You can bet the athletic department is NOT turning any type of profit. Most are very very lucky to come close to breaking even.
As evidenced in an earlier post, scholarships are up in the $2 million range, a figure which is covered mostly by the athletic foundation.
(This is not to mention all the staff pay, insurance, travel costs, equipment, office supplies, maintenance of fields and buildings, etc.)
Student fees account for only a portion of the athletic budget, and fundraising and gate receipts account for the rest ⌠I remember reading in previous football posts that our overall budget was in the $8 million range (no clue who state this or how accurate it is, but it seems reasonable).
Basketball is the only sport making money, bank on that. Theyâre not raking in millions per year ⌠the department is definitely not making a profit, probably not breaking even.
The football money just doesnât exist.
Cincinnati football - lost $1.8 million. Do we really want to do that? What a drain on the other sports, that money could be better spent to have NCAA-calibur teams in other sports. Baseball and soccer could be the football here - soccer has drawns huge crowds for NCAA appearances in the past, and baseball has done it for some other schools.
So are you guys saying you wouldnât attend a Charlotte football game if we switched to D1 when we could and umm lets say after a couple years in D1 we were ranked in the BCS win a bowl and get top recruits not to mention we were close or even selling out every home game.
BTW no one have really has still answered my question how does a new $40 million building we donât even need make sense, but football doesnât.
[b]So are you guys saying you wouldn't attend a Charlotte football game if we switched to D1 when we could and umm lets say after a couple years in D1 we were ranked in the BCS win a bowl and get top recruits not to mention we were close or even selling out every home game.[/b]
Do you understand how non-sense-ical this statement is? After a few years being ranked in the BCS? Winning a bowl? Getting the top recruits?
Look at Notre Dame. They had Ty Willingham, who had great success at a school with many more resources (Stanford) than Charlotte. Notre Dame has been irrelevant in the BCS for quite some time.
Notre Dame has resources that Charlotte canât even conceive of right now.
But yeah, the 49ers will just jump to I-A, and then jump right into winning bowls, being ranked in the BCS and getting the top recruits.
I could go through I-A and show you all the established schools with resources equal to or better than Charlotteâs and show you probably 50 schools that immediately come to mind that have never been relevant in the BCS era.
As for the $40 million student center ⌠have you ever been to the SAC around lunch time? Jammed. Nowhere to sit. There arenât enough offices in the SAC for all the student groups. Basically the SAC is a basketball arena with a second floor game room. Thatâs it. You are talking about a school with 20,000 students expected to grow to 25,000 students, and their âstudent unionâ is a small sliver of the basketball arena. If you want students to have a place to gather at midday or attend non-sports events during the evening, the SAC is not the answer.
It makes sense, but only if you remove the pigskin colored glasses.
And yes, I would attend a I-A football game, because I support all the 49ers sports ⌠but thatâs not the point. The point is that starting football would be a huge mistake in terms of money and wasted efforts ⌠and that would be for the I-AA level (because that is where youâd start and probably stop with football here).
[i]Originally posted by Brick Tamland Weather @ Posted on Sep 11 2005[/i]@ 10:21 PM
[b]I remember reading in previous football posts that our overall budget was in the $4 million range[/b]
I think the athletic budget is approximately $8 million now, about half the amount needed to add football.
[b]But yeah, the 49ers will just jump to I-A, and then jump right into winning bowls, being ranked in the BCS and getting the top recruits.
[/b]
Did i say we would just jump into D1? No we canât the NCAA wonât let us. But, for a student with over 20k of people and growing you think we would could get the ball rolling on football.
And YES I have been to the SAC midday. And its wasnât as crowded as prospector the last time I was there. Upstairs in the SAC is nice. Iâm sure they can build a building for student groups and it wouldnât cost 40 mil.
It still doesnât seem feasable to me why we canât invest 10 mil into a football program but we can invest 40 mil into a student union center for offices and a place to eat. BUT NO we have to have a new bookstore for some reason. Our bookstore sucks in the first place and grayâs is a whole lot better.
[i]Originally posted by HP49er[/i]@Sep 11 2005, 02:00 PM
[b] .................. the local casual fan will not attend. He'd rather make the drive to Clemson, Columbia, Raleigh, Winston-Salem or God forbid, Chapel Hill or [i][b]Durham[/i][/b] to see a college football game. [/b]
Duke games are pathetic. The cameron crazies cannot be the best fans in college sports. They dont go to football games. If they were real sports fans, they would show up at football games. Wallace Wade is always 80% full of visitor fans.
I was researching schools starting football programs online and found this posting on the UNC Pembroke site. It is funny how they can justify football and UNC Charlotte, a school with more resources, can't even analyze a football program.