Good point. I think we've got it covered. Mason should hire all of us to run the athletic department.
Athletic Director Tom O'Connor Announces Retirement
- Thread starter JBiggs
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Good point. I think we've got it covered. Mason should hire all of us to run the athletic department.
KAOriginal
All-American
Anybody can put a crappy basketball team on the floor with a bunch of old school Olympic sports.....I say its time to break the mold and set a new standard of "college athletics!"
We should at least be honest on these boards. The Eastern Wrestling League is quite possibly the worst D-1 wrestling conference. We are in it because no other conference would take us. The EIWA would be a much better fit for us, but they had 0 interest in us joining their conference once CAA Wrestling disbanded.
Not only are we in this awful league, but we finished dead last in the conference championship a distant, distant last, 26 points out second-to-last. Let's be real here.
Pablo
Hall of Famer
And, perhaps if you wanted to be honest, you might have mentioned that Eastern Wrestling League (EWL) member Edinboro finished 5th in team scoring at the 2014 NCAA D-1 Wrestling Championship.
There's no question that Mason has a long way to go to be competitive in wrestling. But, I really don't believe that the EWL is a poor fit for Mason as you suggest. And, I believe it's very positive that the community is supporting Mason wrestling. It certainly doesn't hurt that the program is doing well in ticket sales and fundraising.
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I think it gets a little iffy when talking about financing our teams because schools report expenses differently. I know we talk about vcu probably too much, but the are a peer institution in the same state so it's an apt comparison I think:
vcu total athletics budget (for 2012): 22.779 million
GMU total athletics budget (for 2012): 19.980
At face value it looks like vcu is supporting their programs at a much higher value, especially since they offer fewer sports, but drill down further and you see this curious line item:
Facilities management
vcu: 5.5 million
GMU: 0.0
Take out the facilities cost from vcu athletics budget and you get:
vcu: 17.279 million
Drill down further and you can see some other things:
Coaching salaries
vcu: 7.29 million
GMU: 7.684
Now we know Shaka makes about 500k more than his counterpart at Mason, so we don't seem to be skimping on the coaching salaries (maybe making some bad hires, but it's not because we aren't willing to pay for quality).
Scholarships
vcu: 3.6 million
GMU: 4.6 million
I suspect this is the consequence of having more sports.
Drilling down even further into basketball support:
2013 Recruiting budget:
vcu: $281,000
GMU: $305,000
There are certainly things we could be doing better (our ability to raise private funds is pretty horrible and our ticket revenues are falling off a cliff), but in terms of overall support to our programs it's not doom and gloom. And there are several men's and women's teams who have really shown up in their inaugural seasons in the A10. But I think as much as being a good fundraiser, our new AD has to be able to clean out some of these bad and mediocre coaches who are dragging the whole athletics department down.
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vcu total athletics budget (for 2012): 22.779 million
GMU total athletics budget (for 2012): 19.980
At face value it looks like vcu is supporting their programs at a much higher value, especially since they offer fewer sports, but drill down further and you see this curious line item:
Facilities management
vcu: 5.5 million
GMU: 0.0
Take out the facilities cost from vcu athletics budget and you get:
vcu: 17.279 million
Drill down further and you can see some other things:
Coaching salaries
vcu: 7.29 million
GMU: 7.684
Now we know Shaka makes about 500k more than his counterpart at Mason, so we don't seem to be skimping on the coaching salaries (maybe making some bad hires, but it's not because we aren't willing to pay for quality).
Scholarships
vcu: 3.6 million
GMU: 4.6 million
I suspect this is the consequence of having more sports.
Drilling down even further into basketball support:
2013 Recruiting budget:
vcu: $281,000
GMU: $305,000
There are certainly things we could be doing better (our ability to raise private funds is pretty horrible and our ticket revenues are falling off a cliff), but in terms of overall support to our programs it's not doom and gloom. And there are several men's and women's teams who have really shown up in their inaugural seasons in the A10. But I think as much as being a good fundraiser, our new AD has to be able to clean out some of these bad and mediocre coaches who are dragging the whole athletics department down.
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To those of you who are against running the AD's office like a "corporation", what the hell do you think the majority of other collegiate athletic departments are doing? Sorry to crush your idealic aspirations, but college sports is a business at this point. It's time we started treating it as such or we're going to continue to be mediocre at best in almost all sports.
Another news flash that might violate people's sense of fairness: Winning in high profile sports brings in more donations. The majority of fans, at their core, are frontrunners. They want to see their team win. It boosts their ego.
Another news flash that might violate people's sense of fairness: Winning in high profile sports brings in more donations. The majority of fans, at their core, are frontrunners. They want to see their team win. It boosts their ego.
That vcu practice facility is incredible. I f***ing hate vcu.
Pablo
Hall of Famer
In the A10, only St. Bonaventure has the minimum number of sports (14) prescribed by the NCAA for D-1 schools (although Duquesne & vcu have just 15 each). GW has the most sports (24). Here is the list of A10 schools (including Davidson which will be joining in July) with the corresponding number of sports:
Davidson - 19
Dayton - 17
Duquesne - 15
Fordham - 20
Mason - 20
GW - 24
LaSalle -20
UMass - 19
Rhode Island - 16
Richmond - 16
St. Bonaventure - 14
St. Joseph's - 18
St. Louis - 16
vcu - 15
If the majority of collegiate athletic departments are run like a "corporation" as Patriot Lawdog states, wouldn't you expect more A10 schools to have the minimum 14 sports? Interestingly, Davidson has 19 sports (including non-scholarship football) with an enrollment under 2,000.
