What you fail to take into account is that annual giving would continue after an endowment is established. Hence the endowment does NOT have to supply all the annual costs of the program.
Do we have too many teams? I gotta ask
- Thread starter suggakane
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What you fail to take into account is that annual giving would continue after an endowment is established. Hence the endowment does NOT have to supply all the annual costs of the program.
I found this email:
athleticdevelopment@winants.rutgers.edu
Sent them an email and they should answer your questions.
Question 1: are football and basketball receiving subsidies? If so what's the percentage of their budget?
Question 2: how much of the other sports receiver subsidies from revenue sports/outside sources?
I'm thinking football and basketball (men) cover most of their cost if not all. It's the other sports that depend on other sources to keep them functioning year to year. The local media does a poor job in telling which sports receive what (subsidy) and how much. In the end outside people label all Rutgers sports as dependents of subsidies because it's hasn't been spelled out clearly. Bottom line, we as fans of Rutgers sports have to a better job of giving to the programs so this isn't the case in the future. Helps to get the media off the Rutgers back and gives the sports programs a fighting chance to succeed.
Question 2: how much of the other sports receiver subsidies from revenue sports/outside sources?
I'm thinking football and basketball (men) cover most of their cost if not all. It's the other sports that depend on other sources to keep them functioning year to year. The local media does a poor job in telling which sports receive what (subsidy) and how much. In the end outside people label all Rutgers sports as dependents of subsidies because it's hasn't been spelled out clearly. Bottom line, we as fans of Rutgers sports have to a better job of giving to the programs so this isn't the case in the future. Helps to get the media off the Rutgers back and gives the sports programs a fighting chance to succeed.
That is true - if you could get some reasonable amount of it, you could then count on some of the annual giving. But at the same time - you have to have a plan to get to 100% - because annual giving that isnt endowed can and does disappear.
buffs - basketball loses some money now, FB makes a little. Bottom line - other schools athletic programs are mostly non-subsidized because FB and BB make alot of money. Thats where the main difference between us and other similar schools is.
But again - this is all moot. Five years from now the entire department will be unsubsidized and the AD and president will get to crow about how they got that massive subsidy down from $40+ million to $0.
We're in the Big Ten and don't even sponsor Hockey, so there's even some more room to go. We could eliminate Golf in theory, the Big Ten has a golf championship event but no standings and hard to see that sport bring in any revenue whatsoever.
The two teams combined cost about $600,000. Eliminating them wouldnt do much for anyone else. Its one of the cheapest programs we have (low scholarships, facilities bill footed by someone else, equipment and travel minimal.)
Being an alumus letterman in a non-revenue sport (lacrosse) at another school for almost 40 years I can state with certainty that while annual giving can vary year to year (i.e. a drop in 2009) it NEVER disappears.
Thanks sent the following email - lets see what response I get...
Hi,
I am looking to find out if there are any ways to give a small donation such as %500 that will be used in a way that helps the athletic department long term. I do not want to make a gift that will go towards day-to-day expenses or off-setting the general fund subsidy and fear a donation really is used to that purpose.
From my understanding a helpful donation would go towards facility improvement or increased scholarships but am not sure how a small donation can do this.
I see from the scarletknights.com website mention of large donations for endowed scholarships, annual scholarships, and capital gifts.
From the support.rutgers.edu I see donation options of R Scholarship Fund, RAC Renovation Fund (is this even still a priority for athletics?), and Big Ten Build Fund. It appears R Scholarship Fund is for the football player scholarships that are already in place and the other 2 I can not find information on what the money goes towards. The R Fund pamphlet Page 22 "How is my gift to R Fund Used?" is the type of statement about operational expenses that makes me hesitant to give.
Has Rutger's considered using crowd funding (existing platform or just a notified goal and way to give on scarletknights.com) to achieve specific goals that smaller donors can help with?
