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Coronavirus, or Covid-19, Football Impacts

ScriptOhio

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
Div. II Florida Tech announces it’s eliminating its football program because of the financial impact of COVID-19

GettyImages-1175987767-e1584666481259.jpg


Florida Tech has the unfortunate “honor” of being the first football casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Sadly, they likely won’t be the last.

We have previously noted that there will be a financial cost because of the pandemic as it relates to athletics at the Div. 1 level. Monday, a program one level lower has been impacted as Florida Tech announced a series of cost-cutting moves within the athletic department. Included in that is the elimination of the Div. II football program. The complete elimination. Which impacts 120 student-athletes and eight coaches.

The university stated that the pandemic led to the decision.

“As I have continued to share with you, these are difficult times for our university,” Florida Tech president Dwayne McCay told the university community in a letter. “Indeed, all of higher education is struggling to deal with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the uncertainty that accompanies a global disruption to daily life. Some universities will no doubt close. Florida Tech, however, has plans to persevere. …

“The unprecedented uncertainty created by COVID-19 makes these moves prudent, but no less painful. We must do what is necessary to preserve resources critical to our educational mission and ensure our ability to successfully serve students when face-to-face instruction resumes this fall. I appreciate each of you, and I am humbled by your hard work and sacrifice.”

The Florida Tech football program first suited up for the 2013 season. The Panthers qualified for the Div. II playoffs twice (2016, 2018) during their brief existence. Playing out of the Gulf South Conference, the Panthers will finish with an overall record of 44-35.

In a Q&A, though, there was some sliver of good news:

Will student-athlete scholarships be honored?
All scholarship-eligible student-athletes affected by this reduction will have their athletic scholarships honored for up to four years. If they choose transfer, NCAA rules allow them to transfer and play right away and not have to sit out a year.

Entire article: https://collegefootballtalk.nbcspor...rida-tech-eliminates-div-ii-football-program/
 
Financial toll of coronavirus could cost college football at least $4 billion

As more and more college athletic departments cut sports programs, the financial wreckage due to the coronavirus pandemic is becoming devastatingly clear -- and that's without factoring in a $4 billion loss if the 2020 football season is canceled, a development that would forever alter college-level sports.

University systems have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses thus far, which could grow significantly as decisions are made about whether to return students to campuses this fall.

An array of cost-saving measures have been implemented 100 days from the scheduled start of the college football season: The Mid-American Conference announced multiple scheduling changes, including plans to eliminate conference tournaments in eight sports; Cincinnati dropped its men's soccer program; Old Dominion cut its wrestling program; Furman shut down baseball and men's lacrosse; Bowling Green cut baseball; Central Michigan terminated men's track and field; and Akron announced it is eliminating men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis.

Athletic directors also are refunding tickets for spring sports and student fees for the spring semester while instituting hiring freezes, layoffs, mandatory furloughs and pay cuts, even for their most high-profile coaches. More than 20 FBS athletic departments, including Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisville, Minnesota, USC and Washington State, have announced voluntary pay cuts and/or mandatory furloughs for coaches and athletic staffers.

For Power 5 schools, the possibility of a lost college football season looms even more significantly.

"If there's no football season, or if football season is interrupted or shortened, there will be a massive fallout," TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati said. "There would have to be massive cutbacks. Could the department go on? Sure. It would probably look smaller. There would potentially be fewer sports and much less programming."

Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, believes the upcoming football season will be played -- even if it's during the spring -- because of "astronomical financial implications" for athletic departments if it is canceled.

Quite simply, college athletics might not have a financial choice.
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"Football is the elephant in the room," Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. "From that point of view, it's significant in funding all of our sports and everything we do for our student-athletes. It's also important to our community in a number of ways. Every contest has significant economic impact in central Ohio."
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continued

Entire article: https://www.espn.com/college-sports...l-financial-wreckage-due-coronavirus-pandemic

Good analysis of the financial impact to colleges of no football this Fall (or Spring).
 
Upvote 0
Hopefully, this will cause Ohio State to see the folly of running such a razor tight budget when they don't need to. In the recent year that we actually lost money (600K) we were projecting a 385K profit on 200M in revenue (2/10ths of 1 percent). That's insane. I'm not saying we need to be Texas or Alabama and only fund 16 or 17 sports, but we should be running much larger surpluses in the AD given our revenue levels.
 
Upvote 0
Financial toll of coronavirus could cost college football at least $4 billion

As more and more college athletic departments cut sports programs, the financial wreckage due to the coronavirus pandemic is becoming devastatingly clear -- and that's without factoring in a $4 billion loss if the 2020 football season is canceled, a development that would forever alter college-level sports.

