A new and better FBS thread

[MWC]

People talking about MWC and "travel" when Hawaii is in the conference pisses me off bro.

Hawaii pays to be football only. Were you to receive an all sports invitation you would not. Hawaii pays subsidies to the Big West too.

If you want football only, arrangements would have to be made..

[Kevin]

Lakes, make arrangements.

[taper]

Hawaii pays to be football only. Were you to receive an all sports invitation you would not. Hawaii pays subsidies to the Big West too.

If you want football only, arrangements would have to be made..

Hawaii also has a special rule from the NCAA allowing FB teams that play there to schedule an extra game. They explicitly say this is to offset the travel costs. We're not going to get that.

[The_Sicatoka]

Are you able to take UND's athletics budget into account without hockey spend?

UND's hockey and football budgets (expenses) are roughly the same. Hockey far outpaces football for revenue generation as it generates more revenue than its expenses.

[The_Sicatoka]

I like where NDSU is at. Add in the millions of dollars from the conference and we're approaching median.

https://knightnewhousedata.org/reports/64943136

For NDSU:
- Roughly $2M more in conference distributions in MAC than today. That doesn't quite, it's close, get to NDSU to MAC median.
- Roughly $4M more in conference distributions in MWC than today. That still leaves NDSU over $10M short of MWC median.
https://knightnewhousedata.org/reports/ee825a60

[NDSU92]

https://knightnewhousedata.org/reports/64943136

For NDSU:
- Roughly $2M more in conference distributions in MAC than today. That doesn't quite, it's close, get to NDSU to MAC median.
- Roughly $4M more in conference distributions in MWC than today. That still leaves NDSU over $10M short of MWC median.
https://knightnewhousedata.org/reports/ee825a60

So Day 1 in the MAC NDSU would be essentially median?
Day 1 in the MW NDSU wouldn't be the lowest and have a decent way to go to get to median?

There are a handful of other things to keep in mind as NDSU's budget relates to it's MW peers.

1) Nowhere have I seen that NDSU would need to be a Day 1 median budget school. Common sense would be that there is a ramp up period as there is at every other FCS to FBS transitioning program. Hell, it may hurt NDSU if the other schools see that it's already going to come in the conference and have too strong of a budget. It's a major reason why we've never been considered for the MVC.
2) NDSU is not currently charging Mountain West prices, and believe you me, we would be charging considerably more for MW tickets than MVFC/Summit tickets (and we should be). The price of everything goes up.
3) NDSU isn't getting FBS-pay for the FBS non-conference games. I would assume the normal schedule is 2 away FBS non-con games at $1M each, one home FBS non-con at a cost of $1M, and a home FCS non-con for $500k. Both the revenue and expenses sides are increasing to bring us more in line with our peers in the MW.
4) NDSU is not currently charging student fees at a similar clip to Mountain West programs. Heck if we charged what UND did for student fees, we'd have another couple million just right there. Easy to explain that to Higher Ed board and state legislature.
5) NDSU is not in California, Utah or Denver. It doesn't have to pay it's admin as if they were located in those states. This is a big reason why the Cali Big Sky schools have budgets as big or bigger than NDSU, SDSU, etc. but then come back to complain about unequal resources.

I'm not saying everything is perfect and there's no concern there, but there's a lot more to it than looking at what the 2021 expense was for NDSU and comparing it to the #6 school in the MW before we've even joined. As Bresciani and Larsen have been on record saying, the money actually works out quite well in most possible scenarios.

[The_Sicatoka]

As Bresciani and Larsen have been on record saying, the money actually works out quite well in most possible scenarios.

Bresciani was intimating that NDSU's wells may be tapped out last I read.

[NDSU92]

Bresciani was intimating that NDSU's wells may be tapped out last I read.

https://www.ndsu.edu/news/view/detail/67356/

Yep, $600M in 6 years raised. Bone dry.

Notice how literally none of the points I made were about NDSU raising more money from donors.

But if you wanna take it there, our strong donor base has proven itself. I know of many, many folks in my demographic (late 20's/early 30's professional, what I would consider at least semi-successful) that would love a reason to donate more than I already do to NDSU. Donating more money to TeamMakers so we can beat Montana State by 7 touchdowns in Frisco vs. 5 just doesn't make sense right now. It probably doesn't for corporate donors anymore either. Sell us that it's all hands on deck for us to compete with and dominate the MW? I'm running to my checkbook*.

*Bitcoin terminal

[BigLakeBison]

I agree with the following: We need to improve our non-football sports. You're arguing with me on the thing that we agree on...

The point you were making that I disagree with is that football is causing the other sports to suffer like what happens at UND with their hockey team. Again, I'd argue that the football program is currently funding and subsidizing the other programs, so to say that the football program's success is at the detriment of the other programs is incorrect. On top of that, we're not even sniffing the MW without the football program that we have. The In Our Hands campaign doesn't go nearly as well as it did without the amazing NDSU Bison brand that our football program has built for the University.

Yes, ideally we'd have a MW-funded basketball program. But we're not in the Mountain West are we? It'd sure help to have the extra millions of dollars per year that the Mountain West teams get. That's not the fault of football program. To the contrary, the football program is the reason we're even having this conversation.

Fair point. The football program's success has helped to build the Ath. Dept. to it's current status. Now what are we going to do with that success? How are we going to utilize that momentum to build for the future? If we continue to pour money into the football program at a higher rate than the other programs but remain in FCS, that is the definition of diminishing return on investment. I don't believe there is any more ROI to squeeze out of FCS. To me it makes sense to use some of that capital to help balance the AD and hopefully grow support, and revenue from the other sports at a faster rate than pouring more money into an FCS football program. Again, it's a tough situation for sure. There's no clearly right answer but I just don't believe that the momentum that has been built can be sustained with the status quo. If NDSU can't see a relative quick, attainable and sustainable path to FBS for our football program. Than the leadership needs to explore other ways to keep the fanbase and momentum that has developed from the move to D1 and the FCS success going into the future.

[daddy daycare]

https://www.ndsu.edu/news/view/detail/67356/

Yep, $600M in 6 years raised. Bone dry.

Notice how literally none of the points I made were about NDSU raising more money from donors.

But if you wanna take it there, our strong donor base has proven itself. I know of many, many folks in my demographic (late 20's/early 30's professional, what I would consider at least semi-successful) that would love a reason to donate more than I already do to NDSU. Donating more money to TeamMakers so we can beat Montana State by 7 touchdowns in Frisco vs. 5 just doesn't make sense right now. It probably doesn't for corporate donors anymore either. Sell us that it's all hands on deck for us to compete with and dominate the MW? I'm running to my checkbook*.

*Bitcoin terminal

You might be...but there's also a large chunk of the fan base that won't be.