(10-17-2013 03:40 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 03:29 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 01:46 PM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  

(10-16-2013 09:17 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-16-2013 09:08 PM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  Right... nobody is making these decisions outside of football and basketball to some extent, and even those sports are not the major driving force (fit, revenue, academics, etc.). My point was that the hardest thing to get a program going is the available land for a facility and then building that facility. The SEC could make all of those club sports into varsity sports in a heartbeat. 10 SEC schools bring in at least $80 million a year in athletics. There will be no problem in making those offerings if/when the time comes. It is not an issue right now, so I don't blame them for keeping those sports at the club level.

Again, club level has nothing to do with the schools' athletic departments. They're the same as a chess club. You're talking about $ millions to start a varsity sport...scholarships, coaching salaries, recruiting budget, transportation, facilities, support staff and space, compliance, liability, and if a men's sport, probably the corresponding women's squad. Then you have the annual associated costs you've got to add to your athletic department's annual budget every year. It is not a snap of the finger decision at any school to start a varsity team for any sport, let alone multiple ones across multiple schools. There is a reason most schools don't have nearly as many sponsored varsity sports as UNC.

But it really is besides the point for the purposes of realignment discussions. It's just not as simple to add sports as you are making it out to be.

It is a snap of the finger for most SEC schools, though. That is what I am trying to say. UNC would ranked 10th in revenue if in the SEC. Millions is not a concern. Again, they will do it if/when the time comes.

No. It's not a snap of the finger for any school, anywhere. And they certainly wouldn't do it just because of a team joining the conference nor would a school not join a conference because it doesn't offer an olympic sport or two. It's a ludicrous hypothetical in the first place. Those numbers above aren't reflective of actual cost to start an entire sport. Do you realize how much it costs to administrative assistant for one of those sports when benefits are included?

I do get your point. Even if the SEC added two men's and two women's sports to move to 22 required the start up costs would be hitting around $450 to $500 million to get them off the ground. So likely if a move was made to add 4 teams it might take spreading the start ups of the respective sports across a decade maybe two to get in line with an addition of 4 sports. Otherwise the costs would be too much of a shock to even an SEC athletic budget for such a quick addition. I would suspect that lacrosse would be the first add for both men and women and that men's soccer could be in the offing much later.

Yes, that's more of what I mean.

$500 million...you mean adding for 56 sports across the entire 14-team conference?...that would depend on what sports you are adding, and what facilities they need and how many coaches and staff, what size the squad is, etc. It might be enough if you were adding golf, etc, it might not be enough if you are adding sports like rowing and need to buy shells and build a boat house, add coaches and staff, and 20 full scholarships. It's hard to throw out a number without knowing what a particular AD would be going for in size and scope... how serious they are about being competitive (but in major FBS, I assume they don't just want to be embarrassing).

For facility perspective, in 2004, Alabama built a tennis facility for $4.2 million...or about $5 million in 2013 dollars. Ohio State is building a softball stadium projected at $6 million. Heck, Lehigh just spent over $4 million on a wrestling facility renovation. A couple of years ago Pitt dropped $30 million on a three sport complex for baseball, soccer and softball, and they are among the smallest in major D1. But these things all need staff to run them, have utility costs, need insurance, someone has to cut the grass and sweep up the stands....you have to maintain and run the facilities after you build them. There are continual costs associated with all of this stuff that add to your annual budget before you even get to just coaches and athletic support staff or travel budgets and the like.

If schools add teams, they'll do it judiciously to have as little impact on the budget as possible, as you suggest. You have to realize I'm not saying schools can't add teams over time. That is actually ideal. In a perfect world, everyone would sponsor 30 sports and nobody would be cutting men's sports. What I'm saying is that it is a LOT more to adding a sport than just throwing some money at a club team...that's not how it works at all. I come from a family of T&F coaches, some of them in D1...I want to see schools add sports not cut them. But no one is going out and carelessly adding $10s of millions of annual expenses to budgets that are tight unless they are positive that they can absorb those costs with either increasing revenues from somewhere, including donations. And that is why so many more sports over the last 20 years have been cut as opposed to added. And budgets are tight everywhere, whether because they're building football training palaces like at Oregon or paying coaches ungodly sums or just trying to fund 25 different but still competitive sports...it doesn't matter why budgets are tight, no one is building cash reserves like Apple. Finding new streams of revenue in D1 is about either creating the next advantage, and then for the rest, keeping up with the joneses, its an arms race, primarily in football and hoops where revenue is actually derived, ...not so much fencing and tennis. New money really isn't going to change that equation, more teams will just have Oregon-like facilities. It can cost $10s of millions to start up a sport and can add upper 6 to 7 figures easily to a department's annual budget depending on the sport and how serious a AD wants to be about it. Everyone department in Power 5 football could add multiple varsity sports right now if they wanted just by taking money out of the football budgets. The money is theoretically there. But it's all about the priority of where the money gets invested...either existing money or future money. SEC schools are not going to invest any extra money in lax if they think it will make them one iota less competitive in football. And almost no one else would do that either.

