FB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[Matt Barnhart (kid)]

I wish you were wrong bcsportswriter, but you aren't.

My thoughts and prayers are also with Craig and the Smith family.

[Outsider14]

Division III athletes are a different breed than most.  90% of them are kids that just want to keep playing ball somewhere.  They work hard and make themselves better.

i'm tired of hearing that. 90% of all football players are kids that just want to keep playing ball somewhere. i've been at 3 different collegiate levels, and there's no difference. i'll tell you this: i heard there were several players staying around odac campuses this year working and working out. well, we had a few players not stay this summer. our voluntary (and they are voluntary) workouts ended by 8 AM all summer long. if that's not love of the game, i don't know what is.

[mybleedinghands]

some odac schools don't have the financial capabilities to support a football team. football is a very expensive sport to have and due to Title IX (LC would ahve to have about 60% female athletes and about 40% male athletes) and financial capabilities, other men's sports would have to be eliminated for some schools to support football. It's either that or raise tuition (high enough as it is, with room and board its right at 30,000 now). Also, some schools don't have facilities capable of supporting a football team (i.e. Lynchburg).  When the lacrosse team has a game, LC gets to use the locker rooms in Turner gym, the other team has to go down to Wake Field house.  Two lacrosse teams combined is about one football team, so there is no way LC could put up two football teams every weekend.

[Outsider14]

the visiting lockerroom and training room at e&h is a swimming pool. and i believe guilford's visiting lockerroom is a closet, correct?

[mybleedinghands]

a swimming pool and a closet? that is just wrong, that shouldnt be allowed.

[narch]

sth - multiply 120 by net tuition revenue at lc...say $15k (a VERY LOW estimate)...still think football is an expensive sport?  you're right that football has serious costs, but i bet it doesn't cost 1.8 million a year

as for the title ix issues...it doesn't always involve cutting sports...schools can ADD sports, and with additional tuition revenue created by football (and the added sports), it's very possible for a school to maintain compliance AND have football - frankly, i don't understand why any small, private college doesn't have a football team, especially on the d3 level where there is no scholarship $$ investment necessary

[Trenches]

Guilford is not a new program. Guilford has had football for some time.

Roanoke has made no announcement about football.

Guilford is in it's 99th year of football. One of the oldest programs in the nation. Also, I belive the away teams use the upstairs gym as their locker room.

[mybleedinghands]

Narch,
When LC finally gets around to enacting their plans of tearing down Wake Field House to build a new "state of the art" (in D3 terms at least) facility, there might be a chance that LC adds football because I think they have plans for more and bigger locker rooms in it. There's also pretty much no chance of a football team being here until Shellenber Field gets its upgrades - which is scheduled to occur the first summer they get the funds necessary to enact the upgrades and it includes increased seating capacity, better emerygency vehicle access, concession stands, lighting, turf field, expandig the 6 lane track to 8 lanes, includes more, but I don't remember everything. The field, being natural grass, takes an absolute beating from both soccer teams practicing on it every day, and if you add football to it before it receives the upgrade then it owuldnt be fit to use. The past few years there has been high demand fo a football team with the student populace and some faculty, so I think that the demand for a football team will increase dramatically if and when they build it. They just have to get by the whole football being banned in the school charter thing or something like that. The story goes that the founder of LC, Josephus Hopwood, believed football was an evil sport and promptly banned it after a few years of competition. I don't know how true it is, but that's what I've been told. The idea seems silly now, but remember that was the first decade of the 1900's.

[Ron Boerger]

sth - multiply 120 by net tuition revenue at lc...say $15k (a VERY LOW estimate)...still think football is an expensive sport?  you're right that football has serious costs, but i bet it doesn't cost 1.8 million a year

Remember that your ballers also have to go to class.  Student tuition rarely covers the total cost of providing an education, let alone the additional costs associated with football.  It's hard for schools without some financial resources to say football is a priority if they already have problems paying the light bill. 

