It won’t be definitive, it won’t be perfect, but it will give us quite a grip on where we stand. Whatever comes of this, it’s been a fun ride and you guys have been vital in making this happen.

More importantly is to see how this all plays out from the top, most of us are hoping that Sam Baker uses this very important tool to his advantage.

Will he actively have the newest addition to the Boosters involved in marketing this study? Will there be a fund-raiser built around it? Marketing? Expansion ideas?

Or will we be disappointed seeing this only as an announcement of receipt of a document and a simple explanation of what’s inside it?

Stay tuned at GSUFans.com for the news.

Now back to your regularly scheduled lack of reading this site :)

Yes, I know he works hard in a probably thankless job.

However, we’ve had a mess of football coaches in the past few years, a proverbial revolving door.

Yes, I know BVG wasn’t necessarily Sam’s fault.

Not to mention, we’re having a heck of a hard time trying to figure out and fix the APR situation.

Yes, I know that coaches are responsible for some (or a lot) of this.

On top of that, we have players being suspended, cut, and leaving the team in what can only be described as “too often”.

Yes, I realize that will happen sometimes and coaching turnover doesn’t help it.

But word finally breaks about this NCAA investigation in to Georgia Southern.

Yes, I know it was probably self-reported and such.

But, does anyone else just get frustrated with the way things have gone recently?

Yes, I’m sure there are some logical reasons (or excuses, depending on your POV) for all of this stuff coming to happen.

But on some level, regardless of the why, we need someone to start providing direction and solutions to these issues.

We seem to have squandered, or at least stalled, a lot of our momentum.

At what point do we gain any confidence in our leaders’ vision (and pursuit) of the future?

Color me concerned.

But alas, he (and Sam) have decided to go another direction.

As to why it took so long after our season ended to make this decision I’m not sure, it would have been nice to get a jump on the coaching search. C’est la vie.

Here’s hoping we land someone solid.

But before we go jumping into the deep end without taking swimming lessons we need to take a look at where we currently stand in comparison to current FBS institutions, and also we we currently compare against other leading FCS schools. I’ve put together comparisons of athletic department budgets, football budgets, school enrollments and football home game attendance.

I think you’ll see we have the undergraduate size to move up and we are well on our way to having the attendance. Attendance should not be a problem if we build more seats in Paulson and field teams that put butts in seats every Saturday afternoon.

When you look at the budgets, you’ll see we will need to at least DOUBLE OR TRIPLE our overall athletic budget and probably increase our football budget by 300-to-400%. This is going to take a combination of increased student fees, increased numbers of season tickets and increased ticket prices, and a whole lot of new boosters contributing to our athletic program. Run the numbers yourself and try to come up with your own plan of funding the increases we’ll need to be one of the “Top Three” budgets in the Sun Belt, CUSA or WAC.

Don’t be too discouraged with what you see, because we’ve faced bigger obstacles and come out victorious before. Here’s the numbers I found and put together.

http://www.gata.com/gsuversuscompetition.pdf


To reach the next level of funding for our Eagles, there are several methods of increasing revenues that will have to take place to increase our current $9.115M budget to a competitive level in a FBS conference. Here is my scenario of how we can accomplish this.

Student Fee Increases – $1.875M

Based on 15,000 undergraduates averaging 2.5 semesters each year (7,500 enrolled during summer), an increase of $50 per semester in the student athletic fee would net $1,875,000 per year.

Southern Boosters Increased Giving – $1M

Adding 2,000 new contributors at $500 cash for each contributor would net a $1,000,000 per year. This will take a lot of work to reach our alumni and fans, but it can be done. This figure will rise above $1M over the years.

Football Season Ticket Increases – $600K

The 2,000 new contributors to Boosters will buy 2.5 season tickets per account (average family size) at a cost of $120 per season ticket. This would net $600,000 per year. The question is, “where will 5,000 new $500 seats be located?”

Football Single Game Ticket Increases – $240K

With all the added interest in FBS football, we can expect more walk-up ticket sales on game days. 2,000 additional fans buying single game tickets would net $240,000 per year. Again the question arises, “where will these newly-converted Eagles fans sit?”

Auxiliary Services Absorbs Fees – $2.5M

As in the case with many schools, meals and rooms are absorbed by the university. Being that AuxServices does not operate with “state money” and is not restricted by state laws that say “no state tax dollars for athletics”, our University could have AuxServices absorb the costs currently being paid by Athletics for meals and rooms for our student-athletes. This could be done now if our President decided to take the initiative and simply “do it”! Freeing the athletic budget from these costs would net around $2,500,000 per year.