Thanks,
You will die eventually. You might find other things to sponsor. And the collective drops in a year like 2009 can leave RU on the hook for budgeted spending at a time (a recession) when its own funding is also susceptible to cuts. I guess I would say - if the plan were to do that - you would need a plan to get to 100% endowed within a reasonable time frame.
We have more sports than schools like Texas and USC who have way bigger budgets and donations.
Rutgers needs to and should cut sports. It isn't fair to the student athletes or school to be, in many cases, woefully underfunded with little chance of success. We are fighting with two hands behind our backs.
We should only field the number of sports that can be fully funded and properly supported. Not one more. Like other schools do.
Rutgers needs to and should cut sports. It isn't fair to the student athletes or school to be, in many cases, woefully underfunded with little chance of success. We are fighting with two hands behind our backs.
We should only field the number of sports that can be fully funded and properly supported. Not one more. Like other schools do.
Got a pretty thoughtful response from the department. This includes description of the funds better than my quick google search cound find.
My take:
R Scholarship Fund - will offset subsidy
Big Ten Build Fund - should help with the basketball facility - will donate here.
one.rutgers.edu - crowd funding page for whole university. I am going keep watching this and give when it interests me.
I have never understood how people who believe football, often times the only sport making money at a school, should not be something Universities are sactioning turn around and also believe that non-revenue Olympic sports should be funded and paid for by a University no matter the expense ....... There would be no subsidy if the only varsity sport was football!
The alumni should be given a 3 year clock to fund all sports other than the high visibility sports of MBB, WBB, MS, WS and FB. If they can't do it, put the blame on the alumni and start cutting sports one by one until donations go up or the budget gets balanced.
The alumni should be given a 3 year clock to fund all sports other than the high visibility sports of MBB, WBB, MS, WS and FB. If they can't do it, put the blame on the alumni and start cutting sports one by one until donations go up or the budget gets balanced.
Scholarship costs are a garbage accounting technique used to zero out AD budgets. The AD gets "charged" the full msrp of tuition, room and board, etc. by the university for athletes. The only problem is no one pays the rack rate for college and the actual incremental cost to the university to bring on each athlete is even less. Thus, the university is making a profit - a big profit - on the scholarship it charges to the AD.
Mostly true. That is one of the reasons you didn't see the faculty senate mention scholarship costs in their report on athletics costs. Because that is the part of the subsidy that goes back to the university.
Part of the scholarship cost is tuition, and part is room/board. You can make the valid argument that the room/board part is a real cost, since if an athlete is using a dorm room, that room can't be rented to another student. But the tuition part is absolutely funny money. The incremental cost of educating an additional student is pretty close to zero, and if all the scholarship athletes stopped attending Rutgers they wouldn't be replaced by other students (there is no hard cap on Rutgers' enrollment, so if other students were available to go to Rutgers, they'd already be going there). The tuition money is absolutely a budget give-back.
The problem for Rutgers is the subsidy is so high, that even when you take out scholarship tuition costs, the Athletic Department still loses a ton of money. The subsidy would need to be under about $9MM in order for the Athletic Department to break even when tuition costs are accounted for. Rutgers is the only P5 school with a subsidy greater than $30 million. There are about 6 P5 schools with subsidies in the $9-$13 MM range, and Maryland is at $18MM. All the other P5 schools make money off athletics, when you take scholarship tuition costs out of their subsidies.
Maybe the silliest post of the thread.
A university campus is not a minor league sports operation--at least it shouldn't be.
What next? Tell alums of the Biology department to fully fund the department or you're putting the microscopes up on Craigslist and turning the lights off?
Theater?
A university's budget has to be looked at holistically. If everything is approached as profit and loss centers, it won't be much of a university anymore.
Do alums in those sports/clubs need to step up? Of course. Should the goal be to break even in those sports every year through donations? Sure. Would Michigan or Stanford ever tell their crew or tennis alums to donate to a point of sustainability or we're shutting it down? Please stop.
Maybe if our administration, and our alums who know better, start acting like our peers, the entire university can catch up.
