Quote from: IC798891 on March 27, 2025, 10:10:37 AM

Quote from: jknezek on March 27, 2025, 09:19:46 AMI'm also kind of shocked that the club teams don't pay for themselves. I know we did at W&L. I think the club rugby and soccer teams got a whopping $1000 each from the school every year, but everything else the players paid for.

But it's hockey, which means a rink/facility that is probably not multi use.

I know. Hockey is the most crazily expensive sport. Again, it's a club sport. I'm surprised the school is paying much of anything for it. In my experience, that's not really how club sports at colleges work. The college doesn't pay, the athletes pay. I'm not sure why renting rink time would change that equation much for a club sport. More expensive for the athletes, but if you grew up playing youth hockey you know the drill on expenses.

That will be interesting. If 50% of the students are athletes and you take a huge enrollment hit, how does that save money? I guess they have the numbers showing that the programs cost more than the tuition, or they believe they can stabilize enrollment without the sports, but this seems odd to me.

I'm also kind of shocked that the club teams don't pay for themselves. I know we did at W&L. I think the club rugby and soccer teams got a whopping $1000 each from the school every year, but everything else the players paid for. Though I suppose field maintenance we also didn't pay for, but unless you are just going to turn those fields into meadows someone still has to maintain those spaces.

I've always been interested in the dynamics of DIII due to the variety of different schools. I have always maintained that the academic powerhouses have an advantage in most sports because they can recruit up.

When I look at the NESCAC schools, those are the players I see. When I look at the big research schools, well, many of the very best are D3s. Sure you have Stamford and a few others, but if you are big into STEM, and want to balance that with athletics, D3 opportunities abound in ways D1 can't match.

So these schools can recruit up. And in sports with small numbers, like basketball, I think that makes it a lot easier to level the playing field versus schools who have looser admittance standards who have access to a bigger pool of really good players with less of an academic background. Of course, there are more schools going for those same kids, so coach, facilities, experience and more matter in that difficult recruiting.

But I think the dichotomy of high academic schools being able to grab from a small pool of above D3 talent player vs a lot of schools fighting over a larger pool of talented but less academically proven players, holds true across almost all sports.

Football being the most popular exception. And here I see 2 big differences, one of which is about to end. 1) The NESCAC didn't compete in the playoffs so the highest academic schools weren't as represented and 2) roster size. It's a lot easier to "recruit up" a couple players a year. It's a lot harder to do it 20x a year, every year. Though we are seeing JHU have significant and prolonged success, so it is definitely possible. The addition of the NESCAC to the D3 football playoffs is really going to be interesting.

Regardless, when you look across D3, the schools consistently going deep in many sports, tend to be high academic schools.

Field Hockey Final 4 -- Tufts, Middlebury, Salisbury, Williams
Mens Soccer Final 4 -- W&L, Conn College, Amherst, Middlebury
Womens Soccer Final 4 -- Wash U, CNU, William Smith, Emory
Womens Volleyball -- Juniata, Hope, JHU, UWW
Womens CC -- MIT, Chicago, Williams, NYU
Mens CC -- UW-L, Wartburg, Pomona-Pitzer, UWW
Football -- Susquehanna, North Central, UMU, JHU
Women's BBall -- Smith, UW-O, NYU, UW-Stout
Mens BBall -- Wesleyan, NYU, Trinity, Wash U


Or you can look at the Learfield Cup --

2022/2023 final - top 10 -- JHU, Tufts, Williams, MIT, Emory, Chicago, CNU, Middlebury, Wash U, C-M-S.
2023/2024 final - top 10 -- JHU, Williams, Emory, Tufts, NYU, Middlebury, MIT, Wash U, C-M-S, UWW

Fall 2024 Partial -- JHU, Middlebury, W&L, Tufts, Emory, Williams, Amherst, CMU, Wash U, MIT

Ok, the last one I snuck in just for my Generals. W&L does well in the Fall, but will not be 3rd after Winter!

Quote from: TLU05SA on March 19, 2025, 03:04:41 PM

Quote from: Ron Boerger on March 19, 2025, 02:21:56 PM

Quote from: TLU05SA on March 19, 2025, 09:40:55 AM

Quote from: Ron Boerger on March 19, 2025, 07:24:13 AMOne thing I noticed about yesterday's announcement was that the ASC used the term "faith-based"*, which is certainly understandable given the conference's go-forward membership. 