[narch]

bfb - include salaries & benefits for 8 new faculty (1 new faculty member per 15 students...about 500k, give or take), include football staff salaries (let's say 200k), football budget (another 500k-750k?)...anything else i've missed?...and use a more realistic number on a 30k price-tag (20k net revenue...resulting in 2.4 million revenue) and the numbers STILL work

[Ron Boerger]

bfb - include salaries & benefits for 8 new faculty (1 new faculty member per 15 students...about 500k, give or take), include football staff salaries (let's say 200k), football budget (another 500k-750k?)...anything else i've missed?...and use a more realistic number on a 30k price-tag (20k net revenue...resulting in 2.4 million revenue) and the numbers STILL work

But if it was that simple, wouldn't everyone be jumping on the bandwagon?  It would be a great way to raise revenue for the sports that don't come close to paying their own way (e.g. every other one).  Your 120 new students will probably need new dorms, especially at smaller schools.   If your school has 1200 students then a 10% influx may require new classrooms, too.   Facilities maintenance, security, administration, utilities, travel costs (guess that would be in the generic football budget), scholarships/need-based financial aid provided by the school to students who are admitted all have to be factored in.    Most of the schools you see adding FB these days are doing so to increase their male enrollment rather than to raise funds. 

My alma mater claims that its $30K annual tuition only represents half of the cost of providing an education there - the rest comes from endowments.   That may not be the typical case, but I think it is representative that the total cost of providing a college education is often more than just the tuition the student pays. 

[mybleedinghands]

Narch,
LC pretty much has no problems whatsoever in getting students to come here. Taken from the LC website: "After receiving a record breaking 4,001 applications, Lynchburg College will open its doors to approximately 565 freshmen on August 25 for Welcome Week orientation. For the past three years, Lynchburg College has received record-breaking numbers of applications and, as a result, has enrolled three of the largest freshman classes in the history of the College. The number of freshman applications received by the College has increased 100 percent since 2002." The school can only bring in so many freshmen, and obviously there is no problem whatsoever with bringing in freshmen, so how can you say adding football will increase tuition revenue? The schools is having record gains in retention too, so there isn't a significant problem there either. The way you phrase it makes it sound like LC will get the 565 freshmen AND 120 football players on top of that, but it doesn't work that way (it can't work that way, Lc has a hard enough time finding places for the students to live as it is). There are many kids here who played football in high school that would try out for the team and there are some other kids that probably would try out for the team that didn't play in high school, so the school wouldnt need to bring in 120 football players, they could find many of them at LC now.

[narch]

bfb - i think the number of d3 schools who have or will add football far outnumbers those that drop the sport...i haven't done much research, so i could be wrong, but i'd be willing to bet that i'm not - as for the cost of education being 60k+...i simply don't believe that math - i know educational institutions aren't businesses, and they certainly run a budget deficit much more willingly than any private business, but the bottom line is that if your school has to dip into it's endowment for 30k per student either they have one MAMMOTHLY HUGE endowment, or your alma mater won't be open much longer - your alma mater may be a unique case, but i can tell you that MOST small, private colleges are still largely tuition revenue driven - you make good points about additional classrooms, maintenance, etc...but the residence hall and additional aid arguments don't work - room rental will eventually pay for the residence hall and since i used NET tuition (tuition - average financial aid package) in my example, aid is already factored in - i'm not saying it's a slam dunk decision in every case, but i find it hard to believe that any school that is efficiently running a program wouldn't find those additional revenue dollars enticing, especially a school that wasn't at enrollment capacity

[narch]

sth - certainly in the first few years lc would find some current students or students who were already going to lynchburg to fill out it's roster, but if a school hires the right coaching staff and does things the right way, THEY WILL add 120 student-athletes who would not have otherwise come to their school - obviously lynchburg doesn't NEED to add football...but if they want to add 120+ student, add to school spirit and give the campus the dynamic of football, it's not such a great expense that it can't be done

a couple nitpicks about your last post, though - there are VERY FEW football players on ANY d3 football team that didn't play high school football...they won't make it through camp...football is just a different beast (figuratively and literally) from basketball - in fact, even at a place like mc, which is simply an average football program right now, almost every player was among the 3 or 4 BEST players on his high school team...somewhere around 70-75% of our players were all-conference performers in high school - i'll forgive your ignorance since lc doesn't have football, but AVERAGE d3 football is a FAR CRY from even some of the best high school football...much further, in my opinion, than d3 basketball is from high school basketball - it's all a numbers thing - in hoops one GREAT player on a high school team can carry 4 average players and make them a very good team...one GREAT football player makes a team of average players a little better - if that one GREAT player happens to be a qb who touches the ball every play, then maybe a little more than a little better, but he can't carry a team of oafs like a GREAT pg could in basketball

[Pat Coleman]

Here's a list of schools who have added Division III football.

Swarthmore, Mass-Boston and New Jersey City have dropped it in that time.