Strategically speaking, who is going to commit major dollars in year to a program that has such luke warm institutional support that it is on a hit list? Makes little sense as a fundraising tactic.
The concept is solid - does not need to be so strict. Rutgers AD just needs to announce that do to financial concerns sports cuts are on the table in 2-3 years and start a commitment level for each sport to aim for.
That would destory recuriting for those sports. Very bad idea.
Your in favor of keeping under funded programs that struggle vs competition goingas they have been. Same thinking that keeps Flood here. You guys get the keep Rolling the rock uphill award.
First, you don't have any idea what I think about Flood. So, nice Strawman.
Second, what I'm in favor of is approaching problems strategically. Your proposal signs those program's death warrant. First, the programs won't be able to recruit at a B10 level with the prospect of decreased institutional support leading to program cessation. We will become a destination of last resort at the B10 level in those sports. Additionally, the only way you'll raise the necessary funds is on the backs on modest donations (think 4 figures) from program alums. History shows we don't have enough whales that will write program sustaining checks out of their fun money accounts. An alum who is committed to his or her program is not going to pledge a few thousand knowing that if enough total money ins't raised, their donation was for nothing. You don't raise funds at the point of a gun.
The only rock we're rolling uphill is the one firmly planted between your ears
Good to see your responses are to insult and that you made assumptions. If you re-read I did not say you favor Flood, but that this type of thinking keeps Flood here.
So how do you get positive change to our overall athletic success? Waiting for the Big Ten money is not a reality - it will off set subsidy.
Do you think the planned mixed use training g facility will be enough for most of our teams to compete? I think it will be a big help but not a cure all.
Hope to get some constructive conversation here, but don't worry I expect more of the same.
I didn't say you said I "favor Flood." I said, you have no idea what I think about Flood and to quote my post and make a false equivalency with keeping Flood here is dumb. The way message boards work is you quote people's posts and make points to counter their arguments. You don't quote someone's posts and then make a bunch of silly strawman arguments and when called out on it say that you were speaking in generalities.
And giving programs a 3 year window to alumni sponsored financial sustainability remains an epically bad idea. You might as well close those programs down today.
First, the odds of them actually raising the money are slim--even at the point of a gun.
Second, raising funds through threats of extinction are a sure way to alienate an already fractured athletic alumni base (as a result of Uncle Bob's program cuts).
Third, it will kill recruiting, thereby making it even MORE difficult to raise the funds. People don't usually write checks to programs they feel are non-competitive regardless of the logic.
Fourth, if you get to the end of year 3 and for whatever reason fund raising ends up being woefully short of goal, the AD's hand is forced to ACTUALLY shut the program down. That is a PR disaster. Don't shut it down and her/his credibility becomes an issue with donors. Shut it down and it's yet another PR problem with the local media, faculty, students and staff.
Fifth, shuttering any women's program raises Title IX concerns. You end up being forced to examine a men's program that is not necessarily a candidate to be shut down by these other metrics, but might end up being shut down to make Title IX math work.
Nobody is seriously suggesting that we should field financially non-competitive teams for the sake of it. People realize revenues need to grow. The disagreement is on a mandate to get to break even in 3 years or we're shutting you down. It's a bad strategy.
Per the link below, Rutgers already cut six sports in 2007 in response to University state aid cuts: men’s tennis, men’s fencing, women’s fencing, men’s swimming and diving, men’s heavyweight crew, and men’s lightweight crew. Cutting those sports saved an estimated $2 million, out of an overall budget of $40 million dollars at the time (a quarter of which was spent on money-losing football). Cutting those sports without even giving the alumni a chance to try and fund them privately alienated a lot of university alumni and former/potential future Olympians that the programs produced, and left very good facilities (including the Sonny Werblin Diving & Aquatic Center and renovated/resurfaced tennis courts) virtually unused by varsity teams. Not only that, but it gave more ammunition to detractors of Rutgers football, whose spending was going into overdrive at the time.
