State of the Athletic Department

[DxCowboy]

Don’t know where to put this since there’s no general sports forum with any traffic in it, so I’ll put it here.

Watching last week’s game in an empty GIA, then last night’s drubbing in front of good crowd in Manhattan got me thinking about the AD as a whole and the question of where are we heading in this new frontier of college athletics?

We’re now 20 years beyond a year that’s the best overall athletic year of my lifetime and, I think, had us all excited for the future and new heights that would come.

Football had been reborn and was back in bowl games with exciting results in recruiting. Eddie had the BB program in a Final Four-with everyone returning. John Smith was winning back to back titles. Frank Anderson had us dreaming about Omaha again. We were in a nationally prominent conference that consisted of multiple schools with big success in every sport. The future seemed bright.

I wish I could say that I feel the same way today, but that honestly feels like light years ago, and realistically it is.

Where is the bottom, is this year it? Is softball going to be the only sport that has any success? Without FB and men’s BB being total non-factors, wrestling too, this year feels like the worst I can recall in decades. At least in the 90’s the BB program was ascending. Right now, we don’t even have that.

We’re in a conference now that’s second tier beyond men’s BB, making half the $$$ of the SEC & B1G and have a fraction of the eyeballs the TV networks want.

I don’t know where things go from here and what the overall athletic department looks like a year or two from now. Hope I’m totally wrong, but I think the realistic 30,000 foot view right now is not very rosy. I think there probably haven’t been too many more important eras in our history where the right leadership for the moment is needed. I hope we have it.

 

[EdmondPoke]

We're not playing in the same league as the top. The difference between Ohio State's athletic department budget in 2023/2024 and ours?

$208 million dollars. They spent 2.7X what we did. Texas was only behind Ohio State by $5 million.

This isn't just a conference affiliation thing. Add the $20-30 million extra per year from a B1G media contract and we'd still be spending half of what the top schools are.

If there's not going to be a governing body controlling spending, college football needs to spin off the schools that want to be mega spenders and create an NFL minor league. I'd prefer OSU compete against level competition. Not that we can't compete at the top in one-off situations, but trying to do it year after year puts the future stability of our program at risk. We've accomplished a lot, and Boone's generosity had an effect well beyond the dollar amount he gave the program. However, he was just one guy. Those programs have a rolodex of high dollar donors. We don't.

 

[Cowboyshoopspride]

We're not playing in the same league as the top. The difference between Ohio State's athletic department budget in 2023/2024 and ours?

$208 million dollars. They spent 2.7X what we did. Texas was only behind Ohio State by $5 million.

This isn't just a conference affiliation thing. Add the $20-30 million extra per year from a B1G media contract and we'd still be spending half of what the top schools are.

If there's not going to be a governing body controlling spending, college football needs to spin off the schools that want to be mega spenders and create an NFL minor league. I'd prefer OSU compete against level competition. Not that we can't compete at the top in one-off situations, but trying to do it year after year puts the future stability of our program at risk. We've accomplished a lot, and Boone's generosity had an effect well beyond the dollar amount he gave the program. However, he was just one guy. Those programs have a rolodex of high dollar donors. We don't.

Ohio State also lost $30,000,000 against that budget. Most organizations don’t survive that kind of loss but here we are…….

They “lost” a huge portion of our entire budget.

 

[inappropriate.name]

Ohio State also lost $30,000,000 against that budget. Most organizations don’t survive that kind of loss but here we are…….

They “lost” a huge portion of our entire budget.

Ohio State is pretty much the only major university in a state of 12 million and they have a student enrollment of 66K. These are numbers The Oklahoma State University will never compete with.

Could you imagine if one of the Ivy league schools like Harvard with their 50 billion in endowment money decided to get into the college football arms race.

 

[Cowboyshoopspride]

Ohio State is pretty much the only major university in a state of 12 million and they have a student enrollment of 66K. These are numbers The Oklahoma State University will never compete with.

Could you imagine if one of the Ivy league schools like Harvard with their 50 billion in endowment money decided to get into the college football arms race.

agree.

Now look at Texas ($45 billion endowment, $78 million in donations alone last year.)…….staggering and damn near unforgivable their performances with the scratch they’re brining in.

 

[HacklemanPoke]

agree.

Now look at Texas ($45 billion endowment, $78 million in donations alone last year.)…….staggering and damn near unforgivable their performances with the scratch they’re brining in.

I went back a year ago and looked up the endowments and enrollments of the Power 4 schools. I realize endowment size is not 1 for 1 going to be proportional to athletic dept fund/revenue raising but it does give an indication of how those schools can raise money.

