jdub27

Closing the nano-research center and getting downgraded by Carnegie are two interesting steps to take to reach that goal.

It is possible that part of their ticket sales drop has to do with having at least 1 less home game per year since they will try to sell themselves off to the highest bidder to help balance their budget vs. paying teams to come in or playing more home/homes. Also important to note that there is 1 less game in the FCS regular season than there is in the FBS regular season (most years). The debt repayment is going to be the same since it has to do with a previous buyout of a BC game so they are paying it one way or another. It is only a 1 year thing, which is why it isn't in the "current" column but appears in the two projection columns.

I don't disagree with you and I completely see where the fundraisers were coming from. There is obviously a sunk cost for UND whether those students are there or not however what that is becomes very hard to quantify. I would guess this is the exact sticking point that caused the impasse, there isn't a way to quantify it, so they don't. Even if they were able to, I'd guess it would be a much smaller than they were hoping for because there is a cost on the academic side. Just running quick math, a ballpark on tuition paid by the 29 baseball players would be around $294K (3 in-state, 12 Minnesota, 13 Contiguous/MSEP/WUE, and 1 non-resident) before $105K in athletic aid. The athletic aid likely includes some room/board/other, but ignoring that for simplicity's sake, you're left with a net of about ~$189K loss of tuition.

This whole thing points out how much of anomaly that government and college athletic accounting is from the real world. The fundraisers for baseball wanted to include the players' tuition into the revenue side but athletics gets zero credit for that in their budget, they are only hit for the expenses that it costs to run the team (less a very small amount of revenue). Same thing with something like UND operating Ray Richards golf course, which was revenue neutral or even comes out a little ahead, depending on the year. It was all about cutting the expense side of the equation, even if the revenue side made sense or were very close. If they have someone else operate it, they have just cut out X amount of dollars and are basically in the same place or just a little worse (depending on what fees they'd collect). Even if they are a little behind, they did what they "needed" to cut their budget.

We can? Why exactly does the league need to expand?

So if you remember it, how can you be confused on how someone easily could come to the conclusion that NDSU might be short of funds? It has nothing to do with the explanation and whether you or I are satisfied with it. The athletic department told the students they needed more money and wanted to increase the fees above and beyond what they settled on just 2 years into a 5 year agreement to cover the gap. When the students said no, a logical person would conclude that means if they were short before and their plan to cover the "increase in travel expenses" was denied, they would still be short. And since the request for those fees were completely unrelated to budget cuts, a logical person would also conclude that the athletic department will have to do some trimming on the cuts required for the upcoming biennium due to them being supported by a fairly significant amount of funds directly from the school and in turn state funding ($6-7 million or more last year, depending on how you count it).

While I get the nostalgia, the programs you listed were a big part of the reason that UND left the WCHA. Adding them to the NCHC would be defeating the whole reasoning for the conference being created.

Don't you remember the NDSU athletic department saying they needed to more than double student fees to the tune of an extra $1.5 million per year to cover increases in "travel and equipment"? Seems odd that they would request money 2 years into a 5 year agreement with students if they didn't actually need it.

If I had to guess, I think they would stay where they are at 10 teams and get back to having a balanced schedule unless Douple can convince Patty that UND to the Summit is necessary.

Will be interesting to see McFeely's next article about budget cuts, maybe he can actually do some real reporting on it this time instead of just writing uninformed hyperbole. Guessing it will turn out to show that the rest of the schools within the NDUS aren't in the better financial spot he originally claimed. The difference was UND had someone in charge who went ahead with deeper cuts than were required upfront, that would actually make a difference instead of kicking the can down the road, all with the assumption that more would be coming. Turns out Schafer was right and because of it, UND has put themselves close to where they needed to be with the new mandate, even before it was handed down, getting there by making actual cuts. The other schools within NDUS who were hoping to get by on delayed spending will now likely have to go back through their budget and make real cuts, eliminating things that were deemed safe the first time through. UND did it pretty much all of it the run even though it wasn't easy and was definitely messy but save the trouble of compounding the situation by having to go back and do it again.

There are also articles saying that after beating that drum for years, he realized that it was not feasible at the current time and in the current environment. There will need to be a split before it happens. Zero chance they make this move and toss it on a brand new commissioner.

Fullerton retires in less than two months, he will not be making anything of the sort. He also likely wouldn't be retiring at this time if something like this was imminent.

I was wrong on the ASU to the B1G. From everything I had heard, I'm really surprised that they (the B1G) changed their mind and decided against adding them. As for going forward, maybe they will stay at an odd number of teams. The WCHA did it on and off for a handful of years, though I can't imagine its ideal. I think the NCHC's biggest hang-up on ASU is that their arena situation is a dumpster fire. Then it becomes of a pros/cons decision on how much their brand brings to the table in terms of hockey, which is different than their overall brand. The one thing they have going for them is money, which is something a lot of schools can't say.

You think maybe what Philly told him before he signed his contract and what they did after are maybe two different things and that is why he is upset? They traded away a bunch of picks that could have improved the team to draft his replacement who will get every benefit of the doubt. Can't imagine why he'd be upset to risk his health with zero guarantees. He's in line to get paid nicely for it but for a very short term.

I've already seen it more than once. On multiple occasions, someone yelling anything Hawk related (whether well-intended or meant to provoke by yelling Hawks instead of Sioux, since I guess that is the actual nickname) was usually followed by at minimum a handful of dirty looks and occasionally some commentary. Now, I fully believe that you didn't see it last year, but how many people did you hear using Hawks? I personally didn't see/hear a ton of it, but the responses when it happened were definitely not positive. St. Cloud was probably the most amusing example because it was right after the new name was announced and both St. Cloud and #SiouxForever fans did not seem to care for it.

Ha, might be closer than you think. Saw some real dirty/angry looks occasionally followed by choice commentary multiple times this winter from some #SiouxForever fans towards people doing any sort of Hawk-related cheers.

This is incorrect. Contributions are broken out separately. The ticket revenues reported is gross dollar amount of tickets sold. You are correct that UND contracts out those services to the REA but it comes with an agreement that splits the ticket revenue.

Williams main duty was basketball and football operations. She may have had some knowledge of the TV contracts but Mark Rudner oversees the majority of the TV stuff for the B1G.

Close. They said they were still going to spend the money, just not this (budget) year.

ASU currently has no concrete plans for an arena outside of their current home which seats ~750 people. Guessing that needs to be figured out before the NCHC would make anything official.

Big Sky hires B1G associate commissioner Andrea Williams as their new commissioner.

You're reading those contracts different than everyone else. Even the LSU contract, the only one that actually addresses the possibility of them being in the FCS, allows it to be cancelled by either party with no penalty. Idaho moving to FCS isn't a breach of contract. It is entirely possible (and likely in a few cases) that there will be mutual agreements that either cancel the contracts or amend the dollar amounts, but I have zero clue how you can come up with it costing Idaho $7 million.

Turns out someone was already on that. Looks like the majority don't have any sort of FBS/FCS stipulation and there are a few that leave it up to interpretation on conference scheduling (outside of LSU, who definitely accounted for it)

Do you actually think he took the time to ask anyone or just wrote what sounded best? Though it is possible he was give the "nothing to see here" treatment, the way the article was written makes it seem like he had whatever point he was trying to make figured out before going back and filling in the blanks with whatever narrative was needed.

So with UND going above and beyond (for various reasons), is it just going to be easier to manage the next round of cuts or will they be given any leeway because they trimmed beyond what was required in this round?