Student group wants UTA football back

[MeanGreen61]

You can tell it's a slow time on the board when there's a lively 2 page discussion of uta & football

[SilverEagle]

I thought it almost did in the 1980's? If it didn't die then, it won't die now.

After the 72 season (1-10) there was a student referendum about keeping football or not. The vote was to keep football, but I heard that it just barely passed. I don't know if the referendum was before or after they fired Rod Rust. Hayden Fry was hired after Rust was fired (who went on to have a very good Pro career in coaching) and the rest, as they say, is history.

[Varsity]

Cheap shot.

No, it's not a cheap shot. It is accurate.

Female athletes deserve a chance to pursue sports at public universities as much as male athletes.

I would say not at the expense of men's sports which ultimately pay the bills. This equalization stuff is BS.

Women's basketball is NOT equal to men's basketball and none of the women's sports are close to equal with football, which tends to pay the tab for most athletic programs. Women's sports simply can't draw the numbers that men's sports can, in large part because women are not the athletes that men are. Them's just the facts.

[untgirl04]

No, it's not a cheap shot. It is accurate.

I would say not at the expense of men's sports which ultimately pay the bills. This equalization stuff is BS.

Women's basketball is NOT equal to men's basketball and none of the women's sports are close to equal with football, which tends to pay the tab for most athletic programs. Women's sports simply can't draw the numbers that men's sports can, in large part because women are not the athletes that men are. Them's just the facts.

*sigh* I really don't want to reply to this one, but I think this should be said.

First off, that's complete BS. Women are just as athletic as men, sometimes more so, although in different ways. If you define athletic as "super strong" then no, most women are not nearly as athletic as men. But if you consider speed, agility, aggressiveness, drive, these are distributed I would say fairly equally between both men and women: some men have it, some don't. Likewise, some woment have it and some don't.

But to say that women are less deserving of athletic programs because they don't bring in money is the kind of backward thinking that stalls progress. Case in point: the Nebraska Cornhuskers girl's volleyball team (yes, I said volleyball team) had 17,000+ for their National Championship game this year, and sellout their arena on a very consistent basis. I think the primary reason that women's sports does not have the draw that men's sports has is a societal issue. Men still like to think of their women as small and curvy, and it bothers many men to see women who could kick their butts. Think of it this way: when a man is 6'5" or taller and athletic, everyone fauns all over him and elevates him to star status. When a woman is athletic and 6'5" or taller, she's "freakish" and an "Amazon."

Societal rant aside, everyone deserves to have athletic programs regardless of gender. I think Title IX swung things too far to the left, but something had to be done about the lack of programming for women. The problem is not women's athletics, but the ridiculously expensive costs associated with fielding teams. There's the multi-million dollar stadium, the million dollar coaches, the fancy athletic facilities with flat panel TV screens, the juice bars, the private tutors, the accomodations in 5-star hotels when travelling, the recruiting trips, etc. Maybe everyone should just go back to non-scholarship athletics. Let the athletes pay to play, then we could field all the teams we want.

[UNTFan23]

*sigh* I really don't want to reply to this one, but I think this should be said.

First off, that's complete BS. Women are just as athletic as men, sometimes more so, although in different ways. If you define athletic as "super strong" then no, most women are not nearly as athletic as men. But if you consider speed, agility, aggressiveness, drive, these are distributed I would say fairly equally between both men and women: some men have it, some don't. Likewise, some woment have it and some don't.

But to say that women are less deserving of athletic programs because they don't bring in money is the kind of backward thinking that stalls progress. Case in point: the Nebraska Cornhuskers girl's volleyball team (yes, I said volleyball team) had 17,000+ for their National Championship game this year, and sellout their arena on a very consistent basis. I think the primary reason that women's sports does not have the draw that men's sports has is a societal issue. Men still like to think of their women as small and curvy, and it bothers many men to see women who could kick their butts. Think of it this way: when a man is 6'5" or taller and athletic, everyone fauns all over him and elevates him to star status. When a woman is athletic and 6'5" or taller, she's "freakish" and an "Amazon."

Societal rant aside, everyone deserves to have athletic programs regardless of gender. I think Title IX swung things too far to the left, but something had to be done about the lack of programming for women. The problem is not women's athletics, but the ridiculously expensive costs associated with fielding teams. There's the multi-million dollar stadium, the million dollar coaches, the fancy athletic facilities with flat panel TV screens, the juice bars, the private tutors, the accomodations in 5-star hotels when travelling, the recruiting trips, etc. Maybe everyone should just go back to non-scholarship athletics. Let the athletes pay to play, then we could field all the teams we want.

