickets is charged and part of the AA ticket fees for students for all events. The cost of that fee is dictated by the AA. Its basically a ticket sale for the aa.

This is not the same as the school providing more support on top of it...this is where generally at gt we are behind.

The other big wall or barrier is the one the school and alumni association puts up between roll call and the at fund. Roll call hit 250 million last year alone!!!!!!

But because the money goes there the AT fund is way lower; people already donated. The politics behind this are rich. I dont want to get into it. But gt donations are some of the healthiest in all the land. It just happens that the school walls out and doesnt offer athletic donations as part of the overall mission of funds and insists that the aa do it on their own and separate. This is vastly different than othwr schools where donations and donation programs are more central and less opinionated

Clemson Forever and IPTAY are separate, just like Roll Call and AT Fund are separate. FSU has 8 million in student fees to athletics and zero school subsidy. I don't know if it is still the case, but when I was at Tech, all full time students paid the athletics fee whether they cared about sports or attended sports games. It isn't just like tickets because we don't have 15,000 students at the home football games. We don't handle finances differently than other schools, we just don't get the ticket sales or donations that other schools get.

The Alumni A is pretty clear about where the Roll Call funds go. It is not acceptable to trick people into giving for the specified purposes, and then divert those funds to something different. The solution is to get the GT fans in the Atlanta area to actually buy tickets. It is absolutely embarrassing that FSU and the mutts outnumber GT fans at our home games. GT fans need to stop complaining that "they" don't do enough, and do something ourselves.

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[33jacket]

Clemson Forever and IPTAY are separate, just like Roll Call and AT Fund are separate. FSU has 8 million in student fees to athletics and zero school subsidy. I don't know if it is still the case, but when I was at Tech, all full time students paid the athletics fee whether they cared about sports or attended sports games. It isn't just like tickets because we don't have 15,000 students at the home football games. We don't handle finances differently than other schools, we just don't get the ticket sales or donations that other schools get.

The Alumni A is pretty clear about where the Roll Call funds go. It is not acceptable to trick people into giving for the specified purposes, and then divert those funds to something different. The solution is to get the GT fans in the Atlanta area to actually buy tickets. It is absolutely embarrassing that FSU and the mutts outnumber GT fans at our home games. GT fans need to stop complaining that "they" don't do enough, and do something ourselves.

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I am not saying being separate is the issue. Having fund raised for the AA i can tell you first hand how we do it against roll call vs how i know other schools do it DOES make it tougher for the AA. The school at gt is almost anti athletic.

Gt fans do plenty. It is simply roll call that captures it; which is fine. We have roll call folks that are not even aware of the at fund. Tell me thats the case with itpay at clemson?

There is more to it than just blaming fans

 

[RonJohn]

I am not saying being separate is the issue. Having fund raised for the AA i can tell you first hand how we do it against roll call vs how i know other schools do it DOES make it tougher for the AA. The school at gt is almost anti athletic.

A very large portion of GT students and alumni are apathetic towards athletics. That isn't the same thing as anti-athletics, but no matter what you do those people will not support athletics.

I know and have run into many alumni and fans who do pay attention, but don't donate and watch home games on their couch less than an hour away from the stadium. My attitude is that a person should not complain about the inaction of others until they are doing everything possible themselves. The hill is not preventing those who watch home games on their couch from purchasing tickets. The hill is not preventing any of us from donating more to the AA. The hill is not forcing the people in the club sections to sell their UGA tickets to mutt fans. When the stadium is 100% full of GT fans at every home game and the AA has to hire more people to handle the incoming donation calls from excited GT fans, then let's look at what more the school should be doing.

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[18in32]

That isn't exactly correct. Title IX requires equal scholarships and equal quality of equipment and facilities, but does not require equal dollars. The travel budget for women's sports does not have to equal the travel budget for men's sports. However, a school cannot send the men's basketball team to Notre Dame in a private jet and send the women's basketball team to Notre Dame in Yugos.