Davidson - 19
Dayton - 17
Duquesne - 15
Fordham - 20
Mason - 20
GW - 24
LaSalle -20
UMass - 19
Rhode Island - 16
Richmond - 16
St. Bonaventure - 14
St. Joseph's - 18
St. Louis - 16
vcu - 15
If the majority of collegiate athletic departments are run like a "corporation" as Patriot Lawdog states, wouldn't you expect more A10 schools to have the minimum 14 sports? Interestingly, Davidson has 19 sports (including non-scholarship football) with an enrollment under 2,000.
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The A-10 isn't a good sample because it's dominated by private schools, most of which don't run their athletic departments as corporations. Other than basketball, athletics at a school like Davidson is seen as part of the educational mission.
That doesn't mean Lawdog's point was incorrect.
If you're in one of the big-time football conferences, you can run your AD like a corporation and still afford to fund more than the minimum number of sports teams because of football revenue.
Since we don't have football, and our prez is committed to keeping student fees reasonably low, we have to be smarter and more calculating about where we invest our athletics funding.
Considering that the student-athletes who give back the most financially to the athletic department seem to be the ones who played for sports everyone seems to want to eliminate, I'd say that falls under the category of "be careful what you wish for."
I think it is a positive development that wrestling has been allowed to fundraise on it's own. I would hope that some of our other sports will be allowed to so the same (men's volleyball is a good example, since like wrestling it seems to always be on the verge of the chopping block, but is also relatively popular compared to other non-revenue sports).
I think our biggest obstacle is to get the community (business and individual) engaged and more involved with our basketball team (and athletics more broadly).
Our 2013 basketball budget of 3 million is pretty competitive. And I suspect the increased travel of last season and upcoming seasons will have our budget even higher (and keep in mind our travel costs even in the A10 are probably very low compared to some other schools).
It's all about the coaches, and we don't seem to have a very good one right now (and it's not because we went cheap with it).
Part of the problem it seems on this board is that a lot of our fanbase seems unrealistic with their expectations and what we should or should not be doing, especially surrounding the Patriot Center (some talk as if it's the worst basketball venue on the country).
It's not as bad as you think folks!
Now fundraising, yeah, it's pretty bad. We couldn't even crack a million last year. That needs to improve by a big margin.
Pablo
Hall of Famer
This is true of my alma mater (Penn State), which has 29 sports.
Yep, and with the exception of football, men's basketball and wrestling, all of them lose money.
Not sure their men's basketball team really makes money ) unless you are talking abou NCAA payouts earned by other Big 10 schools. Their wrestling team out draws their basketball team
They also just started hockey which has been very popular.
Yes, I'm about 99.9 percent sure that every Big Ten men's basketball program makes money. You don't have to draw much to cover 13 scholarships, 3 coaches and a few support personnel, especially when you get a cut of the conference's NCAA money every year whether you win or lose.
Well, in that case, I would suspect their women's team makes money as well, considering they outdraw our men's team (at 5,400 fans per game versus our 4,500).
And like I said, their hockey team definitely makes money, as every single home game was sold out this past season (in fact, their announced attendance average was 104% capacity). It also helps they got a gift of $60 million to build a dedicated hockey arena and fund scholarships.
And their women's volleyball team averages over 3,000 fans per game, so I doubt they need any support either.
All this to say that Penn State is probably a special case, as are other schools with certain teams (like LSU's baseball team, which averages 10,000 fans per game, or Navy's lacrosse team which averages 3,800 fans per game, or Utah's gymnastics team, which averages 14,000 fans per game -- with Alabama and Georgia also averaging around 10,000).
A.-Siegfried
Starter
We're broke. That's the truth. we need more money brought in, somehow, someway.
Cold, hard facts people.
Cold, hard facts people.
Pablo
Hall of Famer
Are you saying that the AD is projecting a deficit (i.e., expenses exceed revenues) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014? BTW, see the Statement of Revenues and Expenses for the prior fiscal year - http://www.apa.virginia.gov/reports/GMUNCAA2013.pdf.
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Increasing student fees by $100 per person (just $50 a semester) would instantly generate $3.2 million in cold, hard cash, while still leaving our fees lower than most universities in Virginia.
I don't know why we haven't already done it.
Yes, attending most 4-year colleges or universities is already insanely expensive. But I don't think an extra $100 is gonna make kids stop applying to Mason, especially considering that the fees are even higher at many of our peer schools.
Checked back to 2009. Some funny math here. But vcu is similar. Lost a million in 2012. 1.5 million in 2011. Made 650k last year. I guess the name of the game is to look like you're broke.
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A.-Siegfried
Starter
I stand by the fact the athletic department is basically broke. I don't care what any accounting, shifting of money, etc says.
Mason athletics needs more money.
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