Northern Iowa,
I stand by everything I said. I believe it is you that needs a dose of perspective.
Regarding Montana and operating in the red, where else (in any division) is that NOT the case? Only at Notre Dame and a handful of other places does an athletic department experience positive cash flow. For the rest of us, the state, fans, students and donations through the Athletic Club pick up the tab. Let's get over this "losing money" thing, please. Athletic department deficits are a fact of life virtually everywhere. Does that mean you drop your sports?
Who the heck is in it for the money, anyhow? If that were a requirement, we would be watching fifteen teams play games with each other on Saturday.
Also, most schools operate in the red because they are funding gobs of other, non-revenue generating sports. If revenues from football at Norhern Iowa went to football only, the team would swim in cash. Given Title XI and the necessity to field myriad Olympic sports (and thus be attractive to a wider variety of students), the ledger will virtually never be balanced.
I never stated that athletics should be a money making endeavor. There are obviously schools at every NCAA level that operate in the red. What I'm questioning is a matter of scope. Again, how is it that Montana's athletic department has a several hundred thousand dollar deficit with the success they've had? The most successful schools in 1-A, like Tennessee for example, don't run deficits. Successful D2 programs like NDSU don't have deficits in the hundreds of thousands. What is it about 1-AA that causes this?
Quoting you, there's this madness: The fact of the matter is that, on average, no one in the NCAA runs a bigger athletic department deficit than the 1-AA football playing schools. There's a good reason why 1-A has increased from 85 or so schools to 117 in just a few years: 1-AA is a losing proposition.
I spit up my coffee laughing. Pardon me. Where does this come from? Have you seen the double digit million dollar deficits from some of our 1-A football brothers like Texas Tech, San Jose State, New Mexico, and others? The individual red ink at any of these and other places, unfortunate, though, that it is, towers over any five of the worst 1-AA football schools.
And, regarding those that have made the jump to 1-A, such were the values of their athletic departments at the time. More power to them. If they can be successful in 1-A, that's wonderful. There's nothing wrong with trying to upgrade. Many probably wish they were still in 1-AA. Using your line of thinking, for virtually all of them (Middle Tennessee State, Troy State, U of Lousiana-Monroe, North Texas, Boise State, UNLV, Nevada, Idaho, etc.), 1-A is a losing proposition. That's not necessarily so. Respectfully, you need to get some perspective.
You may think my statement is madness, but if you did your research before spouting off, you would find out that my "madness" is the truth. Check out the financial section at the NCAA website. You will find out that my statement ("on average, no one in the NCAA runs a bigger athletic department deficit than the 1-AA football playing schools") is true.
The reason schools like Nevada and Idaho have left 1-AA is because it is a losing proposition. It is true that most of those schools are not doing better financially than they were in 1-AA, but they're smart enough to realize that if they're going to lose big money they might as well get to be associated with the big boys and not play in a division that is so poorly promoted that it's national championship game in football has worse TV ratings than the Division II game does.
You, again: There is no evidence to back Mr. Fad's contention that a move to Division I has a positive effect on enrollment. Enrollment increases occur because of a) an increase in an area's population density, b) an improvement or addition to a school's academic programs, or c) a large scale recruiting campaign on the part of the university. You're right. But there is plenty of evidence. Look at all the successful 1-A programs. You're sadly discounting the role athletics plays in a school's enrollment. As far as 1-AA is concerned: A) Fans of football, for example, will go to Northern Iowa because they can count on a positive football watching and following experience. My wife is a huge football fan, went to high school is western Iowa and went to UNI because their football program was (and still is) the most consistently successful program in the state of Iowa. B) Success in athletics reaches students and student-athletes far beyond your region. Many successful 1-AA schools, like Northern Iowa and Western Illinois and McNeese State and Montana becomes small "meccas" for football players who want to experience success on the gridiron. And, for years, there were University of Northern Iowa billbords in the Chicago area that attracted untold numbers of students, not just student-athletes. Schools like UNI were once striclty regional, but now are national, thanks in large part to athletics. Chad Setterstrom, a UNI offensive tackle, was featured on the front page of the USA Today sports page. If he was going to South Dakota, that probably wouldn't have happened. Because UNI competes for the 1-AA championship, year in and year out, they have a positive recognition factor. And it's not just football, volleyball and wrestling are huge at UNI and regularly finish in the Top 20 in their fileds, thereby attracting quality students and student-athletes. C) A school's facilities have much to do with attracting students. Nothing more to say about that other than the UNI-Dome is a heck of a place to see any event.
Once again, another misconception. Pick up the book Beer and Circus. It's written by an University of Indiana professor by the name of Murray Sperber. Sperber has done a ton of research and written a couple of different books that dispel the myth that successful athletic programs have a direct correlation with increased enrollment and alumni giving. You have the cause and effect backwards. The successful 1-A programs got that way because they already were the big schools (Michigan, Texas, etc.).
You are right in saying that a school's facilities do play a role in attracting students. The thing is, a nice facility is a nice facility whether the school is Division I or Division III.
Your final paragraph: Mr. Fad says "anything worth doing is worth waiting for and working for, at least in my opinion." Is putting a successful athletic department through a crippling transition phase to become a Division I bottom feeder worth waiting for? Gee, I can hardly wait to see my school go through 5-10 years of athletic purgatory to get into a classification that requires us to offer up our football team as the homecoming whipping boy for some BCS school just to pay the bills. You're "required" to offer up your program at a Big Ten school's Homecoming? Your extrapolation here defies facts. The fact is that fans and donors and alumni don't want to return to campus at Minnesota, for example, to pay to see them play Northern Colorado. Fans, donors and alumni at Michigan don't want to pay to see the Wolverines play Illinois State at Homecoming. To them it's not a game. They want Purdue or Indiana or Illinois or Northwestern. Fans, donors and alumni do not want to pay to see Northern Iowa play Augustana or Morningside or St. Cloud State. Additionally, fans, donors and alumni do not want to trek back to Grand Forks to see them play Wisconsin Lutheran at Homecoming. If UNI is ranked (and they usually are), they want to see Western Illinois or Youngstown State or Southwest Missouri. Instances where the above "sacrificial lamb" scenarios occur are almost non-existent, so you can't use this argument.
I should have stated my point more clearly here. I was using homecoming whipping boy as a metaphor for guarantee games. The necessity of 1-AA schools playing body-bag games (another metaphor ) to help finance an athletic program is appalling to me. It's simply a form of athletic prostitution. Tell me, did it make you proud of UNI when their football team went to Iowa State and Oklahoma St. the last couple of years for a beating and a paycheck? I'm sure that the exposure UNI gained from playing these games was priceless.
And why does the transition to 1-AA have to be "crippling"? More than half of 1-AA teams were once Division II or small college teams. Most have made the transition well and, for most, it has been worth the effort. The transition should be exciting. You start by knocking off an established 1-AA team here and there while in the probationary phase (not an impossible task and also functions as a reputation builder) and eventually work your way to be in a position to tackle a Wyoming or Idaho or a MAC team. Next thing you know, you're in a conference, competing for the championship.
The transition to 1-AA is crippling because of it's length. Lots of schools have made the transition in the past, but the circumstances were much different because the provisional periods were so much shorter. 8 years of being ineligible for postseason men's basketball, are you kidding me? That's 4 recruiting classes you have to convince to come to your school with no postseason carrot to dangle in front of them.