Today, no women's sports can be cut without requisite cuts in men's sports because of Title IX. Further cuts in smaller sports would have a continued detrimental effects on the university's athletic community, result in relatively paltry savings to the athletics budget of $2-3 million max out of a total budget that has eclipsed $70 million, and actually make Rutgers inferior in number to its B1G conference peer schools, who average more than 20 sports. At a time when the somewhat profitable football and MBB programs have experienced repeated turmoil in the past 5 years and are surely not done yet, do you still think it's a good idea to propose even more controversial cuts to Rutgers' more minor sports programs via donation ultimatums??
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/education/23rutgers.html?pagewanted=1&n=Top/Reference/Times Topics/Subjects/C/College Athletics&_r=0
I am well aware of the prior cuts which at the time reduced the costs by 5%. I honestly think we need to reduce programs if we can not increase revenue. This should be done to increase scholarships and coaching for other under funded sports. I realizeany Big have a lot of sports, but they also have bigger budgets.
The whole idea here is go get private donors to give as an alternative. Setting realistic goals so the alumni can step up over a few years would benefit the program. Fully funding in a few years is not realistic, increasing yearly donations or endowed scholarships should be a priority.
the problem with your viewpoint is that the programs that no one cares about also cost the least. So if wouldn't make much difference besides bad press to cut those.
It already is a priority. What makes you think it isn't?
We agree. Continue to make it a priority. Reward those programs that do it substantially.
Don't threaten them with extinction.
I never said a mandate in 3 years, the original poster of the idea did. I said setting goals makes sense with threat of reducing programs.
I also believe we should reduce our programs if we can't get revenue or endowed funding up. So if we can not increase donations -we should reduce programs.
Again how do we improve our competitiveness?
We already have, in wrestling, men's and women's soccer for starters. Women's basketball continues to remain successful under a H.O.F. coach. Baseball has had a good track record overall, and the construction of a new training facility can only help. Men's basketball has repeatedly been terrible thanks to coaching and lack of investment. Football has improved by leaps and bounds in ten years, but much of that success is threatened by our current coaching.
We can agree that more minor programs should continue with the goal of increasing donations and endowing scholarships, because it's basically not possible for them to generate significant revenue otherwise. However, it's just not worth it to cut any more sports. The priority should be continuing to invest in and increasing revenue generation for the top sports, including football, MBB/WBB, wrestling, and arguably even men's/women's soccer.
You increase your competitiveness through undying institutional and alumni support.
You won't get there through the open ended pall of extinction over your head. That works in widget factories where human capital is interchangeable. It doesn't work in an endeavor who's lifeblood is convincing people to choose you over your peers.
If you want to know which sports have a chance to make money it is rather simple...
Turn on your TV. If they are showing it then there is money to be made.
Baseball and Softball can make money. Softball highest level is now College.
both LAX can make money.
Women's Volleyball can make money in the Big Ten anyway. We need to invest more in that sport, since right now that is not doing much.
Turn on your TV. If they are showing it then there is money to be made.
Baseball and Softball can make money. Softball highest level is now College.
both LAX can make money.
Women's Volleyball can make money in the Big Ten anyway. We need to invest more in that sport, since right now that is not doing much.
Rewards are great but hard to do when funding is tight. What type of rewards could we do to get support motivated?
I believe Julie and team are focused on fund raising. I don't get the feeling we are seeing significant improvements. Maybe that is just the overall negativity of the board, there's threads on here about donation and ticket cuts for next year. Only positive I have seen is the baseball facility breaking ground.
2014 8.1m contributions according to daily targum
My central jersey reports contributions:
2013 6.1m
2012 9m
2011 7.6m
2010 9.1m
2009 7.9m
2008 7.5m
2007 5.8
2006 4.8
2005 4.2
So donations doubled from 2005-2010, but appears flat since.
It was late and I was trying to be provocative with my post - looks like I accomplished that goal.