That is spin. This is about money, not faith.

It's about money, especially for the returnees, but for the schools at the heart of the conference, make no mistake that faith is a big part of their game plan.  The conference doesn't make that change if it isn't. 

I respectfully disagree. This is about money, even for the heart of the conference. UMHB and HSU (and probably ETBU) have determined it is cheaper to pay Schreiner and McMurry than the costs and expenses to operate an athletic scholarship program in DII, DI or NAIA.

It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out.

Especially over a 10yr basis. If it was low 7 figures, what is that $2MM per school? So 4MM total? My understanding is that it's not an annual, it's a total in the low 7 figures. That's 400K a year, 100K per school. It costs between 50K and 150K to fly a football team somewhere. Cutting out one flight game a year, for each of the Baptist 4, and that covers it. And that's just for football. Being an independent in D3 in all other sports was going to cost piles. So was going to the C2C. And going D2 was going to cost more than $100K per school per year.

Really this is a bargain. I'm honestly shocked it's a 10yr contract for that little. I was expecting 5 years max. The two joining schools didn't negotiate for enough. Maybe they decided a little was better than nothing, but the way the Baptist 4 were over a barrel, that's a very favorable number for them.

D3 Texas college football is like a snake eating it's own tail.

That's a good pickup for the SCIAC. Should ease scheduling. I'd love to see DIII pick up a D2 conference in the southeast and fill in some holes. Something like D2's SIAC moving to D3 would really help with scheduling for the the southeastern D3s. And I still struggle to see the benefits of D2 for smaller private schools.

Everytime I hear about an E&H or a Ferrum I just shake my head. I get it, they are trying to stand out in a crowded D3 environment, but I find it hard to believe it makes economic sense.

Good job picking up Azusa Pacific. They were a D2 orphan, so it makes sense.

Quote from: hasanova on March 14, 2025, 09:03:08 PMYep, saw the ODAC was done.  Lots of good teams, but you need to get hot late.

Something I discovered while looking up something else:

W&L was one of the 17 Southern Conference schools when 7 broke away in 1953 to form the ACC (Virginia also joined soon after).

Not picking on the Generals, but they were 1-17 in hoops that last season with 17 teams.

Men's basketball has been a struggle for W&L for most of our recent history. The late sixties through 1980 were the glory years. But we've only ever won a single NCAA game, in 1978.

Coach McHugh is the first coach with a winning record since Verne Canfield, who coached from '64-'95, and then you have to go back to the 30s and 40s for a coach with a winning record.

To be fair, if you really go all the way back, the team is 1285-1280-1 in program history. But 355-521 since the start of the 1990/91 season. McHugh has really been a bright spot. This season was his first losing season at W&L, and it came off a pair of 18 win seasons. So I'm hoping we just went from a very upperclass team to a very young team and W&L rebounds next year.

I will say, as we all know, the ODAC is just brutal. R-MC, H-SC, Guilford, Roanoke, Va Wes... W&L under McHugh would probably be a decent threat to make the tournament in most conferences, but the ODAC makes that a lot harder.

Quote from: IC798891 on February 26, 2025, 07:39:37 PMCorrect me if I'm wrong here, (math and economics was never my strong suit) but this says it will only apply to places with "aggregate fair market value of assets of at least $500,000 per student."

So like, at Ithaca, which has 4,200 students, this would mean they would need assets of at least $2.1 billion for this increase to take place?

Now, maybe "assets" includes other stuff, but Ithaca's got a $373 million endowment and another $100 million is cash reserves, so well under the $2.1 billion.

Ithaca's not every institution, obviously. And again, maybe there's something more that go into assets (value of the buildings/land?). But they wouldn't even appear to be especially close. Obviously, the endowments will grow, so they may get there eventually, but it seems like this might be more targeted towards places with endowments in the 10s of billions than the smaller, liberal arts colleges and state schools that comprise most of d3.

