Stanton said he would never use student fees to prop up football, but he has no problem propping up other sports with the newly raised athletic fee. Crazy.

If Stanton really wanted football back, during the failed attempt to bring it back he would have told everyone that the student fees for athletics are going to go up. Do you want them to go up with football added, or do you want to just support the sports we have now? If we would have told the truth, we would have football back by now.

Good point Doctor. It was really the point I was trying to make.

Well, in the current economic climate, I would say $15 mill is a mountain of money.

Once again, I'm just trying to get you to think about how you are going to sell this. Saying "Tech, Peay, & UTC have it, so why don't we?" isn't the strongest argument. A better argument is: "How we are going to be better this time around; this is how we're going to make the school even better than it already is; this will HELP our athletic program and not hurt it, etc. " How will football be better? Not the same, BETTER? How can we make sure it doesn't fail again? These are questions you have to be able to answer and give a good answer to; an answer backed by data, not 'fire the AD and Prez'... Data.

Tiger has iterated many times on here about how we won't make money doing it; so then you have to ask yourself, "How do we bring back a sport that is destined to lose money and as a result, could hurt the financial stability of our other sports?" The argument can be made, it's just not being done very well, in my opinion, at the moment.

Yeah Fan 1: $25 vs. $200+. That's not the same.

Look, the activities fee is going to go up over the years, that's just simple fact.

If the BFFF would have done a better job selling the students on football back in '06 or whenever it was, you would have football back. There was an awesome opportunity there that was completely blown.

And, if you had a positive student vote, you would have a lot more to hang your hat on if the admin had chosen not to bring it back. Now the admin can just say 'Well, the students said no. Why should we say yes?'

I still say the only reason Stanton ever "attempted" to bring it back was so he could sleep better at night. In his own mind, it's not his fault anymore.

(10-28-2009 12:04 PM)BucDoctor Wrote:  BucIsland, don't make me hold class on these ranking classifications. ETSU and Belmont/David Lipscomb aren't in the same ranking classification and you are comparing apples and oranges.

Same to be said with Peay, Tech and Chattanooga, different Carnegie Classifications.

Just as a primer, that little 1 you see means the comparison is only within the schools own region. ETSU is classified as a NATIONAL university, compared with UVa, UNC, etc. QUITE a different league.

Well, in that case, let's compare ETSU with UVA and UNC. UVA and UNC have football. They also have law schools, which ETSU does not have, and a host of highly ranked PhD programs that ETSU also does not have. My point is this: who are we competing against for students? And is football at ETSU (by way of visibility) a means to win that competition? I mean, haven't you even said that a university's biggest marketing expense is its athletic department?

I look at Belmont and Libscomb and I don't see peers. They're small, private, religious schools with high tuition. I look at UVA and UNC and I don't see peers. They're big, prominant research schools with internationally recognized programs in medicine, law, and many other disciplines.

I look at TTU, Peay, MTSU, Chattanooga, and I see our middle market peers. Similar in size, tuition costs, programs, and quality of student body, as well as where that student body is drawn from. Look, you root for UVA; maybe you're an alum. Is what UVA offers - pick out whatever criteria you want - similar to what ETSU offers? I'm a UNC alum; I don't think it's accurate to call them peers. I also lived in Nashville and know plenty of folks from Lipscomb and MTSU. Doesn't make me an expert on the similarities or differences between any of these schools, but just from my experience, I would be willing to put money on the notion that more of ETSU's students are also applying to MTSU or Chattanooga than to UVA or Belmont.

So in that respect, toss the rankings I put in there aside if that makes more sense. Let's find ETSU's true peers - whatever the appropriate definition of that is. Whoever our peers are, presumably because they're peers they would have been in a similar situation when we decided to drop football - did they? And are are we better, worse, or the same as our peers since ETSU decided to kill football?

(10-28-2009 01:07 PM)GoBucsGo Wrote:  Good point Doctor. It was really the point I was trying to make.

Well, in the current economic climate, I would say $15 mill is a mountain of money.

