Where's our feasibility study?

Here's a little information on one of them that actually looked into doing so, but decided not to.

Rice University is a Division I institution located in Houston, Texas. They compete in intercollegiate athletics on the Division I level as a member of Conference USA. Their football program plays a Division I-A/FBS schedule. In 2006, Rice participated in the New Orleans Bowl.

In 2004, the Rice University Board of Trustees, through their Athletics Subcommittee, commissioned a study to help determine the future direction of the Owls Football Team. The question of competitiveness and funding had come to a critical point, and the Trustees decided to explore all their options on what level of play their football program would compete in future years.

Rice decided to continue playing a I-A/FBS schedule, but as part of their study, they looked at dropping down to I-AA/FCS. Here are a few of the findings of the study in relation to I-AA/FCS.

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The financial situation is unlikely to be significantly better in Division I-AA than in Division I-A. Attendance and/or ticket prices (already low) at football games might drop substantially, and football revenue from away game guarantees and conference distributions would disappear. Travel expenses may also return to WAC-like levels were Rice forced to leave the C-USA and opt for academically similar peers.

Cost savings from scholarships may never materialize in a non-scholarship football conference, as it is reasonable to believe Rice would be subject to the same financial “packaging” faced by other schools with non-scholarship Division I football programs. As a rough estimate, these lost revenues and other cost increases are unlikely to be offset by salary and recruiting cost saving opportunities. The decision to move to Division I-AA, therefore, is not about cost savings. It is about playing less competitive football with over 85 athletes that are more academically qualified.

Implications

Moving to less competitive football may impact the quality of athletes in other sports slightly and will attract players from a different competitive level in football.

Donations to athletics would likely decline dramatically, since football alumni and boosters will likely view the move negatively.

Here are the numbers from the Rice report. These numbers show that it would have cost Rice MORE money to drop back down to I-AA; it was more financially sound for them to remain in I-A.

So, what does all this mean? First, it says that Rice was losing almost $10 Million per year with their football program. Personally, I wouldn't stand for this as an alumnus and I don't think anyone on the TSC board would either. The vast majority of schools don't run those types of deficits, and Rice should have looked hard at their internal operations and their external sources of revenue before doing anything else. When we conduct our I-A/FBS study, if the numbers come back with this type of projection, then I say, "let's win another six I-AA trophies and make it an even dozen on display in the Parrish Center!"

Secondly, this reports tells us that after evaluating all avenues, the Board of Trustees of Rice University decided it was in their University's better interest to remain a I-A/FCS program rather than drop a level and compete in I-AA/FCS. This could possibly be looked at in reverse (better to move up into I-A/FBS rather than stay in I-AA/FCS) in relation to Georgia Southern. We really won't know until we have a thorough study conducted on the matter.

Here's what Rice fans are saying today (after turning around their football program and playing in a bowl game this past season) about I-AA and Georgia Southern in particular.

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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:25 am Post subject: The Financial Impact of Getting Out of D-I Sports

My brother is a professor at Georgia Southern. Over Christmas, he was telling me how the prevailing sentiment there seems to be to want to move up to I-A or whatever it's now called. Why go from being a power in I-AA to a nobody in I-A, I asked? Because very few people on campus care about football anymore, he said.

It struck me as very sad. Here you have one of the true perennial powers in I-AA, multiple national championships (5 or 6) in the last 20 years or so, in a football-crazed part of the country, in a small town where it really is the only game in town, and a school of 15,000+ with none of the Elite University Faculty Angst that stirs here with such tiresome regularity. In other words, the perfect I-AA football set-up imaginable. And yet they can't fill their 20,000-seat stadium. But if they moved up, became a perennial 3-8 team, and, say, Clemson or Auburn or - Heaven forbid - the Georgia Bulldogs ever paid a return visit to Statesboro, they could probably sell 40,000 tickets just to their own fans.

Not comparing their situation to ours, but boy am I glad the Board decided to stick with I-A.

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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:12 am Post subject: The Financial Impact of Getting Out of D-I Sports

Right on point. Honestly, if we dropped down to a DIAA status and played Sam, Stephen F, Texas St, etc. in football every yr, who would come out and watch Would ANYBODY on campus give a crap about the team Take that one step further and put us in DIII with no scholarships - would we have a single person in the stands (other than parents) watching one of those games Why even bother.