University systems have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses thus far, which could grow significantly as decisions are made about whether to return students to campuses this fall.

An array of cost-saving measures have been implemented 100 days from the scheduled start of the college football season: The Mid-American Conference announced multiple scheduling changes, including plans to eliminate conference tournaments in eight sports; Cincinnati dropped its men's soccer program; Old Dominion cut its wrestling program; Furman shut down baseball and men's lacrosse; Bowling Green cut baseball; Central Michigan terminated men's track and field; and Akron announced it is eliminating men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis.

Athletic directors also are refunding tickets for spring sports and student fees for the spring semester while instituting hiring freezes, layoffs, mandatory furloughs and pay cuts, even for their most high-profile coaches. More than 20 FBS athletic departments, including Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisville, Minnesota, USC and Washington State, have announced voluntary pay cuts and/or mandatory furloughs for coaches and athletic staffers.

For Power 5 schools, the possibility of a lost college football season looms even more significantly.

"If there's no football season, or if football season is interrupted or shortened, there will be a massive fallout," TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati said. "There would have to be massive cutbacks. Could the department go on? Sure. It would probably look smaller. There would potentially be fewer sports and much less programming."

Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, believes the upcoming football season will be played -- even if it's during the spring -- because of "astronomical financial implications" for athletic departments if it is canceled.

Quite simply, college athletics might not have a financial choice.
.
.
.
"Football is the elephant in the room," Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. "From that point of view, it's significant in funding all of our sports and everything we do for our student-athletes. It's also important to our community in a number of ways. Every contest has significant economic impact in central Ohio."
.
.
.
continued

Entire article: https://www.espn.com/college-sports...l-financial-wreckage-due-coronavirus-pandemic

Good analysis of the financial impact to colleges of no football this Fall (or Spring).
I believe this could be a good thing in cutting the massive bloat of athletic departments.
 
Upvote 0
A Collegiate Model in Crisis: The Crippling Impact of Schools Cutting Sports

Three months into the pandemic, 30 D-I sports teams have already been discontinued to save dough. The impact will be felt from youth sports to the Olympics, and experts believe these moves make clear: The college model is broken. So, how do we fix it?

In August 2016, after Clayton Murphy became the first American man to win an Olympic medal in the 800-meter run since 1992, he was given a hero’s welcome at his school, Akron University.

There was a press conference at the football stadium, and plans were made for a commercial shoot and other promotional ideas. Akron’s athletic department couldn’t wait to use its star cross country and track athlete for marketing purposes. At the time, George Van Horne, senior associate athletics director for development & marketing, told the Akron Beacon-Journal that Murphy’s Olympic medal was worth “100 bowl games” in terms of exposure to the school. “That’s always been a part of our problem as a university, we don’t tell our story very well,” Van Horne told the newspaper. “We’ve got 25,000 of those stories on campus and we’ve got 146,000 alumni worldwide. He’s one of the fastest men in the world, let’s use him to tell that story.”

In May, less than four years after Murphy’s medal, Akron told a very different story: It eliminated the cross country program that helped make him a rising star in American running, along with men’s golf and women’s tennis. Since then, a highly motivated Murphy has joined other Akron alums in a fundraising effort that they hope will convince school leaders to salvage the cross-country program. “Universities across the board need to take a look at these Olympic sports and see the value they can have, and not be tossed aside,” Murphy told Sports Illustrated last week. “They threw away a major part of what made myself and others go to that university.”

As universities scramble to cover virus-related financial hardships, they’re sacrificing a piece of unique fabric in the American quilt: Olympic sports. In Division I alone, 30 athletic teams have been eliminated in eight weeks. Four schools have cut at least three sports and a fifth, Brown, discontinued a whopping eight athletic programs. According to one site tracking the cuts, more than 80 programs have been eliminated across all levels.

Thousands of advocates have rushed to the sides of coaches and athletes of discontinued sports, challenging school leaders, signing petitions and raising funds. They fear that the cuts are far from over.

“We are all holding our breath in the Olympic sports community,” says Kathy DeBoer, executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. “The people in sports that are not dropped get to breathe again. It’s like there are six bullets in the gun and 10 of us are standing there. If you’re still standing, I guess you want to celebrate, but you don’t—you just start breathing again before the next round.”

DeBoer’s organization is one of 21 Olympic sports associations to unite under one umbrella, the Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition (ICAC), with a mission to preserve broad-based college sports in the coronavirus era. The elimination of college sports, they say, hurts the feeder system for American Olympic teams, destroys the motivation of youth athletes and, despite assertions that these are money-saving decisions, actually can cost schools millions in tuition dollars.

They believe discontinuing teams is a quick and fruitless fix to a much deeper problem—an NCAA model that, because of riches in football and men’s basketball, has lost its original purpose of broad-based educational and athletic opportunities.