Now that all is just about the unseen difficulties of adding sports from just the perspective outside of any conference realignment discussion. But in a hypothetical where it costs $1 per sport and each SEC school adds 100 new sports, UNC still is not going anywhere. Guess what, South Carolina isn't moving to the ACC for soccer and Missouri isn't moving to the Big Ten for wrestling either. It is a complete non-factor. In the wet dream fantasy of arm chair conference team shufflers where a nuclear holocaust wipes out every ACC member city but Chapel Hill, UNC still isn't choosing a conference based on lax and soccer.

(10-17-2013 11:17 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 04:38 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 04:31 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 03:49 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 03:40 PM)JRsec Wrote:  I do get your point. Even if the SEC added two men's and two women's sports to move to 22 required the start up costs would be hitting around $450 to $500 million to get them off the ground.

I'm sorry, but there is just no way that the typical small-revenue sport, like say women's tennis, is going to cost anywhere near $100m to start up. Maybe for a sport like hockey, if you need to build a brand-new 8,000 seat hockey rink, but for most of these minor sports the start-up costs aren't going to be 1/10 of that, probably not 1/30 of that.

I bet a million dollars would easily get the typical tennis or track team up and running.

I didn't say women's tennis would cost as much as starting a men's and women's ice hockey program. I do say that it costs more than you think, otherwise, schools wouldn't have gutted (and continue to gut) their men's athletic teams because of Title IX, they would have just added women's sports like the law intended to be done.

Also, after some digging regarding the numbers above again, even though they aren't a reliable way of judging true total cost to an athletic department, the NCAA-wide averages are still way off in some instances compared to "bigger" schools. For example, according to the NCAA, the average for the only the FBS level of the NCAA in women's track and field/XC a net of -$14.8 million on $18.6 million in expenses in FY12. And remember, that includes the Group of 5 have nots that aren't nearly as likely to put a lot of money into those programs.

The FBS level includes how many programs, 120? What is $19m divided by 120? That's about $160,000 in expenses per school. That is nothing.

My numbers are NCAA numbers. These minor programs generate about $500k a year in losses. Sorry, but that is chicken-feed.

Actually, those NCAA numbers (which were reported as per team losses, but you are right, $14.8 million loss is too high per T&F team) have some discrepancies with the equity and athletics data on the US DOE database. According to the DOE, SEC women's T&F teams average a loss of $982,540 per team in FY11 on an average of $1.4 million in expenses. About $1 million in loss, per women's T&F team, at the SEC level sounds more correct. According to those numbers, there is about an $800K loss per women's swimming & diving team, $820K per volleyball team in the SEC. It is sometimes hard to interpret the equity data because schools don't calculate things the same, ie many count university subsidization of athletics as revenue.

Those numbers are still chicken-feed for SEC schools.

But to the larger point, I still don't know why anyone in their right mind would think that if, e.g., the ACC disbanded, that a school like UNC would choose between joining the B1G or SEC based on whether one conference offered LAX or women's tennis or not.

(10-18-2013 01:29 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 11:17 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 04:38 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 04:31 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-17-2013 03:49 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  I'm sorry, but there is just no way that the typical small-revenue sport, like say women's tennis, is going to cost anywhere near $100m to start up. Maybe for a sport like hockey, if you need to build a brand-new 8,000 seat hockey rink, but for most of these minor sports the start-up costs aren't going to be 1/10 of that, probably not 1/30 of that.

I bet a million dollars would easily get the typical tennis or track team up and running.

I didn't say women's tennis would cost as much as starting a men's and women's ice hockey program. I do say that it costs more than you think, otherwise, schools wouldn't have gutted (and continue to gut) their men's athletic teams because of Title IX, they would have just added women's sports like the law intended to be done.

Also, after some digging regarding the numbers above again, even though they aren't a reliable way of judging true total cost to an athletic department, the NCAA-wide averages are still way off in some instances compared to "bigger" schools. For example, according to the NCAA, the average for the only the FBS level of the NCAA in women's track and field/XC a net of -$14.8 million on $18.6 million in expenses in FY12. And remember, that includes the Group of 5 have nots that aren't nearly as likely to put a lot of money into those programs.

The FBS level includes how many programs, 120? What is $19m divided by 120? That's about $160,000 in expenses per school. That is nothing.

My numbers are NCAA numbers. These minor programs generate about $500k a year in losses. Sorry, but that is chicken-feed.

Actually, those NCAA numbers (which were reported as per team losses, but you are right, $14.8 million loss is too high per T&F team) have some discrepancies with the equity and athletics data on the US DOE database. According to the DOE, SEC women's T&F teams average a loss of $982,540 per team in FY11 on an average of $1.4 million in expenses. About $1 million in loss, per women's T&F team, at the SEC level sounds more correct. According to those numbers, there is about an $800K loss per women's swimming & diving team, $820K per volleyball team in the SEC. It is sometimes hard to interpret the equity data because schools don't calculate things the same, ie many count university subsidization of athletics as revenue.

Those numbers are still chicken-feed for SEC schools.