Yummy, something to talk about for dinner tomorrow night. I'm taking this rebuttal offline ... unless people here want to hear to in-laws go at it.

[NM Green]

U go girl!

Woman's volleyball in Hawaii consistently draws over 7,000 and sells out at 10,000 for the Bruins, Penn State, USC, New Mexico State (who actually upset them this year.) Last night's Hawaii men's basketball game drew just over 4,000.

Exceptions - sure, but let's watch the size brush we use.

The money floating around athletics verges on obscene. I am sure there is plenty to go around.

GMG

[UNTflyer]

I think the primary reason that women's sports does not have the draw that men's sports has is a societal issue. Men still like to think of their women as small and curvy, and it bothers many men to see women who could kick their butts.

I respectfully disagree.

It has nothing to do with athletic women being shunned by society... it has everything to do with women's sports falling short of the entertainment value of men's sports.

[Guest JohnDenver]

I respectfully disagree.

It has nothing to do with athletic women being shunned by society... it has everything to do with women's sports falling short of the entertainment value of men's sports.

I respectfully disagree too.

In atheletics where woman do have a more entertainment factor, they dominate in ratings.

Ice skating and gymnastics for example. I will not watch men do it ... i find men tumbling to be boring. I think women tumbling is incredible.

In sports where it doesn't really make a difference to me, like skiing and track, i will watch either..

[stebo]

I'd be in favor of that, but the experts on our board have found the research (talking with the AD, etc.) and say that that isn't allowed. That is, we can't play non-scholarship f-ball and still complete in Div I in everything else. I think you can take it to the bank that the university won't drop down in classification with the present line-up of sports.

Your experts are wrong. There are several avenues that UTA could go forward with. They could go Div III-IA, which is non scholarship, Div III football - I am pretty sure that they will allow you to play your football at the DIV III level and also allow all of your other sports to stay at the Div I level. I might be wrong on this but a few years ago the Tulane President told their alumni that it was put up or shut up time for Tulane football. I think that CUSA would have kicked them out for not fielding a team at the highest level and that scared their alumni enough to save the program. Maybe your alumni have gotten the same message that the Southland requires that if you have football that it be at a minimum level of IAA football. They might even require that you play at full (65 ship) football) - but that is not an NCAA rule, that is a conference rule. In Tulane's situation - their options were to drop to full IAA, IAA-30 scholarship, IAA-non scholarship, or Div III (which is non scholarship). The only difference between the clasifications are basically the post season rewards and budget restraints.

Obviously, we all know that the highest level of playing is IA which has an 85 scholarship level but does not have a budget level (from the school or from donations).... Full Div IAA is almost identical but the scholarships are limited to 65. Div IAA "limited" is similar in that the school is limited to 30 scholarships, but what a lot of schools do is treat it like baseball and split the scholarships among 60 players so that tuition and room is covered for more people and the student athlete has a very small burden (financially).... but it is not a full ride with a monthly allowance like Div I or Full IAA is. Schools that compete at this level are in conferences with other limited scholarship schools and are not guaranteed a spot in the IAA playoffs like the full ship IAA schools; but they "can" fill an at-large spot or even two if they do well enough. Finally, you have schools like the University of San Diego that are non-scholarship IAA. The school covers the salaries for the coaches and pays for the facilities/equipment but that is about it. Their ticket sales and sponsorships are relied upon for balancing their budget - and often times - their basketball teams foot the bill for the football team (rather then the other way around)... They compete in a conference with other schools that are non-ship as well.

The University of New Orleans had a student group (much like yours) that tried to bring football back to UNO - here are the numbers that their study came up with as far as "budgets" for these nonship IAA teams:

How much will a I-AA non-preference, non-scholarship football program at UNO cost?