Once again, I'm just trying to get you to think about how you are going to sell this. Saying "Tech, Peay, & UTC have it, so why don't we?" isn't the strongest argument. A better argument is: "How we are going to be better this time around; this is how we're going to make the school even better than it already is; this will HELP our athletic program and not hurt it, etc. " How will football be better? Not the same, BETTER? How can we make sure it doesn't fail again? These are questions you have to be able to answer and give a good answer to; an answer backed by data, not 'fire the AD and Prez'... Data.

Tiger has iterated many times on here about how we won't make money doing it; so then you have to ask yourself, "How do we bring back a sport that is destined to lose money and as a result, could hurt the financial stability of our other sports?" The argument can be made, it's just not being done very well, in my opinion, at the moment.

There's only 1 person that should have to buy an argument for football, and that's the president. Asking the students is asking the tail to wag the dog.

Framing the argument in terms of our peers having football, so why doesn't ETSU isn't what I was trying to get at. I'm just raising the question of why schools that I would consider peers of ETSU have decided to go in such a different direction when it comes to competition for students, and how has ETSU performed against that peer group? I haven't been able to see Dr. Larimore's presentation, but as you said, the argument for football can be made, and I'm looking forward to seeing his argument for football, and how it addresses that issue of visibility and competition among peer schools.

Island,
The students are going to PAY for it. It's not wrong to ask them if they want it. The majority of the funds that come into ETSU obviously come from them. They're the consumers. They have a right to say what they want and what they don't. Stanton is very sensitive to that issue regarding how much they pay for their education.

I've heard pieces & parts of Larimore's presentation, and I believe the faculty senate president was there to hear the presentation as well. I think the faculty senate Prez agreed that an argument for football can be made, but I think in ETSU's case, since it's been cut, you now really have to sell it and be convincing on the sell. I'm not convinced that just changing Presidents will make football magically come back. You have to market your product. When a product fails, you just don't bring it back as is. You bring it back bigger & better than before. Why would we invest in the same old failed program?

Comparing us to UVA and UNC in athletics? Seriously? Can't do it. They are in the ACC - a little more visibility there. They have TV contracts, endorsements, and pools of money that we simply don't have and it is unlikely we'll ever attain, even if one day we have a D-1A football program. Of course we can't compare to them academically, not really, anyway. They're flagship institutions - we're a regional.

I think it's fine to compare us to Tech, UTC, and other regionals, but understand that we are a unique institution even in that regard; the PhD programs are nothing to sneeze at, that's a significant investment.

Can we have football? Sure. Can we have football and have a successful athletic program across the board with all the constraints currently on athletic programs? I don't know. It has to be proven we can do that. I think at the time football was dropped, many administrators decided to put all of our eggs in one basket that could produce lots of visibility: Basketball. Is basketball the better for it? Well, since football left we have gone to an NIT (nothing to sneeze at our level since we're in a one bid league) and an NCAA tournament in men's b-ball, and the women have gone to two consecutive NCAAs. Men's b-ball upset UGA during the regular season, something we hadn't done since the glory years of 88-92. Women's b-ball has upset an SEC team the last two years, I believe; you can easily make the argument that women's b-ball, whether or not the league is better or worse, is better off now than they were when football was here. Other sports (track, X-country, men's tennis, golf) have produced conference titles and remained competitive. So the question you have convincingly answer is: Why will football make us better?

(10-28-2009 02:15 PM)Buc Island Wrote:  

(10-28-2009 12:04 PM)BucDoctor Wrote:  BucIsland, don't make me hold class on these ranking classifications. ETSU and Belmont/David Lipscomb aren't in the same ranking classification and you are comparing apples and oranges.

Same to be said with Peay, Tech and Chattanooga, different Carnegie Classifications.

Just as a primer, that little 1 you see means the comparison is only within the schools own region. ETSU is classified as a NATIONAL university, compared with UVa, UNC, etc. QUITE a different league.

Well, in that case, let's compare ETSU with UVA and UNC. UVA and UNC have football. They also have law schools, which ETSU does not have, and a host of highly ranked PhD programs that ETSU also does not have. My point is this: who are we competing against for students? And is football at ETSU (by way of visibility) a means to win that competition? I mean, haven't you even said that a university's biggest marketing expense is its athletic department?

