FB: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[Pat Coleman]

The date at which teams can report to summer camp depends on the date of the first game and the first day of classes, so it's not uniform across every school or even every school that plays a game in Week 1.

[Fripp52]

DePauw reports on the 16th

[Navidad]

Talk of reporting dates for these schools reminds me, for some reason, of comments I heard from a defensive lineman who transferred from a Division I FCS school to a Division III school. At the Division I school practice, he said, the talk among the linebackers behind him mostly centered on "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." At one of his first Division III practices, he noted, the talk among the linebackers centered on the performance of the player's mutual funds.

[TigerDad]

Welcome to the board, Navidad.

Nice start ... +1.   

[KentATM]

first and ten roos?   

[Ron Boerger]

The economy and irregularities discovered last spring continue to hit Birmingham-Southern hard.  Surprisingly, given the scope of the announcement, no impact to athletics:



During the past two weeks, Birmingham-Southern has moved forward with some decisions directly tied to addressing the college's finances. The first phase of the long-term plan to address the financial shortfall discovered this spring and to counter the continuing effects of the current economic downturn was announced last week. This included a reduction in force of staff members, as well as salary and benefit cuts for the remaining faculty and staff that will save approximately $6 million this fiscal year.

[...]

The decisions on changes to academic programs and personnel have now been made, and the college will be implementing the following:

· Phasing out five majors: Accounting, Computer Science, Dance, French, and German, effective with the 2011-12 academic year;

· Modification of our Music Program, effective with the 2011-12 academic year; and

· Reduction of 12 faculty positions, effective with the 2010-11 academic year, and 17 faculty positions, effective with the 2011-12 academic year.

[...]

These academic program changes will provide nearly $3 million in budget relief over the next two years and will directly affect only about 10 percent of the overall student body.

[...]



Very surprising to see programs like accounting and computer science get eliminated in this day and age.   This comes on top of an a recent announcement of a 10% pay cut, two-week furloughs, and elimination of a total of 65 staff positions, including layoffs of 51.  

[Navidad]

Ron, your comments about Birmingham Southern doing away with accounting and computer science programs (especially computer science) in this day and age mirror my thoughts too.  From what I read, several things were considered as the school tried to figure out what to cut to meet this fiscal crisis, including "relevancy to the liberal arts mission, relative program expense, extent to which the program is connected to the curriculum, the potential for future growth and development, and its impact on current students." Guess accounting and computer science didn't fare well at least under the first three of those criteria, but it's hard to see how sports (especially higher-cost sports) would escape any cuts too ... unless sports funding is already low enough not to attract attention, or is something that produces a net gain in revenues and/or PR value. It would be interesting to hear from someone closer to the situation ... is there anyone out there on this board?   

[Ralph Turner]

Just my conjecture, but BSC probably has 100 students that are directly related to football and another 40 that are there because BSC is a football school.

I will guess that the discount rate at BSC is 33% (and that might be very low).

I will guess that tuition, room board and fees runs $36K

http://www.petersons.com/college-search/birmingham-southern-college-cost-and-financial-aid-000_10000499_10003.aspx

$24K times 140 students = $3.360M.  Football doesn't cost that much.  It is a net revenue driver in that scenario.

[etg]

(El Tea Gray--re: BSC cuts)

Ralph, Navidad:
How much more can Birmingham Southern cut sports; within the past 4-5 years they already have cut all sports from Division I programs (Big South)? They did add football as a way of attracting more male students (probably female also). IMHO sports programs at BSC will remain steady for at least several more years.

                                                           

If you want to be Superman, you cannot sit and worry about Kryptonite!

[Navidad]

etg, I'm fairly new to DIII football and didn't know that BSC formerly played in DI. Guess that is quite a cutback already, and probably a good reason why they don't want to cut more in that area.

But all of this suggests another question ... what and how much does football "bring" to each SCAC school? What value can be placed on it for each school? Don't get me wrong, I'm asking only for purposes of discussion ...  I don't mean to suggest that they aren't valuable ... I like a good football game as much as anyone else, and always hate it when a school occasionally decides to cut its football program. But trying to look at DIII football really objectively, I don't see that it's often much like a DI FBS program at a big public university, serving as a focal point for alumni and attracting big donors, etc. Or does it serve such a role, but only on a smaller scale, and I'm too new to it to see that? And what other value might is also provide at this level?

