The FBS and the big problem in the future

[33jacket]

One theory is that the P5 will leave the NCAA and form their own association.

It is a huge problem.

Tech needs sustained fundraising. Period.

Look. I hear this all the time.

We just raised 129 million in year with a 250 million in pledges in roll call. Tech is OUTSTANDING at fund raising. These dollars and success at the school level detract and kill AA donations.

This is a fact. A true fact. Having worked with the AA on this exact topic I can tell you there is significant stress between the two for the way tech does this.

Now. I am not going to go into how roll call blocks athletics, and air the issues. But let me say this simply.

If tech did fundraising the way other schools do, our AA would be as healthy as the top tier schools in the acc.

But it isnt. And wont be. With the current setup

Our issue at tech is more often internal than external

 

[chewybaka]

I don't know if any of you saw this article last year or not, but look at the spending, etc: http://www.cbssports.com/college-fo...-football-playoff-teams-make-and-spend-money/

Be sure and scroll down to look at the numbers on athletic aid/scholarship. Oklahoma: 85, Mich St: 90, Clemson: 94, and Alabama: 121. Anything look amiss there?

Am I wrong , but I was under the impression 85 scholarships was the defining limit in FBS?

 

[CTJacket]

Am I wrong , but I was under the impression 85 scholarships was the defining limit in FBS?

You are absolutely correct. You can go over because some guys go on medical scholarship, which is what I would guess is happening at MSU and Clemson. Alabama processes 42% more players through their system than the limit.

 

[YlJacket]

so, if the money is justifiable, why doesn't everybody do what Bama does? I understand there may be a point of diminishing returns but it sounds like a simple business case analysis to me. If I invest X $ then I can generate "X+" $. Requires some raising of capital but it seems rather elementary. Obviously I am overlooking something.

You are seeing some offshoots of it. App State and Ga Southern being ones that are spending to get a credible FB team though obviously not Alabama levels. And as the article said some are simply backing off of what it takes to be credible.

While I take Colin Cowerd with a grain of salt, he does make one point that I agree with here. For big P5 programs there is a minimum level of support that is required to be credible - normally $2-$3M for a head coach. The question is how much are you going to spend above that level and what are you going to get for it. Spending $6 M for Dave Doren at NCSU (just to pick a random coach) doesn't get you anything above regular replacement value - put putting that money into Saban or Meyer or Harbaugh does. So it isn't just the money, it is the jockey as well and there are only so many jockeys worth betting on. But when they hit and the resultant buzz/wins/attention come, they are worth 10X what you spend on them.

Or you can spend top jockey money on a guy like Sartisian and have it blow up on you. It ain't just the money.

 

[Vespidae]

so, if the money is justifiable, why doesn't everybody do what Bama does? I understand there may be a point of diminishing returns but it sounds like a simple business case analysis to me. If I invest X $ then I can generate "X+" $. Requires some raising of capital but it seems rather elementary. Obviously I am overlooking something.

Harvard did a study a few years on the economic impact of football programs. The executive summary is basically that a successful program increases student application count, improves quality of student (higher ACT scores), and is a net positive to the university.

One of the big problems for many though is the high fixed costs to run a program. Major universities like Alabama have 28K students and many times that to support a program; it's more difficult to spread fixed costs over a smaller count.

Still, it's better to be a winner than not.

 

[Vespidae]

The answer to that is a long discussion with lots of assumptions and recognition that FB is the front porch for Alabama and recognition of how that pumps money into the University as a whole. But the short answer goes to student recruitment into Alabama and especially out of state students who generate more than enough revenue to justify the money spent on FB. Especially when the locals are paying more than enough into the AA to cover the $300K for the film analyst. On its own Alabama is a sleepy second rate southern university. The football team gets out of state students to apply who would never have heard of them otherwise. And gets other activity around the university that it has no chance of generating on its own.

From the NYT re Alabama:

"In the last decade, enrollment has increased by more than 55 percent, to a record 37,100 students this fall, and more than half of the students now are from out of state, another seismic shift. The acceptance rate in the last decade fell to 54 percent, from 72 percent. This year, 2,261 freshmen are enrolled in its Honors College, two and half times the number 10 years ago. Its 174 National Merit and National Achievement finalists rank Alabama among the top five public universities."

Alabama is raising record dollars for capital improvements and reinvestment in the university. The faculty feel the investment and are on board shouting "Roll Tide". Everyone wants to support a winner.

