How does everyone view spending money on football? Are you more in line with the Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, Florida mentality or do you think there's a balance of having common sense and realizing you don't need gold plated urinals?

If the university had money to throw at football I say throw it, and throw it fast. I say drop big money on a stadium and a coach. Then let alumni and ticket sales do the rest.

I think a 40,000 seat stadium would suit the school well.
Heck, maybe even recruit Fulmer.

They cant let alumni and ticket sales do the rest. There arent enough alumni that would care, and there wont be enough ticket sales to outpace Science Hill's revenue.

If football comes back (and I do hope it does at some point) we need to realize that it will probably be a money pit and deal with that reality head on. The decision would have to be made that bringing back football is more important than financial sense.

I think that is the point. Football should be brought back and the money dealt with. It could make what they spend on it. I think the whole purpose of the FCS level is for schools like ETSU that do not have a ton of money to spend buy still want to play a high level of football. Hopefully the next president will do this.

(09-11-2009 07:53 PM)etsubuc Wrote:  They cant let alumni and ticket sales do the rest. There arent enough alumni that would care, and there wont be enough ticket sales to outpace Science Hill's revenue.

If football comes back (and I do hope it does at some point) we need to realize that it will probably be a money pit and deal with that reality head on. The decision would have to be made that bringing back football is more important than financial sense.

Are you kidding me, high school football isn't even in the same stratosphere. College football wins hands down, ETSU v science hill revenue competition is a non-issue.

I stand by that. I think more people in Johnson City care about Science Hill football than would care about ETSU. I think more people in the Tri Cities area care about high school sports in general more than they would care about ETSU football.

I think that is silly, but I do believe its true.

Well I guess if your son is playing on Friday night you probably care about that more than you do about any other football game this week ---including UT UCLA , USC ND, Titans Steelers whatever. I understand that,

Now that is not the circumstance for me so I rarely go to HS games. So I really miss not seeing ETSU anymore as they were the only FB games I ever really watched in this area.

I think that despite how much sports can cost, or some of the downside of how some athletes behave, college athletics ties alumni to their university like nothing else. Right or wrong that is just the way it is.

I'm counting on the idea that people from places outside of Johnson City will want to watch ETSU play football too. If thats not the case then we don't deserve football, making stantons descision the best possible one.

There are a good 400k-500k people in the tri cities area. I think that a college football game could draw descent numbers based on the percentage of people that: a) don't have children that play football, b) like watching any college sport over a highschool sport, and c) the number of people that would still go to a college game the day after watching a highscool game.

But then you also have to take out the percentage that would rather watch Tennessee on TV rather than go to an ETSU game.

Then you have to take into account the fact that the Tri Cities is not a coherent metro area. People in Johnson City tend to stay in JC, people in Kingsport tend to stay in Kingsport, etc.

Then you have to take into account that ETSU is a commuter school, and almost none of the students stay on campus during the weekend.

Again, Im not saying any of these things are good, but they are real.

Marketing, marketing, marketing. Also putting a good product out of the field like we did in the mid-nineties can and will easily draw crowds to support at the FCS level. Let us remember the the whold Existence of the FCS(like1AA) is to give schools like ETSU who do not have a ton of money to actually field a division 1 football team.Whatever the national average attendance is for this division I am sure ETSU could draw at that level. Just look at all the other peer schools for ETSU. There is no coincidence that ETSU is the only state school in TN without football. That is because there is no reason why ETSU should not be playing football on some level.

(09-11-2009 07:53 PM)etsubuc Wrote:  They cant let alumni and ticket sales do the rest. There arent enough alumni that would care, and there wont be enough ticket sales to outpace Science Hill's revenue.

If football comes back (and I do hope it does at some point) we need to realize that it will probably be a money pit and deal with that reality head on. The decision would have to be made that bringing back football is more important than financial sense.

+1

(09-13-2009 08:59 AM)etsubuc Wrote:  But then you also have to take out the percentage that would rather watch Tennessee on TV rather than go to an ETSU game.

Then you have to take into account the fact that the Tri Cities is not a coherent metro area. People in Johnson City tend to stay in JC, people in Kingsport tend to stay in Kingsport, etc.

Then you have to take into account that ETSU is a commuter school, and almost none of the students stay on campus during the weekend.