[Ron Boerger]

Just a few ideas:

1.  Many colleges have a substantial female-male imbalance.  Football is a way of drawing male students to address that gap.
2.  Many high school football players wish to continue playing in college but have academics rather than athletics as their primary focus.  They are even willing to pay for the privilege.  For many schools (maybe even most?) football brings in more revenue than it costs, as Ralph points out below.
3.  There are a lot of talented players who, for whatever reason (2" too short, 0.2 sec too slow) can't get a scholarship or even substantial playing time at the D1/2 levels.   D3 gives them the chance to continue their careers.   
4.  There are many parts of the country where it's simply expected that colleges have football teams.

[Navidad]

Some good points, Ron. Not to belabor the point more than desired on this board, but maybe a good way to approach the question is to imagine that we're creating a new, academically rigorous and nationally or at least regionally recognized university (academically speaking). So starting from scratch with that as our primary goal, would we see enough value -- to the university -- in a football program to establish one of those too?

But that said, hey, I'm looking forward to a great, interesting 2010 season!

[Ron Boerger]

Is there one correct answer to this question?  Not really, it depends on what any new institution's board wants to do.  There are boards who want nothing to do with football, other boards that recognize the value of competitive sports such as football.   Both choices are valid.

Given that there are many academically rigorous colleges offering football (and most if not all of the SCAC schools offering football are nationally or regionally recognized for their academics) my biased answer overall would be yes.  Athletes at these schools must, per NCAA regulations, meet the same admission standards as the rest of the student body and be treated no better than a non-athlete when it comes to financial aid including academic scholarships.  

Some kids come to a school because of its location, some due to family history, some because of programs of study, some for facilities - or, more realistically, a combination of these and many other factors.  There are a large number of students who have football as one of their selection factors, and to reach those kids, you have to offer them a place to play. 

[arktraveler]

Addressing it purely as a business proposition (which I think Ralph was doing), of course we studied football pretty closely at Hendrix a few years back, including the financial case. I wasn't closely involved, but from the report at the end my basic conclusion is that football is financially something of a wash: You don't stand to make money from the extra students, but you probably don't lose much either. And I think the current state of affairs is pretty strong that the financial case would be strong one way or the other: If it were obvious, you wouldn't have a lot of schools with football and a lot without, nor would you have some schools adding or dropping football programs.

Looking specifically at Ralph's numbers, I saw somewhere that Birmingham-Southern actually nets about $10,300 in tuition per student. That may seem low - but remember that their problem is exactly that they've been awarding too much financial aid to students. I imagine it excludes room and board - though that's not really something that you should include since students literally eat that money up anyway.

You might say that that means 100 extra students brings in an extra $1,030,000 dollars that you wouldn't have otherwise - but those students also bring in extra costs. For one thing, most SCAC schools are pretty serious about preserving their faculty-student ratios, so if you bring in 100 students, you need to hire 8 professors - and if their total compensation averages $70K, you have to take $560,000 of that money right off the top. (Admittedly, having 8 extra professors allows you to add new programs that might bring in even more students.) It's harder to quantify the other expenses, but there are other expenses with taking care of those extra students, outside athletics.

Anyway, I don't remember all the costs that went into Hendrix's analysis - they talked a lot with other SCAC schools to see the actual expenses of a football program. But listening to the report, my conclusion was that the financial case wasn't compelling either way. Actually, if you include the startup cost of building the stadium and practice facilities, it looked very expensive. But Hendrix didn't include that in their financial analysis - they wanted to know about the cost of sustaining the program after they had found a donor to handle the startup costs.

That's not to say there aren't good reasons. Ron has several good points. The one about attracting men is a major one: Most small liberal arts colleges like the SCAC schools want to keep some gender balance, but in fact they skew female. A similar issue is racial diversity - whether having football helps to improve African-American representation is something that's controversial but at least possible.

[Tex]

TU wins the SCAC this year.  Junior class is the largest in years. Most got a lot of experience as sophs last year.  It's going to be crazy fun. .