The media always portrays Football as the evil Giant. Once again an annoying gallery, but It starts with Football's large profit and ends with the largest subsidy, women's basketball.
Subsidies at RU by Sport
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The media always portrays Football as the evil Giant. Once again an annoying gallery, but It starts with Football's large profit and ends with the largest subsidy, women's basketball.
This isn't actually news, the NCAA financial report was filed months ago and I've linked it several times. The narrative, in response to any naysayers, has to be that non-revenue sports will ALWAYS represent sunk costs to any athletic department. Rutgers football made $8 million in profit in 2014 and reduced the athletic department's overall loss by that amount.
Further accentuates what a joke and a hatchet job the HBO show was. The only sports mentioned were the two that make money.
Rowing costs us over 500k? Next time I see a "bring back varsity rowing" sign at a game I'm gonna laugh at whoever is carrying it. That being said, we really need to drop some sports. Such a waste of money and we will never be any good many of them.
Which ones can you say for sure RU will "never" be good at? Maybe tennis and golf? I see the potential to be competitive in the rest.
be careful with fervor to drop sports you think are insignficant...some of the wealthiest donors can come from those who support or played for the so called lesser sports.
The real elephant in the room is Title IX. Most woman's sports are big money losers for a university, but the PC crowd will never admit to this. I am not against Title IX but don't blame football and men's basketball for University subsidies.
For starters those would be the first two gone. I stopped reading beciase I hate slide shows but I'd drop anyhring that is warm weather dependent. Ridiculous we have more varsity sorts Than Texas does.
its called title IX. What amazes me is the # of women's sports that are fully funded that we really suck at, rowing being one of them. Coaches stay in their helm, year after year as long as they get a good APR, results on the field are not as important it seems. There are a plethora of girls rowing in HS in the NJ/Philly area to recruit.
Everyone has title IX. Everyone doesn't have so many useless sports
It was my experience (admittedly decades ago) that crew chicks were pretty much down for whatever.
So... that's one reason to keep them.
A lot of this is obfuscation. The subsidy is what it is, which is much larger than most (all?) other Power 5 schools. They all have to deal with Title IX. They all have to deal with olympic sports that lose money. While it is true that we offer more sports than many counterparts, those losses do no result in our subsidy being where it is.
Rutgers does have a revenue problem, which can be blamed on football and men's basketball. The problem isn't that those sports lose money, its that they do not turn as much profit as they should, and as they do at other schools. The State of New Jersey and the administration seem to finally (for the first time ever) understand this. Hence the recent investments.
Rutgers does have a revenue problem, which can be blamed on football and men's basketball. The problem isn't that those sports lose money, its that they do not turn as much profit as they should, and as they do at other schools. The State of New Jersey and the administration seem to finally (for the first time ever) understand this. Hence the recent investments.
Comparisons to UTexas are somewhat irrelevant. How does Rutgers compare to other Big 10 schools in terms of the number of sports offered ? How many more sports does Rutgers have compared to say, the average number in the Big 10?
That is the most annoying format ever.
Bottom line is
ZERO Subsidy is used for Football and ZERO student fees are used for Football.
Also ZERO Subsidy is used for Men's Basketball and ZERO student fees are used for Men's Basketball.
Bottom line is
ZERO Subsidy is used for Football and ZERO student fees are used for Football.
Also ZERO Subsidy is used for Men's Basketball and ZERO student fees are used for Men's Basketball.
That is 100% NOT the bottom line. That is true nearly everywhere. Football and basket ball are supposed to turn a profit, and that profit is supposed to be enough to support other sports. Whether people want to admit it or not, the Rutgers subsidy IS a football and basketball problem. It is also, a donor problem.
They should have presented the information with a simply chart which would have been easier for most people to understand. The cost of scholarship should be cut in half since adding 2-3 extra student athletics to a class doesn't really increase cost. If we have to cut cost, we need to reduce the number of sports offered. In addition, they need to concentrate on cutting all Sports at Monclair State, William Paterson, Kean, Rowan, and NJIT if they need to cut cost. I'm sure none of those colleges make any money on any of their sports.
Football and Men's Basketball are ALWAYS the focus of every single subsidy article, news report, Teacher's Union, students who hate sports and don't want their fees going to them, and general idiots on-line (see NJ.com comment section). It is always to say that Rutgers shouldn't be spending so much money on those two sports when they are in fact the only two that don't use any subsidy whatsoever and use no student fees and make money!
These same people are never ever saying that we need to cut women's sports because they waste too much money. I NEVER heard that from subsidy article, news report, Teacher's Union, students who hate sports. NEVER.
Big Ten money and greater success in football and MBB will make this a moot point anyway, but people need to STOP using these sports as scapegoats to push their agenda.
That is all.
I LOVE that this article came out because it at least starts to get the message out to the average Joe that football by itself turns a massive profit and that it bankrolls many other sports.