I look at Belmont and Libscomb and I don't see peers. They're small, private, religious schools with high tuition. I look at UVA and UNC and I don't see peers. They're big, prominant research schools with internationally recognized programs in medicine, law, and many other disciplines.

I look at TTU, Peay, MTSU, Chattanooga, and I see our middle market peers. Similar in size, tuition costs, programs, and quality of student body, as well as where that student body is drawn from. Look, you root for UVA; maybe you're an alum. Is what UVA offers - pick out whatever criteria you want - similar to what ETSU offers? I'm a UNC alum; I don't think it's accurate to call them peers. I also lived in Nashville and know plenty of folks from Lipscomb and MTSU. Doesn't make me an expert on the similarities or differences between any of these schools, but just from my experience, I would be willing to put money on the notion that more of ETSU's students are also applying to MTSU or Chattanooga than to UVA or Belmont.

So in that respect, toss the rankings I put in there aside if that makes more sense. Let's find ETSU's true peers - whatever the appropriate definition of that is. Whoever our peers are, presumably because they're peers they would have been in a similar situation when we decided to drop football - did they? And are are we better, worse, or the same as our peers since ETSU decided to kill football?

Yes I am a UVa alum and there are no schools in Tennessee that are true peers of UVa or UNC, (it could be that ut and VaTech are peers but that is an entirely different argument) but you selected a citation that considers ETSU to be a peer of UVa and UNC. Our current governor believes that he can make ut a peer of UVa or UNC, I think that is laughable. You may be unaware but according to the last data I saw, ETSU is second only to ut in research in Tennessee. While it may not be apparent, ETSU is very much a research university.

You are correct in much of what you say and unfortunatley in our society we equate academic excellence with football excellence. These national rankings that you are citing don't necessarily reflect that bias. Yes I very much stand behind my statement that there are two goals for any NCAA athletic program, first to provide student athletes with an education (not to be a minor league/development league for pro sports) and to provide marketing exposure.

I don't want to hold class on classification systems yet again. If you want to look up my previous postings on the subject of the various ranking services, feel free to do so. There are a minimum number of doctoral programs (of which Ph.D. is only one) that are required to move from Carnegie Doctoral Intensive to Carnegie Doctoral Extensive (UVa and UNC). ETSU is very close to that number,and were there not a hold on new academic programs in Tennessee might already be there. ETSU has highly ranked programs not found at UVa and UNC, for example ETSU's rural and community health program and cardiopulmonary science programs were both recognized as number one in the nation in 2007.

Many would consider ETSU and Appalachian State or James Madison to be peers. Using the classification from the sources you cited, they aren't and ETSU is actually in a higher classification. Neither App nor JMU is classified as a National university. That said, to have a Tennessee (a state that spends next to nothing on higher education) regional university classified as a National University is quite an accomplishment.

Tossing the rankings as you suggest would probably be a good idea. I'm just an egghead that has a real issue with folks saying that Belmont or David Lipscomp or UTC or MTSU or Peay are academic peers of ETSU. That isn't meant to slight those institutions, it is just that ETSU's ranking or lack thereof is an apples and oranges comparison.

Good post Doctor. I agree wholeheartedly: ETSU, App State & JMU are not peers, nor is UTC, MTSU, Belmont, or Lipscomb. JMU is actually close. The latter two are private liberal arts institutions. Belmont has a little bit of research going on, Lipscomb basically has none. Neither offer many if any grad degrees (yes, an EdD probably, but that's about it). UTC or MTSU are certainly stronger than those two on the research front, but all are below us. It's another marketing issue w/ ETSU, something I take a lot of exception with. The public should know this; they don't. And it's certainly not like teaching has been de-emphasized, it's a major obstacle to gain tenure & promotion. So, I think we have a nice balance of the two here, a rarity.

So maybe Stanton did have the student vote to get football back to, as you say, 'sleep @ night.' Still, it was an awesome opportunity. Had it turned out positive, just think of the strength you would have? You could say 'the majority of 14,000+ students want football back, and the Prez says no.' Man, that could have really helped your case. As I've said several times before, when that vote was coming up, I didn't see one person from the BFFF on campus campaigning students to vote yes. Not one.