 

[Vespidae]

If tech did fundraising the way other schools do, our AA would be as healthy as the top tier schools in the acc.

I completely agree with this. And other schools have said the same ... Tech has a massive capacity to raise money if they wanted to do so.

Now, I've opined on this before, but I regularly get Roll Call requests. Other than A-T for my season tickets, I rarely if ever hear from the AA on donating extra. Would I donate if asked? Probably. But I'd like to know what it's for or what donating extra gets me. (Yes, I know I can just write a check to the general fund, but if AA said, we want to build a new XXX, that's specific and you feel good about.)

I think we could be outstanding at this, but in my 35 years associated with Tech ... they've never really wanted to go after it. I'v never understood why.

 

[YlJacket]

One specific example of the value of winning. When Curry took Davidson to the Elite 8 several years ago, the number of applications to Davidson tripled and they were generally high quality applications. My daughter applied to Davidson that year with a 33 ACT score which only got her on the waiting list. That value to a university is huge in both real and percieved dollars.

 

[Vespidae]

That value to a university is huge in both real and percieved dollars.

See my post re the Harvard study. They found that both the volume of student applications increased as well as the quality of the student. Imagine Tech being able to significantly expand its Southeastern alumni base ... it's a virtuous circle.

 

[alagold]

I mean, it's all valid.

Combine this with the fact that football is demonstrably bad for you, and less kids playing, and I wonder what the future of the game is.

Like, I love football. I played it for 12 years. My brothers played in college. I watch college football for hours every single week in the fall.

I won't let my kids play. If football is losing parents like ME, it's sure as heckfire losing random moms who don't have any particular love for the game. I wonder what 20 years from now what the game will look like.

Sports Illustrated had an article on the NFL stopping because of concussions/injuries and MOTHERS not letting sons play before then.Even now flag only is growing for under 15s.

 

[alagold]

so, if the money is justifiable, why doesn't everybody do what Bama does? I understand there may be a point of diminishing returns but it sounds like a simple business case analysis to me. If I invest X $ then I can generate "X+" $. Requires some raising of capital but it seems rather elementary. Obviously I am overlooking something.

Alabama has gotten SO DESIRABLE that they now take more out of state kids than in-state, just for the money (and can)

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

I think it hits it right on the head- I live in Tallahassee and ran into Gene Deckerhoff today and he was telling me that Jimbo Fisher was talking to him about how frustrating it was for him looking at a school like Alabama because they have such a larger staff than EVERYONE else in college football. Sure, they have the same amount of "coaching staff" as everyone else...but if you look at the bama athletics staff page, they have 9 people listed as "Football Analysts." These 9 guys are not counted toward the football coaching staff numbers. Basically Jimbo was saying that Bama is 2 days ahead of all the other teams in terms of having game film broken down and developing a game plan. While the "Coaching Staff" is working with the players on Texas A&M these Football Analysts are already breaking down game film on LSU and developing a game plan. One of these Analysts makes over $300k, which is more than we pay most of our assistants. Here we are with our student athletes and then Bama has an NFL farm team....

Plus I bet they have spotted tendencies similiar to the pros. If the pros spot a weakness, it is all over.

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

this is a very interesting hypothesis....what is the return of investing "X" dollars in the program. If Bama spends an additional 20% (hypothetical) more than school A, what is their ROI? Does that 20% net an additional 10% in profit? Is it breakeven? or does the extra spend generate enough to justify the risk and reward...i.e. does it more than pay for itself? Is Bama (over the long haul) smarter and more business savvy than the folks running FSU's athletic department (and everyone else)? Or dumber?

Simple: smarter. Saw an article years ago about the return on your dollar if your team is in the top ten. It was like ten times the amount spent.

 

[RLR]

As a natural contrarian, I really prefer the 'ol days when I was the one arguing that ESPN contracts were bubbles & financials unsustainable & it's all doomed.

So, I can't believe I'm doing this, but the current state of affairs forces me to be an optimist and support the SEC, ESPN, and your telecom favorites (2 choose 1: Comcast & AT&T).

