Lots of work to do to rectify this

untjim1995 · April 25, 2017

Maybe this doesn't tell the whole story, but the anti-athletics faction at UNT and in Denton will jump all over this...

https://college-sports.texastribune.org/colleges/university-of-north-texas/

greenminer · April 25, 2017

I don't know the average gap, but I do know that minus about 5 programs nationwide, it is the norm for FBS ADs to be losing money.

UNTFan23 · April 25, 2017

Increasing season ticket and Mean Green Club numbers will go a long way to closing that gap.

Aldo · April 25, 2017

This is the case for the majority of programs that aren't the handful big time P5s.

I think USA Today had a nifty graph when we talked about this last year.

ETA: Here's a link, and shows revenue vs expenses and the percent subsidized. That's a lot of programs.

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

outoftown · April 25, 2017

it does not look super good. But they have this comparisson feature. And when you look at other texas schools that are G5, UNT is generally not so far out there. UTEP is a few million better for example, but that is all basketball. That vaunted Houston program... has more revenue, but also a bigger deficit (altough I am betting their recent success has led to donor contributions that are nowhere to be found in this hole stats sheet).

Edited April 25, 2017 by outoftown

untjim1995 · April 25, 2017

48 minutes ago, greenminer said:

I don't know the average gap, but I do know that minus about 5 programs nationwide, it is the norm for FBS ADs to be losing money.

Again, this is why the P5 giants need to play their own schools. Texas A&M made $57 million last year. Texas made $16 million. Tech made almost $2 million. UNT, UH, UTEP, UTSA, and Texas State all lost between $14-22 million...

MeanGreenDan · April 25, 2017

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

Maybe this doesn't tell the whole story, but the anti-athletics faction at UNT and in Denton will jump all over this...

https://college-sports.texastribune.org/colleges/university-of-north-texas/

Huh? I guess Houston should shut down their program too, in addition to MOST other schools?

https://college-sports.texastribune.org/colleges/university-of-houston/

This is the norm for schools of our size. And even if we get better, get more donations, etc....we'll still be in the red.

drex · April 25, 2017

Now we get into the dollars spent on athletics vs. dollars that would have to be spent to get the same publicity. If you are competitive and your athletes are not in jail, etc., the exposure for the university far exceeds money spent on athletics. University administrative costs would be where my focus would be for cost savings. Administrative costs are through the roof and climbing. Competitive programs attract students, whether they will admit it or not.

untjim1995 · April 25, 2017

18 minutes ago, MeanGreenDan said:

Huh? I guess Houston should shut down their program too, in addition to MOST other schools?

https://college-sports.texastribune.org/colleges/university-of-houston/

This is the norm for schools of our size. And even if we get better, get more donations, etc....we'll still be in the red.

UH doesn't have the support issues (both in funds and in attendance) that we have. But the other Texas public G5s certainly do...

VideoEagle · April 25, 2017

33 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

Again, this is why the P5 giants need to play their own schools. Texas A&M made $57 million last year. Texas made $16 million. Tech made almost $2 million. UNT, UH, UTEP, UTSA, and Texas State all lost between $14-22 million...

I wouldn't treat those figures as exact or even close. Different school budget things in very, very different ways. For example, the NT budget looked a lot higher for a while because the debt service for Apogee was counted in the athletic budget while most schools don't do it that way. These are self reported numbers and often there is a agenda in how a school reports the numbers.

Wag Tag · April 25, 2017

Dickens are in the details. As discussed before the student fee and the university fee are revenue streams to athletics. What really stands out is the revenue from BB! I am back with season tickets, I hope others are also!

Aldo · April 25, 2017

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

Again, this is why the P5 giants need to play their own schools. Texas A&M made $57 million last year. Texas made $16 million. Tech made almost $2 million. UNT, UH, UTEP, UTSA, and Texas State all lost between $14-22 million...

Only 12 schools out of 232 programs didn't require subsidy in 2016.

Only 2 in Texas.

I understand that you're saying it's placing a burden beyond athletic departments across the country, but limiting competition solely on those figures hurts the little guy.

If you're wanting to make the fiscally responsible argument, then it's to completely eliminate football programs at colleges but we all know that's ridiculous. I need me some corporate-sponsored football making billions for guys in suits in some rando office who have never played a lick of football, or know what it's like to be a college football player, but I digress.

GrandGreen · April 25, 2017

Old news, most college athletic teams lose tons of money. Last I compared NT was about average for a G5, which is far from good; but what it takes to even pretend to compete in this ever increasing costly D1 level sports.

HoustonEagle · April 26, 2017

It is missing the point. Athletics is approximately 10 million a year marketing program that also greatly adds to fundraising efforts.

greenminer · April 26, 2017

This is not a P5-G5 issue. Last time this discussion came about, someone pointed out that literally only 5ish schools came out on top. Longhorns and Buckeyes come to mind.

El Paso Eagle · April 26, 2017

If you look at the information did we have a "loss"? It looks like we have 20.2 M that was not counted. Am I wrong?

Here’s a look at the amount of money the athletic department earns and spends by itself. Revenue doesn’t include student fees or money transferred into the department by the university. The UNT athletics department receives $10,713,470 from student fees and $9,509,553 from the university.

Loss: $21,134,863

Revenue: $13,020,674

GrandGreen · April 26, 2017

1 hour ago, HoustonEagle said:

It is missing the point. Athletics is approximately 10 million a year marketing program that also greatly adds to fundraising efforts.