(10-27-2009 11:10 PM)buc1997 Wrote:  6,000 fan base. So what! What is the fan base for men's soccer? How about golf and tennis at ETSU?
Tiger, I wish you stop repeating the Stanton/Mullins lies that football loss 2 million a year. Stick the facts.

Men's soccer, golf and tennis you can fund from what you find under the couch, football you can't.

I'm not saying the team lost 2 million, I'm saying it would take that over and above what was there before. They administration quotes 1 million in the red per year. I think they were on bread and water to loose so little. I think it would take an additional million to make the program reasonably competitive. 1 million to cover the previous red ink and another million to make sure the team isn't a joke. The 1 million loss is fact, the other million I pulling out of my @$$.

(10-28-2009 07:22 AM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  But, then again, Memphis football sucks despite the fact they have made bowls in five of the past six years.

Here is a pic of the Memphis vs. ECU game last night.



There were 4,100 people in attendance in a 62K stadium. The program is limping and a couple of years ago it was going to non-BCS bowls. They are paying a coach 900K a year (I think) and they can't get it going. Up until this year, they had an average attendance of 25-30 for the last several years. Second bad year and look where they have fallen. Some idiots think if they build a 40K on campus stadium it will fix the program. The Liberty Bowl is 2 miles from campus. If the basketball program wasn't making millions, they would actually be in worse shape than ETSU was.

I think someone was filming a porno up under the press box. If you look......

(10-28-2009 07:22 AM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  Not only that, but let's put these numbers in perspective.

In 2001 ETSU finished 73rd out of 123 Division I-AA football schools in attendance. Not great, but by this token, every school beneath them should drop football.

Portland State, which is now Division I-A and coached by Jerry Glanville, did not draw as well as ETSU.

Duquesne, Robert Morris, and Austin Peay, now scholarship programs, drew less than ETSU.

Maine, which is a contender in Division I-AA and doesn't have a whole lot else going on in the sports world up there, drew less than ETSU.

I have heard of most of these schools, have any of them ever done anything in the world of sports?

I'm not going to take the time to look up the money situation of these schools, I'm just going to assume it is better than ETSU.

(10-28-2009 07:22 AM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  Look at these figures from 2001, and you'll see Appalachian State only drew 10,000 a game. We champion ASU as the program that draws 24,000 to games now.

Go here- http://ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?key=/ncaa/ncaa/...dance.html and see for yourself. You can do some investigation of the other years as well.

But, then again, Memphis football sucks despite the fact they have made bowls in five of the past six years.

Appy doesn't sit 100 miles from the big urnge, a team always ranked in the top 3 in attendance in college football.

(10-28-2009 07:44 AM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  Northeast- We've been jawing- but let me ask you something here to open your mind.

This "football will draw the other sports to the bottom" nonsense. If it was true, then ETSU would suddenly have taken off athletically.

That hasn't happened, and what successes have occurred, such as the basketball teams' NCAA berths, seem to be the result of the new conference, not significant improvement to the programs.

If you would like to know the sport that actually brings down the others at ETSU, it's golf.

I think the reason the other programs aren't any better (if indeed they aren't) is because the elimination of football just removed the drain, it didn't provide that much extra money. The giant sucking sound on the general fund went away, that is all, it didn't create money, it only took the anvil off the neck of the university, but this is just a guess.

(10-28-2009 08:04 AM)GoBucsGo Wrote:  If football was to come back, how are you going to KEEP it from bringing other sports down? Newsflash: Football's expensive. It will cost a lot of money. Where's the money going to come from? How will you sustain it? How will you keep it from bringing the entire athletic program down?

Sure, certain other athletic programs have kept that from happening (and some haven't), at least somewhat. But now that you don't have football, and you're suddenly putting in a $15 million expense on the athletic program, how do you keep that from happening? I'm playing devil's advocate here, because this is the type of question you're going to get not only from those lowly administrators, but community leaders as well. I have not heard one decent sound argument on here for the 2 years I've been on here.

Here's another thing: Look at the mid-majors that have had the most success in the NCAA tournament in recent years: Gonzaga, George Mason, Butler, Davidson. Which of those programs plays DI-AA scholarship football? None.