$500,000 a year would comfortably cover the costs of maintaining a Division I-AA non-preference, non-scholarship football program at UNO. This is neither a minimum figure nor a maximum figure. The budgets of the schools studied ranged from a low of $150,000 per year to a high of between $900,000 and $1.1 million per year. The budgets for the schools cited in this proposal are as follows:

LaSalle - $150,000

SUNY at Stony Brook - less than $300,000

Austin Peay - $130,000 plus coaches' salaries

Georgetown - less than $300,000

Jacksonville - $350,000

University of San Diego - $400,000

Louisiana College - $860,000 for first two years of program including start up costs

Dayton - $425,000 to $450,000

Yale - $900,000 to $1.1 million

These budgets encompass, with minor exceptions (see individual school summaries), all aspects of maintaining I-AA non-preference, non-scholarship football including recruiting, travel, equipment, equipment maintenance, field maintenance, game guarantees, coaches' salaries, insurance, game management, office supplies and expenses, athletic supplies, film editing equipment, conference dues, meals, contract services, field rental and administrative.

If you want to read more about their study, here is the link:

http://www.angelfire.com/la/uno/proposal.html

Travel seems to often be a concern for these programs - for instance, it seems like it is pretty normal for games to be cancelled at this level because they simply do not have the money in the budget to pay for the trip; especially if the team is having a bad season. Passing the hat for last minute donations is very normal for schools in these set-ups; in other words - football is played as long as there is enough money to cover it for that season but it is not a priority. Just a small step above of a club team... The downside is that it is very tough to establish tradition and they rarely see the post season... when one of them does see the post season, they rarely win a game and move to the second round. At least none that I can recall. They do not have an automatic bid for the post season like most Div IAA conferences, so they have to impress the committee with OOC wins against full scholarship IAA teams before they start conference play - then they have to destroy every team in their conference (and obviously go undefeated)... USD did just about everything in their power to meet this criteria and STILL didn't get selected for the playoffs last year (which is why Harbaugh is coaching at Stanford now - most likely - well, that and about a 700% raise, lol)... the season is long, there are no frills, and there really is no reward for a good season or a chance to play for a championship - but there is a CHANCE to go to the playoffs and win a championship if the team impresses the committee enough (it is just highly unlikely).

I would think that the UTA path would be a simple one. Continue to play with your club team until the money is in place to move the team into Div IAA-nonship or limited ship. When you are ready to move "up" you should have no problem for that stage - the tricky part will be the next move.... full ship IAA. The Southland might require that their members play on an level playing field and they also might require that all members that play a sport, play that sport in the Southland Conference against SLC teams... which UTA would probably be willing to do, even as a non-ship or limited ship team...but the SLC might not let you play because you will bring the power rating of the conference down - they may require that it is all or nothing for your IAA team (which could be the hang-up and the confusion on your board - but realize that this is not an NCAA rule forcing you to go all in or all out - that is most likely a SLC rule).

So just because you "want" to field a non-scholarship IAA team does not mean that you could if you wanted to stay in the Southland Conference, for that sport or any other - which is where your "experts" probably have this matter confused. Sooooo, you would probably have to go Indy for all sports or pony up the money to take it to a full IAA program.

Your other option would be to find another conference like the MVC to play in for all of your sports except football and then play football as an Independent.... but then you are looking at increased travel costs because there are not many conferences out there willing to do that, in fact - I can't think of any in the southwest - but heck, you could always try that route. When the 6 members in the Great West Conference couldn't get things cone in their own onference, they all moved away from their respective conferences and started their own - first for football only and now as a full conference.

So - the timeline (if you can get institutional support) should look something like this:

2007 - 2010 Club Football continues, attendance steadily increases until you are averaging 4K-5K a game consistently.

2010 - Team finally gets the go-ahead from the school to become a Varsity sport and a feasability study is started.

2012 - Coaching search begins and renovations to Maverick Stadium take place.

2013 - First year of Div I-Whatever football, budget of around $500K for your brand first year program (coaches, insurance, facilities, equipment)... If you look at the study done by the UNO student group, $500K will get you a good program, even as a start-up - but it can be done for as low as $150K...