But to the larger point, I still don't know why anyone in their right mind would think that if, e.g., the ACC disbanded, that a school like UNC would choose between joining the B1G or SEC based on whether one conference offered LAX or women's tennis or not.

Of course they would not. But if lacrosse is important to them, and since the SEC does have a fairly good and growing interest in the sport at the club level, if there was a concession on the addition of a varsity sport then I think that would be the one most likely to get added, even before men's soccer. It would also be an appealing addition for Viriginia, and /or Duke, or anyone else that might be considered along with U.N.C. under that scenario.

(10-18-2013 01:41 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Of course they would not. But if lacrosse is important to them, and since the SEC does have a fairly good and growing interest in the sport at the club level

As you suggest, it is important to them.

The lack of lacrosse and soccer would absolutely be a big deal to UNC. Of course, that's predicated on most other factors washing out fairly equally, but yeah, it could play into a decision. I don't know why it's being dismissed as mostly irrelevant. Sure the SEC could sponsor lacrosse, but it's not likely to have near the support that the sport enjoys in the Northeast and the upswing in the Midwest.

Certainly an AD or President would say so publically to support a decision for B1G (or elsewhere) if it came down to that. UNC is certainly not a "football-first" decision, and that opens the door to a lot of other factors, especially given how everyone from the governor to the English prof's second cousin would be weighing in.

NCs per Wiki:

Men's Basketball – 1924*, 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009
Lacrosse – 1981, 1982, 1986, 1991
Soccer – 2001, 2011

Women's Basketball – 1994
Field Hockey – 1985, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2007, 2009
Lacrosse – 2013
Soccer – 1981**, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012

(10-18-2013 01:54 PM)SeaBlue Wrote:  

(10-18-2013 01:41 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Of course they would not. But if lacrosse is important to them, and since the SEC does have a fairly good and growing interest in the sport at the club level

As you suggest, it is important to them.

The lack of lacrosse and soccer would absolutely be a big deal to UNC. Of course, that's predicated on most other factors washing out fairly equally, but yeah, it could play into a decision. I don't know why it's being dismissed as mostly irrelevant. Sure the SEC could sponsor lacrosse, but it's not likely to have near the support that the sport enjoys in the Northeast and the upswing in the Midwest.

I grew up in Maryland and know where LAX is a reasonably big deal: Along the mid-to-northern Atlantic seaboard from roughly Syracuse in the north to North Carolina in the south. It's an ACC/Ivy/Johns Hopkins sport. Everywhere else, it's nothing.

I doubt Lacrosse would matter much to UNC's decision making. Maryland cares about LAX and yet left the ACC for the B1G anyway. Joining a conference is decided by Big Picture issues and LAX is just not Big Picture. And anyway, a school like UNC could join the SEC (or B1G) but still play LAX against its traditional eastern seaboard rivals, they wouldn't have to be stuck playing LSU and Alabama.

LAX is doing alright in the Midwest. This is a 2007 representation. Other dads say that their young kids love it and prefer it over soccer.


The image is very slow-loading right now. It can be found at http://blog.dc.esri.com/2008/01/24/lacro...e-country/

You'd think that with this revenue score the B1G has, that whole conference would hop onto lax and ice hockey. That they aren't, or won't without a sugar-daddy is kind of a conern about how schools might just take their money and drive up the operating costs of football.

Michigan State has no plans to field men's lax, and UMD doesn't expect to bring back the sports they dropped in the near future, either.

I think it's true everywhere, even in the SEC. That revenue is going to be sacred football cash. Want to start a new sport? Find a donor.

(10-18-2013 03:50 PM)SeaBlue Wrote:  LAX is doing alright in the Midwest. This is a 2007 representation. Other dads say that their young kids love it and prefer it over soccer.


The image is very slow-loading right now. It can be found at http://blog.dc.esri.com/2008/01/24/lacro...e-country/

As a guy in his 40's who grew up playing lacrosse in middle and HS I can tell you that since I was a kid the sport has been 'the next biggest thing' and has never really gotten over the hump.

For better or worse it is a sport for middle class and up kids that doesn't have a broad enough appeal to be anything more than a niche sport.

(10-21-2013 08:35 AM)WNCOrange Wrote:  

(10-18-2013 03:50 PM)SeaBlue Wrote:  LAX is doing alright in the Midwest. This is a 2007 representation. Other dads say that their young kids love it and prefer it over soccer.


The image is very slow-loading right now. It can be found at http://blog.dc.esri.com/2008/01/24/lacro...e-country/

As a guy in his 40's who grew up playing lacrosse in middle and HS I can tell you that since I was a kid the sport has been 'the next biggest thing' and has never really gotten over the hump.

For better or worse it is a sport for middle class and up kids that doesn't have a broad enough appeal to be anything more than a niche sport.

Looking at the map, Atlanta is a much bigger hotbed for lacrosse than the Triangle. Dallas, Houston, Nashville, Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Louis look to be about the same interest level as the Triangle. Looking at the geography, there is no reason that the PAC, B1G, and SEC could not field respectable lacrosse; it is already present in the major cities of those footprints.