I tell you what - with the negative attitude that constantly consumes this board, talking about firing of the AD and the Prez, talking about the lowering of the athletic program and downplaying any of the current athletic accomplishments -- I don't see it. We need a new leadership from the BFFF that can do a better job of marketing football -- not 'I can't believe Stanton killed football when it was losing money hand over fist and budget times were bad, so let's fire that guy. And Mullins too!'

Yeah, Pitt, golf is killing athletics at ETSU. They're the only one nationally ranked in the top 25 (or have been). Those bastards!

:ncaabbs:

A couple of quick points here:
1. As has been stated on this board many times before, college football has never been, is not, and will never be for the current students. Using the current student body vote as an indicator to the value of a football program to a university is a ridiculous argument, I don't know why I continue to see it come up on the board.
2. The statement was made that football was too expensive given our commitments to PhD programs, the medical school and the pharmacy school. Another way of looking at this is that this is a tremendous source of untapped revenue (academic and athletic) that could be available to the university if marketed properly. If we just want to look at cost/benefit (which seems to be a common argument here), does anyone know if the amount of donations the university receives from back medical school alums over the years pays for the amount of money pumped into the med school? If not, should we eliminate it as we did football?
3. As the parent of a student at ETSU, I take a more pragmatic approach with regard to research. I don't exactly see Nobel prizes flying around at ETSU so I'm much more interested in a faculty member giving my child a quality education (so she can get a good job) than I am the research he/she performs.

(10-28-2009 09:42 AM)buc1997 Wrote:  

(10-28-2009 08:04 AM)GoBucsGo Wrote:  If football was to come back, how are you going to KEEP it from bringing other sports down? Newsflash: Football's expensive. It will cost a lot of money. Where's the money going to come from? How will you sustain it? How will you keep it from bringing the entire athletic program down?

Sure, certain other athletic programs have kept that from happening (and some haven't), at least somewhat. But now that you don't have football, and you're suddenly putting in a $15 million expense on the athletic program, how do you keep that from happening? I'm playing devil's advocate here, because this is the type of question you're going to get not only from those lowly administrators, but community leaders as well. I have not heard one decent sound argument on here for the 2 years I've been on here.

Here's another thing: Look at the mid-majors that have had the most success in the NCAA tournament in recent years: Gonzaga, George Mason, Butler, Davidson. Which of those programs plays DI-AA scholarship football? None.

I tell you what - with the negative attitude that constantly consumes this board, talking about firing of the AD and the Prez, talking about the lowering of the athletic program and downplaying any of the current athletic accomplishments -- I don't see it. We need a new leadership from the BFFF that can do a better job of marketing football -- not 'I can't believe Stanton killed football when it was losing money hand over fist and budget times were bad, so let's fire that guy. And Mullins too!'

Yeah, Pitt, golf is killing athletics at ETSU. They're the only one nationally ranked in the top 25 (or have been). Those bastards!

Then why don’t the TTU, WCU, UTC and APSU of the world drop football? If football is such a drain on the entire athletic department the campus presidents would surely drop football at their schools. How is football a bigger drain of ETSU’s athletic department then soccer? Or tennis? Seriously answer the question.

TTU and WCU will continue to limp on and never have anything. WCU and APSU are located in NC which funds higher education. I think ETSU now gets less than half its dollars from the state, so I think it would be ok to remove "state university" from the name soon? UTC has had some sucess, but they are not TBR (UT system has more state money) and they have had good basketball teams for years (probably bolstered by a great arena), which I'm guessing makes a little money?

(10-28-2009 11:52 AM)Buc Island Wrote:  

(10-28-2009 10:51 AM)GoBucsGo Wrote:  81 - you missed the point. The measure of a good school is not it's football program. Maybe it is for you and others in this forum, but it really isn't the measure of a good academic institution. So are we as good of a school as Tech, Peay, Martin, Chattanooga? Of course. We're better. We offer more programs, and are able to recruit better faculty because of the resources for research here @ ETSU.

I don't know what you're talking about re: the AD's being dumb - I never said that.

