College football 2020 offseason thread

No worries about men’s soccer here. Only South Carolina and Kentucky have men’s soccer in the SEC.

 

May be late to the party on this take, but odd how, although they are in the same county separated by 20-30 miles, the 49ers can practice, but Stanford can't.

 

any guesses who wants credit for Big 10 football?

 

Actually, the Gators softball field is nicer than many college baseball stadiums. It seats 2,400.

 

And again, I'm not trying to take the fanboi stance.

You keep painting with broad brushes? I'll keep pointing out the inconsistencies.

I'd argue that UConn women's basketball recruits over all the world for the best 15 players because they have that reputation, and deservedly so. Same with the Lady Vols, UNC women's soccer and any other major women's powerhouses.

If schools are serious about competing, they're putting money into those programs just as much as men's Olympic sports.

I'd argue there are more D1 athletes recruited from an area starting in Santa Barbara to San Diego than probably half of the states in the US. Why? Three things: Sheer numbers, a high level of competition and great weather. USC and UCLA don't need to recruit nationally (even though they do) because the talent pool is incredibly deep. The kids who don't make it as Trojans or Bruins are still highly coveted by every other school west of the Rockies.

Texas high school football basically fills the rosters for two dozen D1 universities. Ohio and Pennsylvania are still hotbeds but not like it was two generations ago.

The post-war migration to the south and west has radically changed where athletes live. California, Texas, Florida, Georgia probably make up 75 percent of the homegrown major league players for the sheer reason they have numbers, competition and weather.

 

Not really an off-season football but colleges large and small use athletics like they use other niche programs on their campus and that’s to drive enrollment and increase alumni engagement.
My wife was on the board of trustees for her liberal arts undergrad and they added sports there to drive enrollment and increase alumni engagement.
The reason why universities put up with Greek letter shenanigans is because it drives enrollment and REALLY increases alumni engagement.
Minor sports drive enrollment and increase alumni engagement. It doesn’t matter if it is blue blood big time schools or a tiny liberal arts college. The cost of those minor programs ends up being a net positive because of the increase in students and donor money.
My local DI, approximately 1,600 miles from the Pacific Ocean is in the PAC 12 for wrestling because a local donor, who is also a super wealthy wrestling nut, funds the program. Built the building. Pays for the scholarships. And maybe the travel.
That’s but one example but virtually every college in the country has a rich person who gives money and sports/niche programs are the key.

 

Excellent point. It's also one of the justifications for the high coaching salaries in football and basketball. Nick Saban makes $11 million a year, but how much does a super-successful football program return to the University of Alabama in the way of alumni donations, merchandise sales and brand awareness? I know for a fact it has helped spike their enrollment -- particularly among the lucrative out of state students who pay inflated rates -- over the past 10 years.
Not every university has that level of return, of course, but there is an argument to be made that athletics is essentially a giant PR product.

 

100% true. Alabama was once 60% in state. Its undergraduate population is now two-thirds out of state. With those tuition benefits.
I think they’d get more bang for their buck if they paid Saban $4,000,000 instead of $9,000,000. But there’s no doubt that football is a way they can cover their bills in a state where the legislature enjoys cutting education.

 

That's a little like saying you can get more bang for your buck by driving a $30,000 Chevy instead of a $75,000 Jaguar, though. Yeah, they'll both do what you need them to do, but one is a lot nicer and is going to bring you more status and attention. There aren't a lot of Nick Sabans walking around out there, and Alabama found that out in the decade or so before he came to work for them.
If Saban has been paid about $70 million in salary during his tenure at Alabama, you have to figure the university has gotten a nice ROI from that expense. Certainly a better return than most schools have gotten from their mid-level coaches.

 

Outside of some notable exceptions -- Texas, Southern Cal, Ohio State -- college football's blue bloods are in rural towns/smallish cities.

That's largely by design, as back in the day private schools started by churches wanted to keep students away from the sin of the big city and land-grant schools went to smaller towns to appease rural lawmakers who didn't want everything concentrated in the state capital/big city of that state.

So, from the very beginning, schools needed a way to attract students. Athletics was a huge component of that along with specific programs -- Agri, Mechanical, Normal, etc -- to that brought students in. On the flip side, graduate schools, like medical and law, went to the cities because they needed a higher concentration of population.

 

The service department gets more bang out of its buck with the Jaguar, though.

 

Negative, Ghostrider. While some of those out of state students may indeed be attracted by football and bammer party culture, former UA Chancellor Robert Witt made a deliberate decision to do two things with regard to enrollment. He greatly increased the number enrolled generally, and he emphasized raising the percentage of out of state students because they pay twice as much in tuition money. They've made it more difficult and competitive for in state students to get into UA as a result. Last time I looked UA was paying off more than a billion with a B dollars in construction bonds for all of those shiny new Frat/Sorority houses and research facilities.

If you want a better example, look at UAB. Enrollment decreased during the two seasons that football was dead, and has increased year over year in the four years since. UAB has set records for its number of undergrads the last two years back to back. I absolutely agree that university administrators favor anything (athletics, greek culture) that increases alumni engagement, donations, and bequests.

As to student fees, the UAB student body voted to raise student fees on itself as part of the fight to bring back the Football, Bowling, and Rifle teams that our tool of a university president killed under pressure from the UA Board of Trustees.

Edit: I need to amend this. I looked and UAB is in it's fifth straight year of record enrollment.