The hollowness of AD rhetoric about needing more revenue
by Joe 96alum on Dec 13, 2009 11:00 PM EST
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PrintTo hear Penn State's athletic department talk, you'd think they're barely scraping by in the funding of university sports. But today there was very interesting data reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. By law, schools that receive federal student aid programs must report athletic expenditures to the U.S. Dept. of Education. In a nutshell, it is reported for Penn State:
Expenses: $76,499,957
Revenues: $95,978,243
Revenue minus expenses: $19,478,286
Link to US Dept. of Ed. database
So it appears that the athletic department does quite well for itself, and maybe doesn't really need to schedule the likes of Eastern Illinois and Youngstown State for home games. They're abusing the loyalty of the fanbase with these games.
One thing that's not in those numbers is debt service, which the Dept. of Ed. lists as $11,362,592. (Interestingly, Pitt and WVU show no debt service.) But even with that there's still more than $8 million in the clear. On the flip side of that I can't really tell from the data how private donations are accounted for. But the revenue picture should get brighter with the new seat pricing that was recently announced. The data is for 7-1-08 to 6-30-09.
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I’m surprised the debt service is that low, actually, since they are still paying off the 2001 Beaver Stadium expansion (and I think paying for Medlar Field). But that’s good. Hopefully, they are using the excess revenue to retire the Beaver Stadium debt quicker.
As for what they are doing with the excess revenue, that is likely being earmarked for future projects. Possible for a new/expensive coach in the post-Paterno era. But more likely for new facilities — the softball field is planned, they need upgrades to the soccer stadium and there has been constant talk of both building an ice hockey arena to move that sport to varsity) plus also the thought to upgrade the press boxes and expand the West side of Beaver Stadium. Projects like that do require up front money to initiate, even if there is some large donations as part of it.
Wasn't Medlar Field almost completely funded by Anthony Lubrano? I know he gave a lot of money.
Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Name. All Game.
"Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth."
if so, then I would be surprised it wasn't called the Lubrano Field
by The JuggerNitt on Dec 14, 2009 9:48 AM EST up reply actions
I thought it was Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.
So his name is attached in some way.
Computers rank me number 1, blame the BCS...it's their fault.-Joe Budden
You are correct sir.
It is named after the donor and a former coach.
Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Name. All Game.
"Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth."
my question is
when do we as an institution stop expanding? it’s obvious the more we build, the more complex the facilities, the more maintenance it incurs, leads to more expenses, which leads to charging more to accommodate the expenses. We should have a decade of reprieve from new construction.
God knows Penn State can’t go on expanding forever.
Natural Law
Rich get richer, poor get poorer, then working class uprising…yada yada Communism
by Mr. Rosewater on Dec 14, 2009 11:33 AM EST up reply actions
we already sort of knew this information
this is from the NLC page about the STEP program:
the changes are not about “current problems,” it’s all about future problems. they’ve pretty much peaked their revenue capabilities in the current system, but their expenses aren’t going down, especially with the new softball facility, possible (but extremely likely) beaver stadium press box upgrades, and (hopefully!! but unlikely at the moment) hockey arena.
on the subject of the potential hockey arena. not only would they need a new building, but they’d probably need to buy the land to build it, since i am currently not aware of any site owned by the university big enough for such a project. not to mention they would definitely upgrade the Greenberg Complex, have to fund a full Div.1 program (around $1 million/year, i think Icersguy posted that number before)…PLUS, we’d have to fund a full women’s program (or some other new women’s Div.1 program) because of Title 9.
i also agree that the AD is also starting to make room for a new head coaches salary in the budget.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
Yeah, as much as I love hockey
I really have to wonder if it won’t be a financial black hole.
Twitter: @scrappled
"When it’s third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time" - Max McGee
by Run Up The Score on Dec 14, 2009 9:27 AM EST up reply actions
I think that would depend on whether the Big Ten would add ice hockey as a conference sport. I think a Big Ten ice hockey conference would make enough money in shared revenue that it could make the sport at PSU relatively break even at least, even if we suck. If we are talking PSU playing in the ECAC Hockey League or Atlantic Hockey, financials are probably less rosey.
That said, one way to mitigate the expenses is to have a minor league team also use the facility, a la the Spikes using the baseball stadium. At least you generate some rent when the college teams are using it. The downside to that, though, is that their ticket sales would probably be cutting into the ticket sales for the ice hockey team itself.
rumor has it
That the Big Ten needs 1 more school to commit to a hockey team (besides PSU) and then they will have a Big Ten conference.