“It’s clear that the D-I model of intercollegiate athletics has been broken,” says Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, “and COVID-19 is exposing it.”

At mid-major programs, deficits at athletic departments existed before the global pandemic struck. But the shutdown of campuses and economic downturn has dramatically worsened the situation, while giving cover to athletic directors already considering discontinuing sports.

Colleges around the country are bracing for significant losses in the coming fiscal year. Many programs are projecting at least a 20% reduction in revenue from various sources: cuts in state and federal funding; a decrease in institutional support; loss in ticket sales; and a drop in donations. The reductions extend to the university side. Even a giant like Ohio State is estimating a loss of $300 million in revenue, leading some to believe that a few D-I schools will do what several smaller universities have done—shut down completely. “We’re going to lose institutions,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick predicted last month.

The Football Bowl Subdivision level, which is the top 130 athletic programs in the nation, is itself divided into two tiers: the Power 5 (members of the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern conferences, plus Notre Dame) and the Group of Five (members of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences, plus independents). The sacrificing of Olympic sports thus far has fallen along that fault line: No Power 5 program has eliminated a sports team, at least not yet. Power 5 athletic departments can lean on cash reserves and the possibility still for significant TV money if the football season is played, but G5 athletic departments are strained by their reliance on school and state funding. On average, a G5 athletic program gets 62% of its revenue through institutional and state support. As enrollment dips and state economies decline, the gravy train stops rolling. Take, for instance, Central Michigan. In 2018, $30 million of CMU's $39 million budget came from those funds. Even before the pandemic struck, enrollment at the school had declined more than 10% from 2018.

Entire article: https://www.si.com/college/2020/06/11/college-sports-program-cuts-ncaa-olympics
 
Upvote 0
A Collegiate Model in Crisis: The Crippling Impact of Schools Cutting Sports

Three months into the pandemic, 30 D-I sports teams have already been discontinued to save dough. The impact will be felt from youth sports to the Olympics, and experts believe these moves make clear: The college model is broken. So, how do we fix it?

In August 2016, after Clayton Murphy became the first American man to win an Olympic medal in the 800-meter run since 1992, he was given a hero’s welcome at his school, Akron University.

There was a press conference at the football stadium, and plans were made for a commercial shoot and other promotional ideas. Akron’s athletic department couldn’t wait to use its star cross country and track athlete for marketing purposes. At the time, George Van Horne, senior associate athletics director for development & marketing, told the Akron Beacon-Journal that Murphy’s Olympic medal was worth “100 bowl games” in terms of exposure to the school. “That’s always been a part of our problem as a university, we don’t tell our story very well,” Van Horne told the newspaper. “We’ve got 25,000 of those stories on campus and we’ve got 146,000 alumni worldwide. He’s one of the fastest men in the world, let’s use him to tell that story.”

In May, less than four years after Murphy’s medal, Akron told a very different story: It eliminated the cross country program that helped make him a rising star in American running, along with men’s golf and women’s tennis. Since then, a highly motivated Murphy has joined other Akron alums in a fundraising effort that they hope will convince school leaders to salvage the cross-country program. “Universities across the board need to take a look at these Olympic sports and see the value they can have, and not be tossed aside,” Murphy told Sports Illustrated last week. “They threw away a major part of what made myself and others go to that university.”

As universities scramble to cover virus-related financial hardships, they’re sacrificing a piece of unique fabric in the American quilt: Olympic sports. In Division I alone, 30 athletic teams have been eliminated in eight weeks. Four schools have cut at least three sports and a fifth, Brown, discontinued a whopping eight athletic programs. According to one site tracking the cuts, more than 80 programs have been eliminated across all levels.

Thousands of advocates have rushed to the sides of coaches and athletes of discontinued sports, challenging school leaders, signing petitions and raising funds. They fear that the cuts are far from over.

“We are all holding our breath in the Olympic sports community,” says Kathy DeBoer, executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. “The people in sports that are not dropped get to breathe again. It’s like there are six bullets in the gun and 10 of us are standing there. If you’re still standing, I guess you want to celebrate, but you don’t—you just start breathing again before the next round.”

DeBoer’s organization is one of 21 Olympic sports associations to unite under one umbrella, the Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition (ICAC), with a mission to preserve broad-based college sports in the coronavirus era. The elimination of college sports, they say, hurts the feeder system for American Olympic teams, destroys the motivation of youth athletes and, despite assertions that these are money-saving decisions, actually can cost schools millions in tuition dollars.

They believe discontinuing teams is a quick and fruitless fix to a much deeper problem—an NCAA model that, because of riches in football and men’s basketball, has lost its original purpose of broad-based educational and athletic opportunities.