Again, Im not saying any of these things are good, but they are real.

If those things are real though, why would it be important to bring back football when it's a money pit? It seems like you're saying it's important to bring it back because it will have non-monetary benefits, but if no one is watching the games or paying attention to the team, then what would those benefits be?

Not the necessarily the best source, but the best I could find in 2 minutes of looking: http://ncaabbs.com/newreply.php?tid=386612&pid=4620437

"There are roughly 20 profitable athletic departments in the country, or only 15-20% of all division I athletic departments. Florida, Ohio State, Texas, Michigan, Oklahoma, LSU are just a few examples. Big state schools with a state-wide following, sold-out 85,000 seat stadiums, student enrollments north of 20,000 and nationwide apparel appeal enable the ultra-high costs of running an athletic department to be offset by tremendous FOOTBALL revenue. Additionally, many of these programs have relatively low tuition costs which further offsets expenses with AD's.

Put more simply, the only NCAA athletics departments that are profitable or will break even are those that can sell more than 80,000 season football ticket packages, regardless of the current won-loss of the football team. To operate the Vanderbilt athletics department under the premise that, if all goes as planned, there will be enough money to pay for everything is at best unrealistic, and at worst, a self-made, ongoing budgetary disaster. The fact of the matter is, most all NCAA universities operate under this completely erroneous assumption, mostly because they have no better way of doing things."

So I agree with you that if football is coming back, it's not making money. But I disagree that it can't make a non-financial impact.

There's not a consensus even on this board as to why ETSU should bring back football, but to me, the idea is to increase ETSU's visibility to alumni, donors, and current and potential students, so that you attract resources that can go out the door and positively impact the community and region (becoming the regional university of choice!).

So again, I disagree that it can't make a non-financial impact. I think a lot of those concepts that you cited why ETSU football can't work are just perceptions of the area that have existed for a long time, so there's some truth to them, but they're not irrufutable facts of life for now and forever.

Men's basketball competes with both UT men and women's basketball pretty successfully. Appy football does just fine, and within a basically an hour of one another, UNC, Duke, NC State and Wake (not to mention NC Central, UNCG, Winston Salem State, Campbell, Elon and ECU) all have football and some degree of visibility with their athletics departments (so does High Point on that point). Everywhere has competition for entertainment dollars and eyeballs, so it can be done.

Since you're making it sound like UT football is the bee's knees for people in the TRI, I'd have a hard time believing that people in JC would tend to stay in JC, people in Kingsport would tend to stay in Kingsport, etc. when UT football is involved. Theoretically, why would ETSU football be so different? Again, I'd say, getting appropriate visibility (ie, return on your investment in football) can be done.

Neyland seats roughly 100,000 people. UT's enrollment is roughly 26,000 (undergrad + grad). Even if UT is not a commuter school and ETSU is, the math alone for UT makes that irrelevant. Besides, if you can drive to campus for class, what difference does your car see that wouldn't allow you to drive to campus for a football game? I would even argue that ETSU in theory has an advantage with respect to alumni; while ETSU has fewer alumni than UT, I would guess that a larger percentage live within easy commuting distance to a game. Besides, with the attractiveness of the new on-campus housing options, I'm not sure that argument holds a lot of water.

If the goal is visibility for the university, despite these specific protests vis a vis ETSU, in general I think we'd agree that football can increase visibility and all the positive things that go with that. It can be done, it's just a matter of having leadership that agrees with that philosophy, and doesn't just see the limited picture of the dollars and cents of football or even athletics as a whole as the end-all, be-all of the equation.

Sorry for the long post.

I never said it couldnt make a non financial impact, actually I said that we would have to realize that the non financial impact would be the main goal, and quit pretending that it would make money or break anywhere close to even. If we bring it back, it must be for the non financial reasons.

I also agree that even though what im saying is true about the nature of Johnson City residents, attendance, etc., it wont be like that forever. When Johnson City becomes larger, with jobs other than medical and service oriented, and most importantly when Johnson City and Kingsport stops competing and starts working together, all of this can change. It will take time, however

And since you mentioned Vanderbilt, I LOVE their philosophy of getting rid of the athletic department, AD, etc. Sports can work with less bureaucrats involved.

why more visibility? ETSU's enrollment is increasing pretty dramatically even beyond that of other TBR shools and private schools without football, according to the JC paper. Div 1AA football is NOT a revenue sport, it drains other sports, people have NEVER come to the games in enough numbers to make it viable. I just don't see wasting time money or energy on it.