(1) ESPN College FB contracts may not be a bubble. Yes, NFL viewership is down & yes the theory that live football's audience is inelastic are showing cracks in the valuation assumptions. But, TV providers are getting better at providing customers with on-demand & streaming options and generating mobile & targeted ad revenue. It's less of a battle between cable provider and star networks than it use to be (when you own everything, why fight at all?). College educated folks + the 'ol so elusive tween demographics are valuable, yes (Idk, just what i hear).

(2) College football teams also have a positive net effect on alumni interactions with the school. Alumni go to games, which means they come to campus more often, which means they are more engaged with the university, which makes it easier to solicit money. Ask Emory's leadership what it's like trying to raise money from alumni when you don't have an engineering school or football team. No one donates money to their graduate school & no one wastes their trust fund on college donations (*assuming trust funds are the only source of income for Emory's liberal arts undergrads)

(3) College football is a big money business that's loosely regulated (or about to be, once the NCAA loses it's last mirage of power). I'm sure we can look at any number of other US industries and see a common path - blue chip assets will sore in value, causing a bubble somewhere in the low-high to middle & when it goes pop the blue chips will recover but the rest won't. I'm hoping GT's ACC affiliation keeps us in the blue chip range.

(4) Why doesn't GT do to college football what we've done to corporate america? (i.e. replace expensive, inefficient labor with technology). I'm not talking players. I'm talking coaches. I know CPJ's contract is reasonable. And this isn't a rant about him. I also know Watson currently doesn't do anything besides sell gimmicks. But that type of platform is actually perfect for college football play calling. Put sensors in players shoulder pads to get dynamic performance stats, use historical play calling data, factor in down and distance & opposing coach tendencies, and loop in a live feed analysis of the other team's formation/personnel/splits to predict the play. (hell, maybe even go the Pat's route & intercept some signals intelligence. j/k, but kinda not). From their, choose the play with the highest likely success rate. . . seriously, I'm not a data expert, but shouldn't this be like a thing? No way a human can be better than big data in this task, right? Assuming GT + IBM partner and run this program at no cost & GT only has to hire position coach + recruiters & staff, etc. - what's our cost savings? a couple million a year?

(5) GT could and should find a way to merge it's educational & societal progress pursuits with the brand & fandom inherent to its sport's teams. I'm a big believer that football stadiums need not be used only 10 times a year. GT can push it's online education & urban redevelopment / city of atlanta connection my establishing better connections with atlanta high schools. (i'm assuming this could be a driver to redevelop the westside - a big benefit for GT & establish recruiting pipelines with the high schools that produce some of the best players in the world).

(6) the NFL will never, ever pay for a minor league. They are the most powerful institution in the U.S. Don't expect them to negotiate or choose the net-benefit option.

We will never raise as much money as the schools we compete with for the AA. I'm actually a fan of keeping it that way. The last thing GT needs is to sink costs into miniature golf courses and lazy river for its football team & having our top 30 paid employees be football assistants. But, clearly there's a way to increase funding w/o wastefully diverting money.

Also, can we please get a soccer team?? Finally. my obligatory get rid of Russel statement. There we have it.

/end rant.

 

[alentrekin]

One specific example of the value of winning. When Curry took Davidson to the Elite 8 several years ago, the number of applications to Davidson tripled and they were generally high quality applications. My daughter applied to Davidson that year with a 33 ACT score which only got her on the waiting list. That value to a university is huge in both real and percieved dollars.

Davidson '06. My baseball scholarship (one of davidson's 1.7 full...) was paid for by a football player who used to run McK's NY office. He and some of the other folks strategically killed scholarship football at Davidson -- endowing it as a non-schol sport -- and restricted nearly all of the other scholarships to strings-attached academic+athletic money. They also kept tight budgets and scheduling for everything else to allow for preseason tournaments, swag and marketing for basketball, and the coupled Title VIIII outlays. All of that is a major expense for Davidson, but it made the basketball program special on campus and unique to recruits. It all took a very long time, played into natural advantages like competitive NC basketball, and required Jim Murphy (GT MS) and some other smart folks guiding the ship.

When I started a new job, my boss knew Davidson through that association alone.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

I think the problem with most top football prospects is perspective. Not to be politically incorrect, and statistics will bear this out, but most football players come from the lower income homes and a good percentage from households whose parents did not have a college education. Simply put, they just do not understand the options put in front of them. They don't realize that if GT/Stanford/Duke/Northwestern/Michigan/etc. are recruiting you, that's potentially a winning lottery ticket for your career post football. It doesn't mean they can't get a good education anywhere else, but some schools are just more respected than others.