“It’s clear that the D-I model of intercollegiate athletics has been broken,” says Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, “and COVID-19 is exposing it.”

At mid-major programs, deficits at athletic departments existed before the global pandemic struck. But the shutdown of campuses and economic downturn has dramatically worsened the situation, while giving cover to athletic directors already considering discontinuing sports.

Colleges around the country are bracing for significant losses in the coming fiscal year. Many programs are projecting at least a 20% reduction in revenue from various sources: cuts in state and federal funding; a decrease in institutional support; loss in ticket sales; and a drop in donations. The reductions extend to the university side. Even a giant like Ohio State is estimating a loss of $300 million in revenue, leading some to believe that a few D-I schools will do what several smaller universities have done—shut down completely. “We’re going to lose institutions,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick predicted last month.

The Football Bowl Subdivision level, which is the top 130 athletic programs in the nation, is itself divided into two tiers: the Power 5 (members of the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern conferences, plus Notre Dame) and the Group of Five (members of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences, plus independents). The sacrificing of Olympic sports thus far has fallen along that fault line: No Power 5 program has eliminated a sports team, at least not yet. Power 5 athletic departments can lean on cash reserves and the possibility still for significant TV money if the football season is played, but G5 athletic departments are strained by their reliance on school and state funding. On average, a G5 athletic program gets 62% of its revenue through institutional and state support. As enrollment dips and state economies decline, the gravy train stops rolling. Take, for instance, Central Michigan. In 2018, $30 million of CMU's $39 million budget came from those funds. Even before the pandemic struck, enrollment at the school had declined more than 10% from 2018.

Entire article: https://www.si.com/college/2020/06/11/college-sports-program-cuts-ncaa-olympics
Good.
 
Upvote 0
Div. II Florida Tech announces it’s eliminating its football program because of the financial impact of COVID-19

GettyImages-1175987767-e1584666481259.jpg


Florida Tech has the unfortunate “honor” of being the first football casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Sadly, they likely won’t be the last.

We have previously noted that there will be a financial cost because of the pandemic as it relates to athletics at the Div. 1 level. Monday, a program one level lower has been impacted as Florida Tech announced a series of cost-cutting moves within the athletic department. Included in that is the elimination of the Div. II football program. The complete elimination. Which impacts 120 student-athletes and eight coaches.

The university stated that the pandemic led to the decision.

“As I have continued to share with you, these are difficult times for our university,” Florida Tech president Dwayne McCay told the university community in a letter. “Indeed, all of higher education is struggling to deal with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the uncertainty that accompanies a global disruption to daily life. Some universities will no doubt close. Florida Tech, however, has plans to persevere. …

“The unprecedented uncertainty created by COVID-19 makes these moves prudent, but no less painful. We must do what is necessary to preserve resources critical to our educational mission and ensure our ability to successfully serve students when face-to-face instruction resumes this fall. I appreciate each of you, and I am humbled by your hard work and sacrifice.”

The Florida Tech football program first suited up for the 2013 season. The Panthers qualified for the Div. II playoffs twice (2016, 2018) during their brief existence. Playing out of the Gulf South Conference, the Panthers will finish with an overall record of 44-35.

In a Q&A, though, there was some sliver of good news:

Will student-athlete scholarships be honored?
All scholarship-eligible student-athletes affected by this reduction will have their athletic scholarships honored for up to four years. If they choose transfer, NCAA rules allow them to transfer and play right away and not have to sit out a year.

Entire article: https://collegefootballtalk.nbcspor...rida-tech-eliminates-div-ii-football-program/


Florida Tech is an HBCU, so you'll start to unfortunately see a ton of HBCUs start to fall by the wayside.
 
Upvote 0
Though this thread is about football casualties, the effects will go way beyond football, or even college sports. We all know this will decimate athletic department budgets and thus other sports, but the effects will go farther still.

These “other” sports comprise partly, maybe even mostly, Olympic sports. While the U.S. Olympic athletes have a training infrastructure outside of the university system, there are countries (a fair few of them) whose Olympic teams are (formally) trained mostly within the U.S. university system. Where will these countries go to find other training resources? In truth, I expect they simply won’t find them. The repercussions of that won’t be vast, but the people who are affected will be deeply affected.

Then there’s Title IX to consider. FBS teams that cut football will have 85 fewer male scholarships on the budget. The Olympic sports that are then cut because they are no longer underwritten by football will certainly comprise 85 more female scholarships than male. Though this will result in equal numbers of scholarships, the howling will be no less fierce for it. Where the ensuing conversation will lead us might be good or bad... Based on the political climate on this continent I’m not optimistic.
 
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