This is not a partisan post based on anything, I'm merely trying to see if I'm interpreting this correctly

See the link above. I counted over 20 D3 schools with endowments of more than 500K per student. So yeah, not a huge amount given the more than 300 schools in D3, but there were about 50 (I think 46 or 47) schools total that qualified according to the list just on endowment. If you add buildings and land, there will be quite a few more.

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on February 26, 2025, 07:15:34 PMQuick math, it's $250m for a school of 500 students and increasing proportionately ($500m for 1000 students, etc).

We just had that big endowment list released.  I wonder how many d3s would fall into this range?

https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/EndowmentPerStudent/

Not just D3s, but you could count them. It's roughly the first 50 schools on the list. Many are D3.

Considering this limit would include Hillsdale, I have no doubt it will be magically raised to 600k per student before being debated...

Quote from: Ron Boerger on February 14, 2025, 09:37:18 AMWhile I am sympathetic to this argument, from a sustainable financial perspective you generally can't draw down more than 4-5% from an endowment annually.  In addition to their sizeable endowment drawdown (in the most recent audit, $66M) Berea is able to generate over $100 million annually in outright contributions (per their 990s; 2020, $109M; 2021, $100M; 2022, $120M; 2023, $100M; total, nearly $430M) and as a result they can do what they do.  I don't know of many colleges that can raise the majority of their annual operating costs - which for Berea run in the neighborhood of $140M - strictly from contributions (which include government grants; $22M in 2023).  Thanks to these generous donations/grants and endowment earnings, the school has had a net income of over $200M since 2020.

I looked at the schools near Berea for comparison.  Berry, with half as many more students, saw total contributions of around $75M for the four years combined.  Middlebury, with over twice as many students, around $260M; Trinity(TX), with 75% more students and a slightly larger endowment, around $120M.  If these schools have similar endowment drawdowns, the only other place operating costs can come from is tuition.  Unless you can become a fundraising juggernaut like Berea you'd have to dramatically reduce the expense side of the equation to change that, and for most schools the bulk of costs come from salaries and related expenses. 

I think colleges "can't" do what Berea does because they don't have the pitch. People will only donate so much to a school that still charges a fortune. But if you framed it the way Berea does? I think you'd get more donations. I know I would. Now I'm not one of the whales you need to make it work, but I do think that if you stop fundraising for the sake of fundraising, and start fundraising for a good purpose like lowering tuition to essentially 0 for all students, people would chip in a lot more.

Especially if you can get over the hump of 20 or 30 years and those who benefitted from the $0 tuition are now the people you are looking to give back. With $1B+ and a relatively strong donor core, going for 20 or 30 years when you can return 8-10% on your endowment shouldn't be a problem.

$1.5B at 8% is 120 million per year in returns. Add in 20-50MM in funds raised and that should cover operating costs pretty well. Might need a little belt tightening, but that needs to happen in higher ed anyway. Too many deans of everything these days. Yeah, the endowment won't grow and inflation will bite over time, but the math works on that 20-30 years if you are smart.

I think what annoys me most about that list is Berea College shows what colleges should do with a $1B+ endowment, and the other schools, including my own alma mater, show what is wrong with higher education...

I've all but stopped donating to my alma mater. Not because I don't love the place or didn't have an incredible experience, but because there are so many other places to donate that have an actual impact on making lives better instead of simply amassing giant piles of funds. I just can't justify donating to a school with 1.6+Billion dollars in the endowment that is still charging, on average, over 25K per year per student with a sticker price over 60K.

It's ridiculous.

One fewer possible Texas opponent for the ASC remainder as NAIA NAU folded the football program:

https://footballscoop.com/news/naia-program-decides-to-fold-football-program-after-just-four-seasons

You might see some other odd matchups this year. I have no inside information, but with both Roanoke and Gallaudet joining the ODAC football rotation, and Ferrum moving to D2, teams went from needing three non-conference games to two.

But the timing was all kinds of odd, so it's possible teams set games, cancelled games, and then scrambled to find what they need, possibly in a one-off. The whole SAA challenge last year was kind of last minute due to B-SC closing, and that could have also played havoc with games scheduled as a series.

Basically I suspect ODAC teams had to really work the phones for the last 2 years, and every time they thought they had something set, another bomb dropped. Eventually you just take what you can get.

Just a guess, but the zip codes probably correspond to where his wife can work given why he left W&L.