Very doubtful and unprovable, but always used to support losing money in athletics. l

NorthTexan95 · April 26, 2017

So what's the monetary value of the publicity of the school by athletics ... and games where alumni come back to campus to attend and re-engage with the university. That would close the gap quite a bit.

greenjoe · April 26, 2017

based on the information provided above, North Texas needs to charge 2 million for a money game. the big schools have the money and will pay. Otherwise, let's hold a 7th home game.

GO MEAN GREEN

TreeFiddy · April 26, 2017

15 hours ago, GrandGreen said:

Very doubtful and unprovable, but always used to support losing money in athletics. l

Weird that almost all programs lose money on paper, yet so many still see value in sponsoring teams. Maybe add credence to the argument that they are a worthwhile endeavor.

GrandGreen · April 26, 2017

45 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

Weird that almost all programs lose money on paper, yet so many still see value in sponsoring teams. Maybe add credence to the argument that they are a worthwhile endeavor.

There are a lot of things that are very worthwhile that cost lots of money. I personally think athletics are a very positive thing for universities. The problem is that the costs are far greater than they should be and the higher they get, the less competition there is.

If by magic, the NCAA could come up with a ceiling on AD spending; what would happen. Competition would significantly get better, but the current powers would still dominate. There would be less millionaire coaches, reductions in bloated staffs, and maybe 1960 level facilities.

As far as if athletics are a worthwhile endeavor, I am afraid that the answer to that is going to be no for more and more people. We have an university with around 38k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni and can't sell out a 30,000 stadium and have probably an average of under 300 students regularly attending basketball games. Yes, both programs are down, but even in good times; attendance and support has been poor. You can't judge the value of an athletic program totally based on the financial impact, but at some point there has to be an end to how much money you can use to subsidize anything.

The vast majority of programs have the same financial problems, so NT is far from alone.

letsgiveacheer · April 26, 2017

1 minute ago, GrandGreen said:

There are a lot of things that are very worthwhile that cost lots of money. I personally think athletics are a very positive thing for universities. The problem is that the costs are far greater than they should be and the higher they get, the less competition there is.

If by magic, the NCAA could come up with a ceiling on AD spending; what would happen. Competition would significantly get better, but the current powers would still dominate. There would be less millionaire coaches, reductions in bloated staffs, and maybe 1960 level facilities.

As far as if athletics are a worthwhile endeavor, I am afraid that the answer to that is going to be no for more and more people. We have an university with around 38k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni and can't sell out a 30,000 stadium and have probably an average of under 300 students regularly attending basketball games. Yes, both programs are down, but even in good times; attendance and support has been poor. You can't judge the value of an athletic program totally based on the financial impact, but at some point there has to be an end to how much money you can use to subsidize anything.

The vast majority of programs have the same financial problems, so NT is far from alone.

Good post, Grand. I like football as much as the next guy but this has gotten completely out of hand. There is no valid justification for the excessive money spent on college athletics. Twelve schools out of over 100 pay their own way but the others do this on the backs of students and university support. As someone earlier said, there are also cost savings in the bloated administrative staffs but I suspect those savings are small when compared to the AD budgets.

Yet, about 50% of our country's university faculty are adjuncts and even at North Texas, at 23 to1, the student to faculty ratio is among the worse in the country.

HoustonEagle · April 26, 2017

39 minutes ago, GrandGreen said:

There are a lot of things that are very worthwhile that cost lots of money. I personally think athletics are a very positive thing for universities. The problem is that the costs are far greater than they should be and the higher they get, the less competition there is.

If by magic, the NCAA could come up with a ceiling on AD spending; what would happen. Competition would significantly get better, but the current powers would still dominate. There would be less millionaire coaches, reductions in bloated staffs, and maybe 1960 level facilities.

As far as if athletics are a worthwhile endeavor, I am afraid that the answer to that is going to be no for more and more people. We have an university with around 38k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni and can't sell out a 30,000 stadium and have probably an average of under 300 students regularly attending basketball games. Yes, both programs are down, but even in good times; attendance and support has been poor. You can't judge the value of an athletic program totally based on the financial impact, but at some point there has to be an end to how much money you can use to subsidize anything.

The vast majority of programs have the same financial problems, so NT is far from alone.

I pretty much agree with everything you said here. I just want to point out that often we talk about the good times on here. So looking back 30 -40 years or so. Lets be honest, UNT has experienced better times but UNT has never really experienced good times. We have never been in a good conference. We have never been to bowl game any casual sports fan has heard of. We have never won a NCAA Tournament game. We are not often above .500 in most sports (hat tip women's soccer and JJ... I see you over there).

I don't say that to be negative. On the contrary, I think the few stints of success of we have had around these parts have shown that people will come. JJ was pulling in pretty decent crowds relative to his conference. The low level bowl games we participated in have always been very well attended by UNT fans. I would love to see what some real success would do for this place. I still hold out hope.

GrayEagle · April 26, 2017

There is no way under the current setup that a G5 school can survive without student fees. Remember, they are not included in the "losses" shown by the Texas Tribune. Since I don't see that these fees are running anyone off at any of the state universities, the administrations must not be overly concerned.

There are only two universities in Texas (Texas and Texas A&M) that have revenue that exceed their expenses. Texas A&M is way out front of UT so that means that the Aggies are managing to keep stadium costs from showing in their expenditures because they spent a ton of money remodeling Kyle. Although private colleges are not included in the Tribune's report I doubt that any of them make a profit...especially in Texas.

The article made for interesting reading but in the grand scheme of things probably didn't register very high on the average reader's concern list.

Edited April 26, 2017 by GrayEagle