Most BiG10 schools will blow away Big12 and SEC. ACC also has an impressive list of large endowments.

Most Sec schools not named Texas or aTm or Vanderbilt were below $2MM w LSU, ole miss and Miss St being below $1B.

In fact throw out UCF and the avg endowment size of the Big12 is higher than the SEC sans Texas & aTm. What’s shocking is West Virginia’s endowment size at $2.9B. For reference ours is a little over $1B.

It’s why Alabama and other schools know they are in deep $-!+ when it comes to $. If we thought the conflict between academics and athletics was difficult in the past it’s about to get a lot worse for 95% of the schools wanting to compete at a power 4 level.

It’s why I think this football thing gets broken before it gets fixed.

1) The business model is just not sustainable.

2) The NFL will not allow them to compete. For reference the highest watched regular season college game this last season drew 13.9 million. The CFP championship game was 22.1. The sucky Dallas vs NYG game drew 38.1 million (albeit Thanksgiving). The Chiefs at the Bills regular season drew over 31 million. 72 of the top 100 watched programs in 2024 were NFL games. The NFL is king by a long ways and those owners will in no way allow competition.

I think what might solve it short term is for 20 or so schools to break off in football only and outside US $ comes in like we’ve seen for LIV golf and what being talked about for NBA world league.

Otherwise you’ve got 5 or so schools that will become the Dodgers and Yankees.

 

[PokeBloke]

Where the heck has Yormack been?! Spewed all football season we were the #1 basketball conference. Haven’t seen anything from him in months.

 

[DxCowboy]

I went back a year ago and looked up the endowments and enrollments of the Power 4 schools. I realize endowment size is not 1 for 1 going to be proportional to athletic dept fund/revenue raising but it does give an indication of how those schools can raise money.

Most BiG10 schools will blow away Big12 and SEC. ACC also has an impressive list of large endowments.

Most Sec schools not named Texas or aTm or Vanderbilt were below $2MM w LSU, ole miss and Miss St being below $1B.

In fact throw out UCF and the avg endowment size of the Big12 is higher than the SEC sans Texas & aTm. What’s shocking is West Virginia’s endowment size at $2.9B. For reference ours is a little over $1B.

It’s why Alabama and other schools know they are in deep $-!+ when it comes to $. If we thought the conflict between academics and athletics was difficult in the past it’s about to get a lot worse for 95% of the schools wanting to compete at a power 4 level.

It’s why I think this football thing gets broken before it gets fixed.

1) The business model is just not sustainable.

2) The NFL will not allow them to compete. For reference the highest watched regular season college game this last season drew 13.9 million. The CFP championship game was 22.1. The sucky Dallas vs NYG game drew 38.1 million (albeit Thanksgiving). The Chiefs at the Bills regular season drew over 31 million. 72 of the top 100 watched programs in 2024 were NFL games. The NFL is king by a long ways and those owners will in no way allow competition.

I think what might solve it short term is for 20 or so schools to break off in football only and outside US $ comes in like we’ve seen for LIV golf and what being talked about for NBA world league.

Otherwise you’ve got 5 or so schools that will become the Dodgers and Yankees.

They need to move the CFP CG to Friday night to get ahead of the NFL Divisional Round. Having it on Monday night still is arcane and people have just digested NFL on Saturday and Sunday.
Put it in prime time on Friday night and lead the weekend off instead of the other way around.

 

[HacklemanPoke]

They need to move the CFP CG to Friday night to get ahead of the NFL Divisional Round. Having it on Monday night still is arcane and people have just digested NFL on Saturday and Sunday.
Put it in prime time on Friday night and lead the weekend off instead of the other way around.

NFL has Thursday Sunday and Monday prime time. They’ve traditionally left Saturday alone until after college regular season. If college (& by college I mean the 2 commissioners of the BiG & SEC) get too far out of their lane, NFL will move on either Friday night or Saturday night. A game of the week type matchup say Bills/ Chiefs on Friday or Saturday night would cut college legs.

NFL knows how to sustain this business. College ad’s and commissioners are cosplaying.

 

[andylicious]

They need to move the CFP CG to Friday night to get ahead of the NFL Divisional Round. Having it on Monday night still is arcane and people have just digested NFL on Saturday and Sunday.
Put it in prime time on Friday night and lead the weekend off instead of the other way around.

They need to put it on January 1, they can get that done if they get of their stupid little championship game. Play every round on Saturdays, Finish on Jan 1

 

[DxCowboy]

They need to put it on January 1, they can get that done if they get of their stupid little championship game. Play every round on Saturdays, Finish on Jan 1

Just like the BB tournaments though, the conferences are not going to do that.