If you're aiming for technical fidelity to the statute (er... regs), then neither of us is quite correct – but providing a detailed explanation of Title IX gender equality requirements is beyond the scope of this thread.

Practically speaking, what I said IS true. Here, the correlation between equal provision of travel, equipment, facility, scholarship, etc. and equal dollar expenditures, is close to 1.0. Either way, it is Title IX, as much as football, that ultimately causes this re-direction of academic dollars into athletics.

I don't think political bias among sports journalists is as strong as it is among their colleagues, but the perpetual mischaracterization of these numbers eventually gets to be a little inexplicable.

 

[18in32]

When the stadium is 100% full of GT fans at every home game and the AA has to hire more people to handle the incoming donation calls from excited GT fans, then let's look at what more the school should be doing.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the AA/school plays a significant role in getting people to attend games and give money...? People who sense that the institution is not excited about athletic excellence will tend to be less excited themselves. This would be like evaluating an academically struggling football player and saying, until he's doing 100% whatever is in his power, we can't cast any blame at all on his advisors and teachers. Except that it is their job to help and encourage him (they're actually getting paid to do that), just as much as it is his responsibility to improve himself academically.

 

[RonJohn]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the AA/school plays a significant role in getting people to attend games and give money...? People who sense that the institution is not excited about athletic excellence will tend to be less excited themselves. This would be like evaluating an academically struggling football player and saying, until he's doing 100% whatever is in his power, we can't cast any blame at all on his advisors and teachers. Except that it is their job to help and encourage him (they're actually getting paid to do that), just as much as it is his responsibility to improve himself academically.

The Alumni Association does a very good job of getting people to donate to the academic facilities. The Athletic Association does not do a good job of getting people to donate for athletics.

I am not trying to say that the Athletic Association or the school could not do more. What I am tired of are fans who complain about the Athletic Association or the school not supporting the teams, while they sit on their couch and don't donate anything themselves. I assume most of the people who post on this forum have season tickets, but I don't know that. I assume that many of the people who post on this forum donate to the AT Fund, but I don't know that. I personally know alumni who are in the area and sidewalk fans who do not have season tickets. I personally have not done enough to try to convince them to go to the games. I am reasonably certain that many on this forum know alumni and sidewalk fans who do not attend games. I am reasonably certain that many of them do not try hard to get those fans to the stadium. "We" can either sit back and wait for "Them" to do something, or "We" can take steps to get our friends and co-workers to the games and supporting the athletic department. I am extremely sick of reading and listening to people who do absolutely nothing but complain about "them" not doing anything.

 

[MikeJackets]

I think that will always be a problem and there always will be a deficit of support from those who run Georgia Tech. I don't think a lot of them follow sports or care about them one way or another.

 

[jacketup]

I think there are alot of number games going on here. Student fees for athletic tickets is charged and part of the AA ticket fees for students for all events. The cost of that fee is dictated by the AA. Its basically a ticket sale for the aa.

This is not the same as the school providing more support on top of it...this is where generally at gt we are behind.

The other big wall or barrier is the one the school and alumni association puts up between roll call and the at fund. Roll call hit 250 million last year alone!!!!!!

But because the money goes there the AT fund is way lower; people already donated. The politics behind this are rich. I dont want to get into it. But gt donations are some of the healthiest in all the land. It just happens that the school walls out and doesnt offer athletic donations as part of the overall mission of funds and insists that the aa do it on their own and separate. This is vastly different than othwr schools where donations and donation programs are more central and less opinionated

You are correct. We operate like a private school when it comes to fundraising.

Academics at private schools rely on private support, and they can't have athletics threatening that support. People point to the quality of private schools' academics as holding them back in athletics, but more often it is the lack of money for athletics holding them back. Stanford is an exception, and one reason is they have a LOT of very rich alumni. Money for athletics is less of an issue for them.

In any event, money is one thing that has been holding us back since Homer retired. Homer was a fund raiser. Braine was a money spender who spent the cushion Homer left. DRad issued long term debt so that it would be someone else's problem. I don't even want to discuss the Boob.

Stansbury has his hands full.