@collegiatestdms
Ice Hockey
You need 6 schools in a conference to get an automatic bid to the NCAAs. Right now, 5 Big Ten schools sponsor varsity ice hockey — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan St and Ohio State. PSU, Illinois and (I think) Iowa have club ice hockey among other Big Ten schools. It’s thought that either PSU or Illinois or both could jump up to varsity status and there could be a Big Ten conference for ice hockey. This would signficantly affect the power structure of the sport though given that Minn/Wisc/UM//MSU are among the richest and most powerful teams in the sport.
As an aside, Notre Dame should they be invited to the conference, also has varsity ice hockey.
I'm way out of my depth here
But my understanding is that not only Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan St and Ohio State all pretty highly regarded hockey schools, but they are pretty highly regarded hockey schools in different leagues.
So Big Ten hockey would be something like starting a fooball confrence by poaching Florida, Alabama, Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan, just to get started.
Similarly, Penn State joining that league would be the functional equivalent of Robert Morris joining the SEC.
I say let's rock the Orange Bowl, because nobody will remember in five years anyway.
But my understanding is that not only Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan St and Ohio State all pretty highly regarded hockey schools, but they are pretty highly regarded hockey schools in different leagues.
Exactly correct. Minnesota and Wisconsin are in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). MSU, Michigan and tOSU are in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) [along with Notre Dame FWIW]. And the Big Ten schools are basically the powerhouses in each of those conferences, though there are some other strong teams like North Dakota and Denver.
The other schools in the CCHA and WCHA don’t want to see the Big Ten schools leave to form their own conference. The thought is that if the Big Ten schools combine, they’d make so much money relative to other schools and so much coverage that they’d really dominate the sport. I’d imagine a Big Ten hockey conference would be able to get a good national TV deal with ESPN plus would also be able to fill up space on the BTN (a lot of hockey games are basically just carried locally now if at all on TV). The BTN already carries some ice hockey, but this would lead to a lot more (plus affiliated shows to cover the sport).
I think PSU would be walking into a great situation if that were the happen, one that would make adding the sport a lot more viable.
I'd have to think
That creating a Big Ten hockey confrence is a pretty high prioroity for the BTN right now.
I say let's rock the Orange Bowl, because nobody will remember in five years anyway.
I know very little about college hockey
But Brian Cook addressed the idea of a Big Ten hockey conference in one of his posts. I recall something about Michigan being rather loyal to the smaller Michigan schools in the CCHA.
"Andrew Jones....SEND IT IN, BIG FELLA!" - Bill Raftery, 4/2/09
by ReadingRambler on Dec 14, 2009 5:18 PM EST up reply actions
Yes indeed,
that is the case. I think it would be a devastating thing for the ‘other’ schools in those conferences for the B10 schools to jump into their own conference. Also it would create such a powerful conference that it would completely throw off any kind of balance. Not only would it decimate the smaller teams in their former conferences, but even the larger teams like Boston College and New Hampshire or Maine out east would not appreciate it.
That said I think that Notre Dame having a hockey program is a big deal when seen through the prism of a 12 team Big 10. Any of the other schools talked about do not have big time hockey teams. I think despite the rumblings from Alvarez, the big ten is still waiting for ND.
The big ten would like to sponsor a hockey conference if given the opportunity, but I don’t think the rest of the college hockey landscape could survive a B10 hockey conference right now. They just had an entire conference disappear recently (granted it was only a 6 team conference and most of the other teams were adopted by standing conferences). The way Delany figures it, by the time ND is ready to join a conference, hopefully the rest of college hockey could handle a B10 conference.
but in joining this
wouldn’t PSU be able to recruit a totally different type of player?
We decide when you hear the snap count...
Exactly
If we jumped up and joined a Big Ten hockey conference, we’d easily be the cellar dweller in the league for some time (well, unless Illinois joins as well in which case we’ll be co-cellar dwellers). But it’s quite possible that the cellar dwelling in the Big Ten conference would be an average team in most other conferences and we’d be fairly competitive in the grand scheme of the sport.
Of course, this is all years away, if ever.
Cellar dwellers?
I know almost nothing about college hockey, but I thought I remember that PSU was always one of the top teams in the league it is in. My assumption now after reading this post is that we’re currently in a JV-type league compared to the NCAAs. Am I right?