Playing One Football “Money Game” Per Season – $750K

Once we are a FBS member, we will be able to receive a minimum of $750,000 per game for playing a BSC team at their home stadium. These prices have escalated dramatically over the past five years with some SBC, CUSA & WAC programs receiving over $900K for a guarantee. One of these games would net a minimum of $750,000 per year.

Increased Marketing Sponsorships – $250K

With increased exposure in FCS, a higher-profile conference, more butts in seats for home games, and more regional/national exposure on television, we will have additional opportunities for corporate sponsorships. Taking advantage of these opportunities would net us a minimum of$250,000 per year.

So far, this scenario nets Georgia Southern Athletics an additional $7.215M per year, but much of this growth is based on finding seats for the extra fans 7,000 fans and 2,000 students we are counting on. As you all know, there is no way Paulson Stadium can absorb these addition numbers in her current configuration. We will need to add seats, lounges, private boxes, end zone seating, upper decks, etc. to Our House BEFORE we start our efforts of attracting new paying customers. We can’t afford to bring new patrons into Our House and have them sit on the berms or stand . . . and then expect them to come back again and willingly hand us their money. We have to treat them as members of the family and give them comfortable seating and competitive football for their dollars.

New Club-Level Lounge (new “Eagle Club”) – $500K

Adding a 1,000 seat club level to the newly-constructed press box/club/private booth facility on the south side of Paulson would net $500,000 per year. It would also be a magnet for attracting some of the new boosters and season tickets we are counting on for our increases. Take a look at what Troy has done with their Trojan Club lounge; they sold out their club level seating at $500 per seat per season before construction started.

New Private Boxes (40) – $700K

Constructing 40 new private suites, each holding 16 patrons, would net $700,000 per year. These suites would lease for $17,500 per year on a five-year lease, and future pricing would be based on supply & demand.

Increased Merchandising, Concessions, Parking, etc. – $150K

Increase numbers attending games will put a stress on parking adjacent to Paulson Stadium and yearly parking fees will increase due to supply and demand. Expect parking to rise to $125 per year. Increased numbers at games will also lead to more lucrative concessions and merchandising contracts, most possibly from off-campus vendors (Aramark, Sodexho, etc.). These outside vendors and other fee increases would net $150,000 per year.

Spring Golf Blitz – $75K

Southern Boosters would conduct a Spring Golf Blitz across the southeast plus DC, holding golf tournament in fifteen cities featuring the Head Football Coach and prominent football lettermen. These tournaments will not only attract GSU alumni, but friends of our alumni that simply enjoy playing in golf outings. We would secure a corporate partner for these outings and set a goal of $5000 profit per outing. This would net $75,000 per year and would also allow us to generate significant interest and enthusiasm for our program outside of southeast Georgia.

These additional revenue sources would net us $1.425M per year, giving us a total of $8.64M in increased revenue for our annual athletic budget. We’ll have a more expenses due to a new conference being more geographically wide-spread, expenses related to bond payments for retiring stadium construction costs, and increased sport program budget for recruiting, etc.

But, taking our existing budget of $9.115M and adding the expected $8.640M will give us an expected budget of $17.755 in current dollars. This budget would put GSU at #2 within the Sun Belt Conference, 11th of 12 in Conference USA, and 6th of 9 in the WAC.

I do want to say that sitting down and coming up with these numbers is a much easier task than actually going out and doing it, but the simple truth is we CAN increase our revenue if we all work together and dig deep. It will not be easy and there will many, many bumps along the way. We probably won’t be successful in most of our sports initially due to the increased levels of competition we will be facing, but if we look on this as an eight to ten year project, then success will eventually come our way.

A couple of options that I intentionally did not include in this scenario is for current boosters to increase their donations and increased ticket prices for football. We all know these will be necessary, but I wanted to run the numbers without these two options. Each of us that currently give to Southern Boosters should expect to increase our giving by 50-100% once the decision has been made for our Eagles to move up into FBS. We can also expect to see ticket prices to rise $5-$10 per seat for “priority” seating inside the 35-yard lines. It will be each of our duties to dig deep for our alma mater and make sure our move into the FBS is a success for future generations of Georgia Southern Eagles.

