(05-07-2014 11:51 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(05-07-2014 11:42 PM)Fresno St. Alum Wrote:  you guys didn't hear, the pick for 12 has already been made. All of his facts prove it. http://collegesportsinfo.com/forum/viewt...start=1155










Lamar

The guy from Revenge of the Nerds? I seriously don't see how 1 person can be competitive as an entire team. I don't think even Wormser could figure out a way to help him defeat other teams all by himself. Maybe UN Jefferson's Lambda Lambda Lambda crew could help fill out the team.

All Revenge of the Nerds joking aside, I'm not quite as optimistic as SHWISH since one of the stated goals is an eastern member, but there are some reasons for consideration.

Offered Sports:

Lamar, Eastern Kentucky, and Liberty currently compete in all sports offered by the Sun Belt. Each would match Western Kentucky's sports offerings (prior to WKU dropping Men's Tennis).

Athletics Expense Comparison:

Per the most recent Department of Education OPE Equity in Athletics, Lamar's athletics expenses were higher than almost every mentioned candidate and higher than some current SBC members.

Eastern Kentucky: $11,858,777
Missouri State: $15,126,054 (includes costs for Field Hockey, Men's Soccer, and Swimming & Diving)
Jacksonville State: $12,640,684 (Includes Rifle, but no Men's T&F)
Tennessee-Chattanooga: $14,344,501 (No Baseball, but offers Wrestling)
Lamar: $15,044,029
Liberty: $25,270,726 (includes costs for M Soccer, W Field Hockey, W LaCrosse, W Swimming & Diving)

Recent Member:

Georgia Southern: $10,696,878 (Includes M Soccer, W Rifle, W Swimming & Diving)

Student Support:

As opposed to some other university's negative vote by either officially voting or expressing opinions via straw poll, Lamar students passed an athletic fee with a 78% "Yes" vote. The Lamar fee is currently $9.72 per hour compared with Texas State's $20.00 per hour so there is room to grow. (Lamar's student fee currently adds $2,174,000 to the athletic budget.)

Ability to fund facilities:

There are some great projects going on at a lot of universities. One of the challenges is to find donor funding. Whether it will continue, Lamar has had some great donors with multi-million dollar donations to both academics and athletics. Although it doesn't directly apply to athletics, our endowment has increased from around $25,000,000 to just under $100,000,000 in a five year period. During the same period, we've had over $20,000,000 in donations for athletics improvements.

Facility Updates:

The latest athletic facility will be a new on campus softball stadium. The budgeted amount is $2,600,000. The stadium is scheduled to be completed before next season. RFQ's went out in December. Per the RFQ's, architectural drawings and renditions are due the end of this month. Construction is scheduled to begin June 9 if there are no delays. The cost does not include locker rooms, study areas, restrooms, and concessions. The facility for those items was built in the $3,000,000 Soccer/Softball complex built in 2010.

One of our greatest needs is for updates to the baseball stadium. Although numerous updates have been made, the last one in 2012, $6,000,000 in renovations is budgeted for 2016.

Our football stadium was completely renovated in 2010. The renovations included new field turf (Hellas Matrix FieldTurf), new seats, new and additional restrooms, new and additional concessions, ADA compliance, new entries and deck, new concourse. Also included in the project was a 53,700 sqft Athletic Complex. Cost of the two projects was $30,000,000 + pressbox renovations + new, large scoreboard + 7 VIP suites + outdoor practice fields. The athletic complex compares favorably with Georgia Southern's and UMass's 55,000 sqft Athletic complexes currently under construction. (Although other athletes can use our facility, it is basically for football since each sport has its own facility with weight roooms, study areas, locker rooms, etc.)

The Tennis Courts, the Volleyball court (part of a $19,000,000 recreational sports project), and our basketball home also received recent renovations. Locker rooms, concessions, etc. were included in the Tennis court renovations. Like the Soccer/Softball complex, the Tennis Court project included a combined concessions, locker room, study area for both Track and Tennis.

Since money has already been spent on a lot of the sports, any future financial burden of a football stadium expansion should be reduced. A lot of facility upgrade money for other sports has already been spent. The recent football renovation did set our stadium up for a final capacity of 28,000 seats.

Academics:

According to USN&WR, we are classed as a National University. According to the Carnegie Foundation, we are classed as a Doctoral Research University. Below are some recent honors.

1. We are on the Forbes "America's Top Colleges" list again.
2. Our MBA program made the Princeton Review's "Best 295 Business Schools".
3. Our Online Graduate Program rated #3. GraduatePrograms.com rates our online graduate programs #3 in the nation. We're in pretty good company since Texas A&M is #5 and Johns Hopkins is #2.
4. Payscale.com rated us #11 best Return on Investment in Engineering in 2013. We were in pretty good company in this one also. MIT was #10. University of Virginia was #12.
5. Our MBA student team recently won first place in Graduate-Level Growth Funds at the Global Asset Management Education (G.A.M.E.) Conference at Quinnipac University. That makes the fourth straight year a Lamar team has won a category first place at the conference. (Last year's conference had representatives from 118 universities.)
6. We recently had three education programs recognized by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

Out of our 1,655 graduates next week, 790 will receive Masters degrees. 46 will receive Doctorates.