I think it’s far more likely that Army-Navy gets moved and CCGs moved to that weekend. This moves things up a week, capitalizes on people’s appetite for the big games, and moves it a week ahead of the nfl playoff schedule.

I don’t think you’re going to see what you’re proposing any time soon. Taking it from January 20th to January 1 is basically shaving 3 weeks off & forgoing revenue from the CCG’s- not gonna happen imo.

 

[andylicious]

Just like the BB tournaments though, the conferences are not going to do that.

I think it’s far more likely that Army-Navy gets moved and CCGs moved to that weekend. This moves things up a week, capitalizes on people’s appetite for the big games, and moves it a week ahead of the nfl playoff schedule.

I don’t think you’re going to see what you’re proposing any time soon. Taking it from January 20th to January 1 is basically shaving 3 weeks off & forgoing revenue from the CCG’s- not gonna happen imo.

If they want to own December they will get after it, once NFL playoffs start no one cares about college

 

[Cowboyshoopspride]

Just like the BB tournaments though, the conferences are not going to do that.

I think it’s far more likely that Army-Navy gets moved and CCGs moved to that weekend. This moves things up a week, capitalizes on people’s appetite for the big games, and moves it a week ahead of the nfl playoff schedule.

I don’t think you’re going to see what you’re proposing any time soon. Taking it from January 20th to January 1 is basically shaving 3 weeks off & forgoing revenue from the CCG’s- not gonna happen imo.

If the games still happen, are they really "shaving off" any revenue? They still get played and ESPN owns the entire thing anyway, it's not like they got more money by extending the schedule by 45 more days.

I would like to see the semi's, at the very least, on the 1st and the championship the most logical Saturday following. But now sure that even fixes the issue of getting too deep into January.

College Football belongs on Saturdays, not some random Monday in late January.

I think all of us agree it was way too long between conference championships, the play-ins, quarters, semi's and final. Maybe everyone plays weeks 0, which now becomes the official week 1, and you take out the extra bye. Then compress the playoff shcedule from what it is now. Seems like there is plenty of time in the calendar if they wanted to fix it.

 

[DxCowboy]

If the games still happen, are they really "shaving off" any revenue? They still get played and ESPN owns the entire thing anyway, it's not like they got more money by extending the schedule by 45 more days.

I would like to see the semi's, at the very least, on the 1st and the championship the most logical Saturday following. But now sure that even fixes the issue of getting too deep into January.

College Football belongs on Saturdays, not some random Monday in late January.

I think all of us agree it was way too long between conference championships, the play-ins, quarters, semi's and final. Maybe everyone plays weeks 0, which now becomes the official week 1, and you take out the extra bye. Then compress the playoff shcedule from what it is now. Seems like there is plenty of time in the calendar if they wanted to fix it.

I don’t follow you here. I was responding to the suggestion that CCG’s go away.

What do you mean by ‘if they still get played’?

 

[DxCowboy]

If they want to own December they will get after it, once NFL playoffs start no one cares about college

The numbers clearly say that’s not the case. The NFL is undoubtedly king, but CFB is second and it’s not close. Year after year out of the top 100 watched shows, football comprises 90 plus, pro and college.

As for December, the bowl ratings speak for themselves-that’s why there’s so many of them.

The wildcard round started on 1/8.

 

[Cowboyshoopspride]

I don’t follow you here. I was responding to the suggestion that CCG’s go away.

What do you mean by ‘if they still get played’?

I thought you meant the duration between CCG and the Jan 20 NCG. My fault.

Agree that CCG never go away.

 

[LS1 Z28]

I don't want to start a new thread based off a twitter rumor, but does anyone know if this is true?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1886912992039854273

 

[Poke Rocker]

I don't want to start a new thread based off a twitter rumor, but does anyone know if this is true?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1886912992039854273

Who is this guy Gorman besides a political reporter for some site out of DC?

 

[LS1 Z28]

Who is this guy Gorman besides a political reporter for some site out of DC?

IDK, I never heard of him before today. I still haven’t seen this reported from any sources I trust, so it may not turn out to be true.

Edit: It’s now been reported by the O’Colly, but they’re citing the original report. We’ll see what happens.

https://www.ocolly.com/news/osu/osu-president-dr-kayse-shrum-expected-to-announce-her-resignation-per-report/article_3d232b7e-e34e-11ef-a281-5fa28dc11ecb.html

 

[PickleRick]

If this is true - any theories as to why? Was there writing on the wall?