The points I was making was that the problem with our AD budget is not football. Football is the solution to the problem that is the non-revenue sports. Nonetheless, we are not enabling the solution (football) to grow and fill that role because the other sports are putting the department in a huge budget hole. The logic in continuing down this path defines stupidity.
The AD is the marketing arm of the university. I agree it is not a minor league. Because we ate not a minor league we should not support money losing sports that bring no marketing/visibility to the university and are not financially supported by alumni. If the alumni of these sports do not care about supporting these sports why should I and why should the university. I agree that my original post was draconian, but do u have a better solution than "waiting for the B1G money to roll in"?
The biology department does make money via research grants. Over 50% of research grants are claimed by the university to pay for F&A. If profs do not get funded they do not remain profs for very long. Why should sports be any different?
Good thing revenue is going to basically double between now and 2021 then isnt it.
But like I said - the list of mens sports we coulc cut are golf, and the three seasons of track - each of which clocks in at less than $400,000. Womens versions are a little more expensive because they hahve more scholarships- but not signficiantly so. On the womens end you might be able to replace some of the track or golf with Volleyball, swimming, field hockey,rowing, or gymnastics, but you would have to keep track or golf or both - because those sports have more scholarships. In other words - you are really looking at a max savings of about $3 million by cutting 6-8 sports (4 mens and 2-4 womens depending on which ones you chose). Thats 4% of our budget.
And the PR would be terrible - RU bailing out its moribund football and BB teams by cutting other sports that use real student athletes (i.e. ones who could pass Dance Appreciation) when if it waits five years it will have more than enough money to cover them and then some. It would make the 2006 wipeout look like a friendly game of checkers.
The answer is yes - we probably have too many teams. Had we started with the minimum of 14 or 16 or whatever, we wouldnt be looking to add any. But the realities of title IX, of which sports are popular and cost the most, the great future revenue situation, and the effect of bad PR means that we will keep all of the sports we have.
PHDKnight - you have it exactly backwards. Because we are not a for profit business, we shouldnt worry about profits. Even the biggest schools dont have alumni supporting their minor sports - FB and BB carry the freight - everywhere.
What the schools gets from those sports isnt PR - its a huge and significant connection with students who almost by definition overacheivers (getting a D1 scholarship in any sport isnt easy). The more sports you have, the more chances you have at making that connection. Or put it this way - golf cost $300,000 a year, much of which is scholarships (i.e. not realy costs to the school).
But yes - if we were still in the AAC, it might make sense to do what we did in 2006 - cut sports permanently in hopes that the modest savings could be plowed into FB and BB so that they could support the other sports. But in 2015 that makes no sense. The modest savings will be blown away by increases in conference revenue even if FB and BB suck forever.
If the various departments were self-supporting with grants by the way - we wouldnt have to charge tuition. Tuition is basically the difference between what it costs to keep the school open, and what we bring in from grants, etc, and even at a big research school like RU, it cost alot more to run the school than the grants bring in.
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So your position is big ten money will fix the problem? You have better understanding of numbers than me.
I see we subsidize 37m, 10m is student fees that will stay. So we need to close 25m in gap today. Once we get full share we will get 35-40m instead of 10m which is 25-30m increase. The problem is our budget is expected to raise about 15-20mover those same years so we will still be about 15m short. So we need to find 15m in revenue outside of Big Ten payout.
Der,
I was trying to back people into the idea that football is the solution for the non-revenue with my post. The only way for that to be true, however, is to double down and invest in football. If you do not invest in football then the only solution is to cut everything else to the bone which there is no stomach or will to do. As far as I understand it "waiting for the B1G money" will make things better but will not solve the problem so this cannot be the only plan on the table.
I was trying to back people into the idea that football is the solution for the non-revenue with my post. The only way for that to be true, however, is to double down and invest in football. If you do not invest in football then the only solution is to cut everything else to the bone which there is no stomach or will to do. As far as I understand it "waiting for the B1G money" will make things better but will not solve the problem so this cannot be the only plan on the table.
