I just noticed in the text under the Alabama numbers, that their AD received institutional support. Hell, even SEC kingpins take handouts from the taxpayers (university as a whole) even though they are running millions of surplus.
Athletic Dept deficits
- Thread starter acoustimac
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People/institutions are always going to spend the money they have. The guy making $30K/year lives paycheck to paycheck and the guy making $100k/year lives paycheck to paycheck.
Yeah top 20% household income (upper middle class?) in Iowa is $170k
Income by State: Statistics and Percentile Calculator
Compared to say Alabama.
That 173k number is the 95th percentile in Iowa, 101k is the 80th percentile according to that link.
It's not about the fans donating. It's about one fan or a few fans donating a lot. For some reason ISU doesn't have that many high dollar donors willing to give to athletics. It also lacks in corporate donors. To top it off the University takes their cut and the state leaders on both sides doesn't see the need to support the economic value of Iowa and ISU's athletics to the state. It really doesn't help that a large part of U of Iowa's fans base pushes for the destruction of ISU athletics.
Eliminate Title 9 and this goes away, the system needs to be you pay for what you can bring in..
Non revenue sports should not be getting on a plane to compete, unless they can raise the money for that.
Non revenue sports should not be getting on a plane to compete, unless they can raise the money for that.
So ISU fb and mbb should be in the big 12, while the rest of the sports should be in a conference with Central, Luther, Wartburg, etc. No athletic scholarships, small coaching staffs, limited travel expense. Maybe that's ok, but the money involved in the 2 main sports is out of hand.
The mean on a top end income range is fairly misleading since it is skewed significantly by the very top end earners. You can see that from comparing the household income graph to those means. 170k is the mean of the top 20%, but 173k puts you in the 95%. Median would be a more useful number, but ultimately to your original point, $101k puts you in the top 20%.
I apologize for being too literal, but 'always' might be a stretch. There are a lot of people who have retirement in mind and invest accordingly. Even if it's just a house. But, I do agree with your inference. Too many people are void of financial management.
Without congressional control or mandated caps on spending by NCAA schools, yes ISU non-revenue sports should compete against Central and Grandview before flying to Orlando to compete against Central Florida.
College athletics needs major reform to avoid every school but 10 or so falling into an unrecoverable debt postition.
That site doesn't have it layed out the best either. But another site shows $173k also being about the 80th percentile, being a few years behind.
Income by State: Statistics and Percentile Calculator https://share.google/5Y4fnd9U90lqqA3Wy
The article mentioned at the bottom that even Alabama received institutional support to help pay for the House Settlement.
This deficit talk is overblown. It was a given. Most Athletic Departments around the country operate at a revenue/expense breakeven each year. So when a $20M+ annual expense is imposed on schools, with little advance notice, running a deficit is a given for most schools.
The fact that Iowa State was able to dip into reserves vs. relying on institutional support is a credit to Iowa State's university and athletic department leadership.
But as has been pointed out, ISU reserves will only last a few years, so some tough choices and new revenue streams will need to be identified.
This scenario seems to be proven today by North Dakota State University - move wrestling to Big 12, and football to Mountain West FBS level.
Agreed, but it’s the world. Likely in the next 2-3 years it’s going to be a choice of if we want to gut those programs, if we want to have bottom feeder MBB/FB, or if we just give up and go mountain west or something.
It sucks but I’m positive what choice this board would make.
The problem is NIL and this new era of college athletics and the inequity in the money involved. Your statement may be technicallly correct but if ISU were to eliminate the 'deadweight' sports, they would no longer be able to compete in the B12 conference as a full member.