I wanted to chime in on the people stay in Kingsport argument. When it comes to football, they seem to. Even, being a Kingsport resident who tries to make most of the home basketball games I would not be attending home football games if it were brought back.

The level of play at ETSU's level of football makes it very hard to want to come out and watch. Put that on top of the lack of a quality stadium, rather watch UT, horrid parking, an economic recession, and all of the other reasons that have been listed over and over on here and you get to the point that ETSU football is not a big draw. My guess is that after the initial revamp excitement died down you couldn't get 5,000 people to an ETSU football game at this point.

It was mentioned that the TRI is not a unified area and that is so true. Part of the problem is the local high school rivalries and part of the problem is becoming less and less of need for people in any one of the three cities to go outside their town to get the services they need closer to home.

I would also like to point out that alumni / donation giving and fund raising has not decreased sine football was dropped. In fact it has increased.

It's time to face facts people. Football isn't coming back and it probably shouldn't considering the financial situation of the college. I imagine it would hard to stomach tuition increases and teachers being fired if the school went back to losing a million a year on one sport that affects a small portion of the student body.

- Just my thoughts, I know they don't fall in line with the board.

At least football has a revenue stream and it is capable of drawing more than an insignificant number of people. To my knowledge, soccer,volleyball, softball, baseball make little, little if any money at all. At least football had the 1A game which could bring in 400K and even if the Bucs get 6000 paying fans(which they can) at $20 a ticket and 120K a game. At six home games(hopefully) that is 720K at the gate. Putting just those two things together adds up to more than 1 Million dollars in revenue before any BASA money or special "football" fundraising is conducted. Add that money in and the football program could easily generate the 1 point something million dollars it takes to operate a 1AA football program. If ETSU can operate all the Fall sports they do with absolutely no revenue being generated then it could certainly operate a 1AA football program that as least has a revenue stream coming in. Hopefully the new administration will quickly take care of this.

(09-14-2009 09:22 AM)bucfan81 Wrote:  At least football has a revenue stream and it is capable of drawing more than an insignificant number of people. To my knowledge, soccer,volleyball, softball, baseball make little, little if any money at all. At least football had the 1A game which could bring in 400K and even if the Bucs get 6000 paying fans(which they can) at $20 a ticket and 120K a game. At six home games(hopefully) that is 720K at the gate. Putting just those two things together adds up to more than 1 Million dollars in revenue before any BASA money or special "football" fundraising is conducted. Add that money in and the football program could easily generate the 1 point something million dollars it takes to operate a 1AA football program. If ETSU can operate all the Fall sports they do with absolutely no revenue being generated then it could certainly operate a 1AA football program that as least has a revenue stream coming in. Hopefully the new administration will quickly take care of this.

+1

(09-14-2009 09:22 AM)bucfan81 Wrote:  if the Bucs get 6000 paying fans(which they can) at $20 a ticket

HAHAHA! Do you seriously think people will pay $20 a ticket! Really?!

(09-14-2009 09:22 AM)bucfan81 Wrote:  Add that money in and the football program could easily generate the 1 point something million dollars it takes to operate a 1AA football program.

To do football right, it would be at MINIMUM $2-$3 million in annual costs. Anything less would be glorified high school football.

Crack, is bad for you, really, put the pipe down.

ETSU Football will always be a money pit. I think U of Memphis loses two mil a year on football and they draw 30K a game. ETSU was losing one mil a year before they dropped football, that tells you the football program at ETSU was on bread and water, before it was dropped.

Why would anyone want to have a program that will always be sub-standard and be a drain on everything.

Given the money realities, I could care less if ETSU ever has a football team. Focus on basketball, where we could actually have a chance at building something special.

Shadow,
The $20 is a number that I chose that probably would be close the actual amount that a Divsion 1AA team would get by the time the Bucs get football back. In any event I would pay it and then some. When the Bucs dropped football all sources said it cost around 1 million dollars and I was estimating it to be arounnd 1.5 million to play again. The point is the school could easily be doing the numbers whatever they are and playing football like every other state university in the state of Tennessee. That is the point.