Look at the offspring of players who played in the NFL. Ed McCaffry's sons will have or are going to academically elite schools: Max went to Duke, Christian is at Stanford, and Dylan is committed to Michigan. Barry Sanders son BS Jr. busted his hump to go to Stanford even though he could have coasted and gone pretty much anywhere. Bo Jackson is on record saying he'd rather his sons go to Ivy League schools than make it in the NFL.

Just this past weekend, Jameis Winston said if he understood the significance of Stanford when he was being recruited, he would have went there instead of FSU. http://www.ninersnation.com/2016/10/20/13343478/jameis-winston-stanford-florida-state-choice

Most elite recruits have people in their ears about playing for these factory schools that education is lower on the totem pole of priorities. That's a shame because these kids get only one shot at these kind of schools that their parents could only dream of, and the people influencing them don't have the kid's best interest at heart.

Given the income disparity in the US, I think most kids are from low income families. Not just football players.

 

[takethepoints]

(4) Why doesn't GT do to college football what we've done to corporate america? (i.e. replace expensive, inefficient labor with technology). I'm not talking players. I'm talking coaches. I know CPJ's contract is reasonable. And this isn't a rant about him. I also know Watson currently doesn't do anything besides sell gimmicks. But that type of platform is actually perfect for college football play calling. Put sensors in players shoulder pads to get dynamic performance stats, use historical play calling data, factor in down and distance & opposing coach tendencies, and loop in a live feed analysis of the other team's formation/personnel/splits to predict the play. (hell, maybe even go the Pat's route & intercept some signals intelligence. j/k, but kinda not). From their, choose the play with the highest likely success rate. . . seriously, I'm not a data expert, but shouldn't this be like a thing? No way a human can be better than big data in this task, right? Assuming GT + IBM partner and run this program at no cost & GT only has to hire position coach + recruiters & staff, etc. - what's our cost savings? a couple million a year?

On this, see:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13320664/bill-belichick-patriots-microsoft-surface-tablet-nfl

Belichick's - shall we say - forceful rejection of using the MS Surface platform should make us all a bit apprehensive about some of this part of your post. I don't think computer tech is at all up to the challenges of an event as complex as a college football game. Oth, I'd love to see a match-up between Coach and Big Blue (it can coach Ugag).

 

[chewybaka]

You are absolutely correct. You can go over because some guys go on medical scholarship, which is what I would guess is happening at MSU and Clemson. Alabama processes 42% more players through their system than the limit.

Wow...42℅>>>>high census.... apparently $$$ is certainly not an issue...thanks for the clarification....

 

[takethepoints]

I think some of the posts above are missing the forest for the trees.

The big problem for post-secondary education these days is the funding levels from public sources are too low. When California abandoned the UC model of providing a college education for every kid in the state who wanted one it started a cascade of problems nationwide that have continued to this day. All of a sudden, the students and their parents became the main source of funding. That meant:

Increasing tuition rates to cover the shortfalls in construction funding –> increased demands by faculty and staff for higher salaries (if the kids are willing to pay more, why not?) –> more staff to raise funds and run activities (not educational, of course) to attract students –> more efforts to attract funds from private business, foundations, and (#1 with a bullet) alums and

–> More emphasis on collegiate sports

What we are now running into is the returns on this. Does football help with getting students on campus? Sure, a lot of kids go to schools where they can play ball and their parents watch. My son went to Trinity College, a really good school. The admissions people were very straightforward about it: they let him in at least in part to play lacrosse, just like they touted their sports programs to 40% or so of their applicants. But …

All of that is not what the problem is now with collegiate athletics. We are getting perilously close to having a few big time programs separated from the NCAA where the pretension of "student-athlete" will be unsustainable. In the long run, the politics of the public footing the bill for professional athletic programs at state colleges and universities is not defensible, especially in the face of increasing costs for educational programs.

A "luxury tax" scheme like that used in pro sports could bring more parity (not complete; Bammer will always get good players) and might be a solution. If we don't find one soon we'll see an end of the "big time" college game. I don't want to see that. I enjoy college football too much.

 

[ilovetheoption]

Sports Illustrated had an article on the NFL stopping because of concussions/injuries and MOTHERS not letting sons play before then.Even now flag only is growing for under 15s.

Im lost, a little. is this a shot at my masculinity?