How do the other schools pay for it? Increased student activity fees, unless they have great community support (like App). We didn't have great community support, so where does the money come from and how do you convince the community to support the team like they do in Boone? And how do you convince the admin things will be different this time around?

ETSU does have a medical school (that existed just fine thank you very much when football was around), and a new pharmacy school that is almost accredited. As far as other programs, is there really a major difference among any of the schools cited as our peers? And did they exist when football was around? Because it seems to me we just traded a football team for a pharmacy school. That might sound OK in the abstract, but what benefits does ETSU get (or not get) by having a pharmacy school and no football that our peers do not get (or get) by having football instead of a pharmacy school?

I'm not against a pharmacy school. We as a society need pharmacists, and there are plenty of folks in the TRI that had to pack up and go to Memphis for 4 years even though they would rather have stayed home for school, and now that ETSU has a pharmacy school, we can capture that market. I'm just saying that it LOOKS like a straight-up trade: football for pharmacy, and questioning whether that was the right decision, given that none of what I think we would agree are our peers went in a similar direction, and schools like Belmont, Lipscomb, and Union did the same thing we did (i.e., instituted pharmacy and do not have football).

ETSU medical school funding is among the lowest in the nation. It is amazing what the school does with so little funding.

The Pharm school is susposed to be mostly funded by private dollars (no state support). This funding is in response to a dire need in the tri-cities for pharmacists, it isn't out of the goodness of the gift givers heart. Pharms are making almost what primary care docs are making now and the shortage isn't just in the tri-cities. I still believe that when/if the supply of pharms makes it to an serviceable level some of those donations will dry up. My point is that I don't think that very much of the money going to the Pharm school would have been sent to football. Donating money to a football team doesn't give you a pharmacist to fill all of the vacancies in your business.

(10-28-2009 01:15 PM)ETSUfan1 Wrote:  I still say the only reason Stanton ever "attempted" to bring it back was so he could sleep better at night. In his own mind, it's not his fault anymore.

I have stated before, that Stanton is a politician first before anything else. He had to spend political capital to eliminate football. I don't think he would have ever done that if he didn't have to. I think he weighed how much the move would hurt him politically given the fact that football support was so low (6K a game). It would have been politically easier not to end it. Politicians never make the hard choices unless they are forced to. What was the gain to Stanton the politician, there was none.

(10-28-2009 08:29 PM)$1.80 Wrote:  A couple of quick points here:
1. As has been stated on this board many times before, college football has never been, is not, and will never be for the current students. Using the current student body vote as an indicator to the value of a football program to a university is a ridiculous argument, I don't know why I continue to see it come up on the board.
2. The statement was made that football was too expensive given our commitments to PhD programs, the medical school and the pharmacy school. Another way of looking at this is that this is a tremendous source of untapped revenue (academic and athletic) that could be available to the university if marketed properly. If we just want to look at cost/benefit (which seems to be a common argument here), does anyone know if the amount of donations the university receives from back medical school alums over the years pays for the amount of money pumped into the med school? If not, should we eliminate it as we did football?
3. As the parent of a student at ETSU, I take a more pragmatic approach with regard to research. I don't exactly see Nobel prizes flying around at ETSU so I'm much more interested in a faculty member giving my child a quality education (so she can get a good job) than I am the research he/she performs.

Research dollars at ETSU is a little misleading. When you compare one university to another university in terms of research funding you really should seperate out medical school research funding. ETSU's college of medicine, while not exactly burning it up in research, does create an disparity in funding levels with non-medical school universities.

You have to maintain a "certain" level of medical research for the college of medicine to remain accredited. So you have to have it, it is part of the students education also. It costs alot more to do research in a school of medicine than say the computer science department. A 30,000 dollar grant in the computer science department would be huge. A 30,000 dollar grant in the college of medicine wouldn't turn the lights on in most labs, it is just a different animal. In the CS department 10K for a fast box, 15K for grad student, 5k for supplies, wahla, you have a year of funded research. In the med school you could spend 30K on animals in a few months.

Also, you shouldn't compare "teaching" someone to play football, with any college education program/major, isn't comparable. The school exists for education, not football or any sport.