If y'all can get to this point then you can go one of two ways to move forward or stay in a holding pattern. if your mission was just to have football then your job is done - you will have football at your school and you will have accomplished your goal. You really won't have any shot of playing in the BCS system but you might get a few NFL players coming out of the system as long as you are able to suit up enough non-scholarship players each year to field a team (AND as long as the Administration keeps footing the bill for the bare neccesities)... You will probably be able to sell a few tickets but I would guess that 50% of of the people attending the games will likely be students and they will probably get into games for free. So let's say that you average 4K-5K a game (a generous number considering that you will be playing teams that nobody has ever heard of and given the fact that you usually get about 1/3 of that out for a basketball game)... So let's say that you sell 2K tickets a game and have 5 home games a year like North Texas does. That will be 10K total tickets that you sell each year (with a total of 20K showing up because the other 10k showing up will be students that get in for free)... So... if you sell 10K tickets a year (just a guess) and charge between $5-$10-and $15 per ticket, then you can bring in about $100K in ticket sales. Throw in a little advertising revenue combined with donations and concessions and you are looking at pushing your revenue to about $200K or so. Then you can guarantee a few IA teams a win by selling them a easily winnable home game for $50K (that is what we paid Samford a few years back so I would imagine that we would pay UTA a similar amount)... you could probably pimp yourself out two or three times a year to raise another $150K minus travel expenses for a net of $100K for those three "money" games... putting your income at around $300K. According to the chart from the UNO guys, that is enough to run a program but not really that good of a program. You would need institutional support of around $200K a year to be succesfull.

Now comes the final analysis - is $200K a year a solid PR investment for UTA? I think so. I would bet that UTA loses out on $200K worth of income in a multitude of ways by NOT having football currently. Once you got established at the lower non-ship IAA level, you could move up to 30 ship, then 65 ship... who knows, maybe someday UTA could field a IA team... but you have to walk before you run and UTA is just barely crawling along with its club program right now.

Damn, when is football season gonna get here? I just spent an hour breaking down the ins and outs of a non-existing football program at UT freaking A, lol...

[Go_UTA]

Stebo, your post is more than I can absorb tonight, but thanks.

Seems like you should be a sports consultant or something.

BTW, have always enjoyed your posts.

[FirefightnRick]

*sigh* I really don't want to reply to this one, but I think this should be said.

First off, that's complete BS. Women are just as athletic as men, sometimes more so, although in different ways. If you define athletic as "super strong" then no, most women are not nearly as athletic as men. But if you consider speed, agility, aggressiveness, drive, these are distributed I would say fairly equally between both men and women: some men have it, some don't. Likewise, some woment have it and some don't.

Interesting part about "drive" and it reminded me of something that SUMG brought up a few years ago about Title IX. If women are driven as much as men to compete/participate in athletics then why don't we see their(women) programs with an equal amount of walk-on's trying out to earn a spot on the team and willing to play for free?

Rick

[SCREAMING EAGLE-66]

Interesting part about "drive" and it reminded me of something that SUMG brought up a few years ago about Title IX. If women are driven as much as men to compete/participate in athletics then why don't we see their(women) programs with an equal amount of walk-on's trying out to earn a spot on the team and willing to play for free?

Rick

---I have to agree with Rick... I raised two boys and a girl... The interesting thing is look at Y-basketball teams and soccer leagues... There are always more boys teams than girls teams... They just aren't as interested in it as a group... individually some are. Point two: looking at girls soccer teams usually the best girls on those girls teams are those with older brothers (not older sisters) Those girls are more accustomed to "mixing it up" more and are more aggressive... ie. they learned it from the brothers (who are aggressive) and it rarely works that way from having older sisters. At this point my daughter still plays soccer (adult league in Richardson) and she will agree with me about the older brother "thing" and how it makes them different in a lot of ways than girls in all-girl familes or as an older sister to boys. -----even in the workplace and how they relate to other employees--

--- As you can see I am not exactly anti-women's sports but to spend money equally on both gender's sports seems nuts when there is not equal interest. This may not mean much but check out fantasy sports.... Men probably outnumber women 10 to 1 in participation. The interest just isn't equal.

_____

---Another point I think one reason men don't watch women sport's much is that many of them can often do about as well as those women-athletes. (how far they they drive a golf ball for example, or even how well they play tennis) but they can't even get close to the men athletes and realize those people are outstanding.

---A lot of girls from rural areas are pretty good athletes also but then again their lifestyle can be a lot different also and they do physical work like boys around homes, my wife even had a roommate that drove tractors some, she had been a college athlete, basketball, wasn't that large, now married, and a school principal, had a younger brother so she worked like a boy at times until he got older and could help out..

Edited March 4, 2007 by SCREAMING EAGLE-66

[UNTFan23]

Has anyone seen a Roller Derby game? Those can be intense ... and fun to watch. Dallas even has a couple teams.

Also, if you wanted to make women's college basketball more entertaining, lower the backboard and give those girls have a chance to dunk the ball.