"God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy"
PSU ice hockey is a club sport currently, meaning non-scholarship guys playing just for the fun of it. They would get crushed by any regular Div 1 team let alone a powerhouse team like Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin.
That said, obviously if we made it a varsity sport, we’d actually be recruiting players and have the brand name of PSU (and potentially the Big Ten) behind us which would help to get things off the ground. I guess we’d also have a nice new facility as well. I don’t think that will help us too much against the other Big Ten teams at first, but should be able to be competitive with most non-elite eastern teams pretty quickly and that’s who we’d probably play non-conference.
Eventually, maybe.
We can recruit the same kind of players that Indiana does in basketball, but with a few very limited exceptions, we don’t really compete at that level. And we had a pretty competitive D1 basketball program in our league when we moved up in status.
Maybe the hockey folks can enlighten me, but the prospect of going from club team to playing not just D1 hockey, but D1 hockey at it’s highest possible level, seems daunting. To say the least.
We may compete eventually. But I have to think we’d be staring down the barrel of a decade or so of losing games 13-0.
I say let's rock the Orange Bowl, because nobody will remember in five years anyway.
Wow
So a guy loses the internet for a couple days, and all sorts of speculations starts a-flyin’.
From everything I’m still hearing, a lot of the start-up work for getting a full hockey program will have to start from within the Icers right now. That is, the AD won’t support hockey until the Icers can prove it can be a lucrative sport. Or, at the very least, not the financial black hole being feared. Also, I’d expect the school to rent out the unused ice time for extra money. No reason to kick some of the local youth/adult hockey leagues, or the figure skating groups, out if they’re willing to pay.
Should Penn State join the NCAA ranks, I think a Big Ten conference would eventually develop, but not for a few years. I’d actually be very surprised if Penn State would jump into the DI level off the bat – it just seems like a death sentence for the program. Start in the D3 ranks, get some experience, some NCAA-caliber players, and play the abundance of teams in the New England area which we might have a chance against out of the gate. From there, they could either make a Big Ten conference, or throw us elsewhere (I’ve heard thoughts of forcing us into the CCHA, but I’m not quite sold that we’d be some warmly welcomed). Should Illinois decide to make the jump as well – something that might be dependent on how well we do making the jump – that would be a 7th team to think about.
For the record, Indiana has a pretty crappy ACHA DI team, and the other 3 schools (Iowa, Purdue, Northwestern) all have ACHA D2 teams. Either way, it will take years for all 4 programs to ever think about making the jump to the NCAA, so the Big Ten Conference would be a max of 7 (unless this new, mythical Big Ten team also has a hockey team).
"In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
how would all this affect the "all sports conference"
or are there already sports in the Big 10 that don’t have all 11 teams? (I’m not counting hockey in this since it isn’t a “Big 10 conference”,
by The JuggerNitt on Dec 16, 2009 12:52 PM EST up reply actions
I don't think it'd change much
Wisconsin doesn’t have a baseball team. Men’s Volleyball is non-existent in general, and only Penn State and Ohio State have DI teams. Many don’t have men’s and/or women’s gymnastics teams. And I’m sure if you continued down the list, you’d find other gaps. So only having 6-7 of the programs with NCAA DI hockey teams wouldn’t be an anomaly.
"In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
As I understand title 9 (not all that well)
We wouldn’t need another program necessarily, but we would need equal spending. Either women’s sports across the board would get a major upgrade, or we would have multiple new women’s teams.
by PSUinBOSSton on Dec 14, 2009 9:38 AM EST up reply actions
The practical application in this instance
is that they would have to fund a Woman’s Team at the same level.
There are several ways to comply with Title IX, but basicly, the law is that you can’t build a gleaming new facility to facilitate a men’s sport, then cry poor when the women want to use it.
You hear an awful lot of bitching about Title IX from a lot of people, but when you consider it in this light, it makes perfect sense.
I say let's rock the Orange Bowl, because nobody will remember in five years anyway.
in case there was any confusion
i was not knocking Title 9, simply stating that it would be employed in an instance where a Div. 1 men’s hockey team would be funded.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
The new Hockey Arena
Is going to be built at the corner or Blue Course Drive and West College Ave. PSU is buying all the land out that way and are going to be expanding to campus out past the golf courses. The new Hockey Arena is projected to be the kind of centerpiece to that campus wing. It may be awhile tile it actually happens, but the initial plans are already in motion, I have seen them myself. We discussed this in my one class(the Prof. is like the head of OPP or at least a bigwig up there)
Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Name. All Game.
"Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth."
*corner of
Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Name. All Game.
"Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth."
Huh
So, it would be on the opposite site of campus from the rest of the sports facilities (except Rec Hall). Interesting… for some reason, I thought that they had a spot mapped out somewhere on the east end of campus (though it’s obviously very constrained there in terms of available land).
You can solve this problem pretty easy....
By attending games from some of the smaller sports and giving them some of your $$$.
by smashtheguitar on Dec 14, 2009 11:05 AM EST reply actions
does it even cost anything to go to games/matches/meets for some of the smaller sports?
We decide when you hear the snap count...
Probably depends on the relative popularity and short term success of said sport.
When I was in school (‘01-’05), attending a volleyball match was between free and $1. Now it’s somewhere in the $5-$8 range for the women. Comparatively, I’d be willing to bet that if Super Cael starts winning national championships, the pricing for wrestling matches will go up. Of course, some sorts will never cost money no matter how good we are…
"Have I ever told the story of when I met Miley Cyrus?"
by Jeff Junstrom on Dec 14, 2009 11:40 AM EST up reply actions
Volleyball?
I think they’ve charged for volleyball for some time for non-students. When I was in school in the 90’s, I could have sworn that the ticket booths sold actual tickets to non-students for both women’s and men’s v-ball (though memory is a tricky thing).
A lot of other sports are free though. Baseball now charges in their new stadium. I wonder if softball will charge once their facility is build. Wrestling has charged for quite some time.
Still you can still support those teams by at least going to the games and buying concessions. Or making a donation specifically earmarked for a certain sport.
I guess I was only ever thinking about student tickets. If you have the facilities to warrant charging admission, and people are willing to watch, I say do it and make a little extra scratch.
"Have I ever told the story of when I met Miley Cyrus?"
by Jeff Junstrom on Dec 14, 2009 1:43 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
Oh, fair enough. I didn’t realize they started to charge for student tickets for volleyball. That’s IMHO surprising.
don't they still have high attendance, even while charging admission?
add one more championship (knock on wood) and i wouldn’t be surprised to see a ticket price increase (i.e. student football ticket prices increasing from 2005 to 2006…at least i think they did).
then again…football is football and is a highly visible sport to the university. as good as volleyball is, could they afford to raise prices and still draw the same crowd? i don’t know.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
dont forget all the $
they get from parking. thats sheer profit right there.
We have little tranquility but tons of tranquilizers.
by mikeissurreal on Dec 14, 2009 4:36 PM EST up reply actions
PSU Can Make As Much Money As It Wants
It’s not like anyone is walking home with those millions of dollars. They’ll get put back into the athletic department in some way so, I don’t care how much they make.
God Created the World Out Of Nothing, Paterno Built A National Superpower On Cow Fields...
fixed that for ya
It’s not like anyoneCurley is walking home with those millions of dollars.
Don’t stop the hate!
by The JuggerNitt on Dec 16, 2009 12:56 PM EST up reply actions
additional fix...
….and the rest of the fat laden AD staff walking home each week with a pay check and our contributions to their university/state benefit package and the burdensome retirement package payments. No…we must pay for it all while other state schools underwrite their programs with state tax funds allowing us to pay part of their systems as well What a racket. We are….taken for a ride..
by FG Dreadnought on Dec 18, 2009 1:20 PM EST up reply actions
There
is no scandal here…just good revenue operation.
Priorities
I’d imagine the department priorities after the softball field are as follow:
-Swimming facility
-Jeffrey Field upgrade plus standalone soccer service building
-Beaver stadium press box…total reconstruction
-Beaver Stadium expansion
-ice arena
Unfortunately all of these are pretty much in the non-revenue category
Jeffrey Field could use a much better press box. The soccer teams have been hankering for a service building for a long time now. Currently, they locker in Rec and have to bike across campus to practice.
The Beav’s press box is an embarrassment to Penn State football. It ought to be redone ASAP. Way behind our contemporaries here.
The aquatics building is the pits. We could have great swimming and diving if our facility wasn’t a stinkhole. Unfortunately this carries a monster price tag in the vicinity of $30-$40 million
ice hockey as discussed above.
I imagine the order would go like this
-Beav press box
-soccer facilities
-swimming
-Beav expansion
-ice hockey, whenever it gets bumped to D1. I’d have to think part of the department’s requirement for the endowment to pay for the program would include money earmarked toward a facility or BJC conversion.
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