University of New Orleans & D3-D1

[Gregory Sager]

UNO -- Playing in Limbo

Pull Quote...

...There already have been bumps in the Division-III road for UNO. Sources familiar with the situation said the school informally has been denied acceptance into at least two Division III conferences during its decision-making process.

Is this story implying that the ASC has spurned UNO's feelers to join the conference after moving to D3? That would surprise me, because, as we've discussed, the ASC seems like a good fit for UNO.

[Ron Boerger]

UNO -- Playing in Limbo

Pull Quote...

...There already have been bumps in the Division-III road for UNO. Sources familiar with the situation said the school informally has been denied acceptance into at least two Division III conferences during its decision-making process.

Is this story implying that the ASC has spurned UNO's feelers to join the conference after moving to D3? That would surprise me, because, as we've discussed, the ASC seems like a good fit for UNO.

Story does imply that; that said, UNO would be considerably larger than any other ASC school.

[Ralph Turner]

UNO -- Playing in Limbo

Pull Quote...

...There already have been bumps in the Division-III road for UNO. Sources familiar with the situation said the school informally has been denied acceptance into at least two Division III conferences during its decision-making process.

Is this story implying that the ASC has spurned UNO's feelers to join the conference after moving to D3? That would surprise me, because, as we've discussed, the ASC seems like a good fit for UNO.

I would prefer to have Centenary.  Centenary has been on the ASC radar for a long time.

Centenary is about five hours closer for almost everyone.  Shreveport to New Orleans is 343 miles.  Louisiana College is 222 miles from UNO.   Louisiana College is 176 miles from Mississippi College.  New Orleans to Mississippi College is 195 miles.  There is no natural travel partner that is close for UNO.  As it is now, it is a triangle down there.  If NAIA football member Belhaven in Jackson MS were to move to D3, then that would make a nice group.

With 11,000 students generating $3.3M in fees to fund an athletic department, that is about $1M more that the usual D3 program.  The facilities are probably better than any D3 programs in this part of the country.

I think that the UNO issue is who gets into the ASC-East as the 8th team.  Centenary is probably in line ahead of UNO.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Ralph,

You might want to poll the ASC players whether they would prefer Bourbon Street or Shreveport!

[Wydown Blvd.]

But then ask the ASC coaches....

[hickory_cornhusker]

UNO -- Playing in Limbo

Pull Quote...

...There already have been bumps in the Division-III road for UNO. Sources familiar with the situation said the school informally has been denied acceptance into at least two Division III conferences during its decision-making process.

Is this story implying that the ASC has spurned UNO's feelers to join the conference after moving to D3? That would surprise me, because, as we've discussed, the ASC seems like a good fit for UNO.

Story does imply that; that said, UNO would be considerably larger than any other ASC school.

Actually according to the latest numbers I've seen UT-Dallas is slightly larger than UNO. Hurricane Katrina took a huge toll on UNO's enrollment and they still haven't recovered.

[Ron Boerger]

UT-D has a huge graduate enrollment (over 5K) but even excluding that, you're right, they have about the same undergrad enrollment as UNO.  +1 for the correction.  

That said ... neither UT-D or UT-Tyler offer football.  If UNO wanted to offer it (and since they have a club team now it would seem likely) then UNO would theoretically be by far the largest school to offer a football program in the ASC - the only other state school to offer it is Sul Ross, which is much smaller.  

[Gregory Sager]

With 11,000 students generating $3.3M in fees to fund an athletic department, that is about $1M more that the usual D3 program.  The facilities are probably better than any D3 programs in this part of the country.

The news stories out of New Orleans are reporting UNO's enrollment as 11,000, but the Petersons website currently shows enrollment as 8,648, which is smaller than that of the University of Texas-Dallas.

Petersons also shows that the UNO undergraduate student body is 95% commuter, 5% resident. That's very significant; it's difficult to muster much interest in school activities among commuter students, and urban commuter schools thus tend to have significantly undersupported athletic programs, when they have athletic programs at all. Case in point: Northeastern Illinois University, which is the same size as UNO, dropped its D1 athletic programs and disbanded the athletic department entirely, because nobody ever showed up for games. Chicago State University, which is also D1, is often outdrawn by CCIW schools in terms of average attendance. UTD has consistently drawn 250-300 fans for Comets games -- and never drew more than 450 for a game last season, in spite of the fact that the Comets won the ASC and made it to the Elite Eight! And UTD has a significantly bigger resident student base than does UNO (UTD is 79% commuter, 21% resident).

(The only exceptions to the commuters-don't-care dictum that comes to mind are urban commuter-majority schools that have national-profile D1 basketball traditions that stretch back for decades, such as DePaul, St. John's, and Temple.)

UNO has a magnificent facility: Lakefront Arena, which seats 10,000. But it's practically empty on game nights; while a big-name opponent such as North Carolina State or a local rival such as Tulane or Mississippi can bump up attendance over the 1,000 mark on occasion, the typical home game against a conference rival such as Arkansas State, Denver, or North Dakota draws about 500 to 700 fans. And that's against D1 competition; imagine how much lower the attendance will be once UNO becomes a D3 team.

I understand that the student fees of a public school that size could generate a pretty healthy-sized athletic department budget. But there's no guarantee that the school will continue to charge the same-sized fee once the school changes from D1 to D3. UNO is about the same size as a WIAC school, and the WIAC folks are always pleading poverty with regard to their athletic budgets in comparison to some of the fat-cat-supported private schools in D3.

In other words, the student population figure for UNO -- whether it's the reported 11,000 or the 8,648 that Petersons claims -- is deceptive. It's resident students that sit in the stands and support their school's teams, not undergraduate students in general.

[Warren Thompson]

Greg:

Just out of curiosity, is your local Loyola primarily a commuter venue?

[Gregory Sager]

Loyola (IL) is 40% resident, 60% commuter. That's actually a slightly higher resident ratio than Elmhurst has. The difference is that Loyola has 10,000 students, which means 4,000 residents who give the campus a sense of life outside of the classroom -- including at basketball games at Loyola's 5,000-seat Gentile Center.

The East Rogers Park neighborhood around Loyola has a very vibrant, "college-town" sort of feel that you don't get around a commuter school, and that's because the 4,000 resident students provide enough of a critical mass to give the nearby community that atmosphere.

[Warren Thompson]

Thanks, Greg.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Being a predominantly commuter school (plus living in the very large shadow of U of M) has always been the death knell for Eastern Michigan.  I think the on-campus population is <5,000, though there are also about 3,000 who live in apartments nearby (of a total enrollment of 19-24,000, depending on the economy).  This has been enough to keep the Convo Center hopping for basketball, but they will NEVER (legitimately) average much over 7,000 for football (which will someday get them kicked out of D1).

[Pat Coleman]

University of New Orleans reported the following numbers to the U.S. Department of Education for last school year:

Number of Full-time Undergraduates: 6,546
Men: 3,248
Women: 3,298

[doolittledog]

University of New Orleans reported the following numbers to the U.S. Department of Education for last school year:

Number of Full-time Undergraduates: 6,546
Men: 3,248
Women: 3,298

Do you have a link for that info?  I would love to see what the schools report on there compared to what they put out on their websites. 

[Pat Coleman]

Here you go:

http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/

I use this because it's precise and consistent.