The average NJ pro sports fan has no idea of this truth. I can't wait to hear feedback from a good friend who was texting me yesterday about the real sports piece and our wasteful overspending on hotel stays, etc, for the football team.
The average NJ pro sports fan has no idea of this truth. I can't wait to hear feedback from a good friend who was texting me yesterday about the real sports piece and our wasteful overspending on hotel stays, etc, for the football team.
Getting fb and BB to have more revenue and getting more donations is part of the solution, not the problem. The problem is that each of the Olympic sports cost about a million a sport, and of course woman's BB which loses big money. These are the problem. Not saying we shouldn't have these sports, but for us, they are the problem. Subsidy will go down as we get more Big money and some sports collect some revenue, and donation increase, but we have a lot of mouths to feed.
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I'm sure that football and basketball don't make money at William Paterson and Rowan.
Why do we have stupid Rutgers professors that can't see that the football program makes money? If we get rid of football, we would have to get rid of all sports.
If they are so weathly and important then they can fund these teams. Otherwise they are not actually wealthy and important.
Isn't it also the case that Rutgers sponsors more sports than most other schools? If I'm not mistaken, some stat came out a year or two ago illustrating that we have more varsity sports (not clubs) than a good number of other schools by a ratio of 2:1 or something. I don't have the exact stat in front of me. But, if that is indeed the case, then perhaps the numbers (including subsidy) should be represented as "Dollars Per Sport/Student Athlete" and then see how Rutgers stacks up.
The question I asked above is how much "friends" groups or undesignated donations to Rutgers sports currently funds these sports. Those groups at other schools provide a significant portion of sports costs, particularly lacrosse, wrestling and crew.
I think that teams stat was when RU was in the AAC. The B1G is a very different story. No way it's 2:1.
Because that is not their point, they want all sports cut and that money to be used to give them a higher salary. The key is they want more money for themselves and less money spend on students who play these sports.
That's because nobody cares about either.
"Rutgers" as usual is the boogeyman here.
Rutgers donation problem is much, much greater than its revenue problem.
Rutgers has the 49th largest athletic department spend in the country (link below). Virginia Tech receives double the amount of donations annually than we do ($8MM/year more). Texas Tech receives 3x more in donations annually ($16MM/year more). Central Florida (CENTRAL FLORIDA!!) receives a $1MM/year more in donations than Rutgers. At the very top end Penn State receives $20MM/year more in donations and Texas receives $36MM/year more in donations.
Thats not a "revenue" problem in the way most folks think of "revenue".
http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
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Every P5 school has that "problem" and they all solve it without having the highest subsidy in NCAA. Its a red herring argument. I am not going to look up how many sports the other Big Ten schools support, but its similar to us.
That said it is not a spending problem, it is a revenue problem. We do not make enough profit. We have terrible donor support compared to other Big Ten and P5 schools. Of course we also have crappy BE level TV revenue, so help is definitely on the way.
They don't make money at any FCS schools. They make money at every P5 school. Those are our peers. Comparing us to Rowan and WPU is not really informative, unless you want us to behave like they do in the size and scope of our AD.
I'm sure someone has this info. However, if they were donating that much their favorite sports wouldn't be losing so much money. Right?
@PhDKnight and @mdk01 are right.
At a lot of P5 (or places where that particular sport is important) schools that is how these are funded.
If you want to play, ya gots to pay.
The people @bac2therac is talking about should make sure their donations are going to those sports. It would be a big help.
I totally agree with you. The articles and media always misconstrue the issue, and I also hate it. They love trying to act like we are recklessly spending money. In reality, our spending is right where it should be, and right where it needs to be to be competitive. If we aren't competitive, the losses will grow, not shrink. You cannot run this thing on a shoestring budget, or the revenue will get even worse.
My issue is that a lot of people here also misconstrue the issue. You cannot just say that because football and basketball turn a profit, we are doing things the right way. That doesn't explain the highest subsidy in the nation. So while the newspapers and faculty are criticizing the wrong things, we are pointing to the wrong things in defense. We are pointing to things like tennis, and Title IX, which every other school seems to manage without the highest subsidy. So its a weak argument.
We have to acknowledge that their is a problem, it just isn't a spending problem. Cutting sports, or running the women's sports on a shoestring budget shouldn't be the solution. The solution is to become a better run AD, that is competitive, scandal-free and a source of pride for the alumni. We are churnign out an insane amount of alums every year. If we give them a reaosn to be proud, donations will improve. That takes decades, and we are knew to the game when it comes to big time fundraising.
I get your point, but most of the knee-jerk negative articles against RU's sports funding misleadingly suggest that the subsidy is needed for the "Big Time" sports of men's football and basketball. But, if you eliminate those two revenue sports, the subsidy would actually be greater. But you can;t sell papers railing against funding for the women's gymnastic or rowing teams. That is the salient point of this thread.
I wish you folks would stop trying to refute the national sports media narrative that Rutgers football is a colossal money losing dumpster fire and that Rutgers should terminate it's football program in order to reduce the cost of tuition.