I also did not include any numbers from Capital Project donations which could offset many of the costs related to stadium construction and renovations.

If you don’t agree with the numbers, or if you come up with other methods of raising funds on a consistent annual basis, please feel free to chip in with suggestions.

Back in March of 2007, many of us decided that the time for standing idly by had come and gone. By banding together in a grassroots effort, we were able to set and achieve our goal of convincing the University to pursue a FBS Feasibility study. Sometime next month, we will learn the results of that study and should be able to gauge where we stand in our pursuit of bringing better competition to Paulson Stadium.

Today we have launched our second grassroots effort in coordination with Southern Boosters and GSUFans.com – we are looking to raise money to endow ONE football scholarship.

Southern Boosters has set the cost of this endeavor at $50,000 and if we hope to add the 22 additional scholarships necessary to compete at the FBS/I-A level then we have to start gathering these funds now. We raised over $2,000 last time very quickly just out of a few donors to do some simple advertising – today we need you all to pitch in to directly help the football program ramp up for what’s next.

We ask that you visit SouthernFACTS.org and click on the ChipIn link on the right hand side. Send over whatever you can offer, $5, $10, $100, $1000 or more. The money will go directly to the Southern Boosters bank accounts and Dan O’Dowd and his crew will be able to give you credit for your donations just as if you had mailed the check in yourself.

So get your end of the year donations in and help us make a difference!

If you can’t give, then go out of your way and recruit a new booster to the program – have them ChipIn! – and make sure to let us know that you did so! Every little bit helps!

As an incentive to the largest donor during the month of December, I will personally mail you my last original copy of the coveted NCAA Drive to Dixie poster which celebrates Erk Russell’s undefeated 1989 national championship season. These originals have gone for over $500 on eBay and are great find for the GSU collector in your home.

So dig deep, and if you want to spread the word you can add a ChipIn widget to your sites by clicking this link.

Grube has no doubts that GSU will eventually enter the FBS, but said the university has to balance its checkbook while making the move. That means a lot of private financial support, not student fee money.

“There’s some room for movement on student fees. That would require students to be in support of that,” Grube said.

It’s good to see that we are getting closer to being on the same page, a modest increase in fees could net the University an additional $1M which is more than Southern Boosters has ever ponied up in a single year.

With that said, I personally think it must also be mandated that our Southern Boosters program be able to match any increase by students fees (if not set goals for even more than that). Additionally, we must be able to find donors and match them to projects specifically sought to facilitate the move up. I think that we now see that our officials are telling us that concessions have been made on every front … it’s now up to the study, our next leaders, and our boosters to carry the torch.

As Grube noted, “I can’t take a business plan that’s not real to the Board of Regents,” Grube said. “We need to do it right.”

And that’s all the I-A proponents ever wanted I believe, as Erk said often, “Do right.”

Here’s hoping our new leaders are willing to take on this challenge. It’d be awful nice to see our current leaders lend them a helping hand however.

The link is http://www.customintercept.com/surveys/web/georgiasouthernstudent08.htm

Make sure to fill it out and if you finish it, post in the comments here to let us know! :)

1) A FBS survey will be going out to Boosters and alumni soon.

2) Open forum for faculty and staff: November 17th there’s an Open Forum scheduled for GSU faculty and staff with Rosser.

3) Open forum for students: Immediately following that forum on November 17th there will be another open forum specifically for GSU students with Rosser.

Sam also made a statement disagreeing with something in the paper written by Andy Geiger regarding moving up on something like an extra $2M to $3M. Sam suggested that he felt like that wasn’t enough.

Keep your eyes here or over at GSUFans.com for updates.

The biggest things that came out of it were 1) we need more money 2) the kind of revenues we’re getting need to be looked at. The revenues they mentioned were 60% based on donations and game revenues while our budget is currently 35%. Now much of that is because of our supplementing it with student fees.

Hopefully there will be some things that show up in the report that give our administrators something to work towards. With 25,000 enrollment being on the near horizon we’ll be looking at conference affiliation sooner than we think.

Personally I’m with Nate on this currently, I just hope that we can finally get the answers that we seek and then we can see how our various administrative groups (Grube, Baker, and Mulherin) respond to reaching them.

The year 2010 is a long way away, but not so far that we can’t have our plans moving that way. I’m definitely excited to read more about what these guys are putting together for recommendations and such.