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Post by rgs318 on Dec 18, 2022 10:57:46 GMT -5
In today paper (The Sunday Record) is a story that the financial disaster that Rutgers is now experiencing is getting worse every year. The athletics department is in debt for millions of dollars and that debt is getting larger each year by about $10,000,000 or more...every year! AND, the college just paid a consulting firm to look at that and to suggest ways to reverse that trend. The cost of that study is already over $200,000 on the debit side of the athletics ledger. The rehiring of coach Greg Schiano was supposed to bring winning football back to Rutgers and to increase donations. What actually happened was that the football team is losing and donations are down. Rutgers converted three successful "minor" intercollegiate sports to clubs and took the money" saved " by that move to build a special football box to be used primarily to host recruits and their families. The move did not work. I hope that the studies being done of Holy Criss do not go in that direction and that they do not cost/waste that sort of money. I must confess to personal bias here. As a NJ taxpayer I am one of the many who must pay for this but will have nothing to show for it...nothing, that is, but more losses.
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Post by mm67 on Dec 18, 2022 12:35:20 GMT -5
OMG. Self Deception. Awful!
But, how did this happen at Rutgers? What were the stakeholders thinking or more appropriately feeling - alums. administrators, etc.? How did this happen? Pure fantasy? Money for outsider corporate & political. Did love of school and the personal need for vicarious thrills push Rutgers into fantasy land?
Rutgers provides a warning to HC administrators & alums.
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Post by rgs318 on Dec 18, 2022 13:06:47 GMT -5
Faculty (a majority), students (on the 3 downgraded teams and their supporters), and alumni opposed this. TPTB (including the athletic director) did want to return to the bowl days of Schiano's first time as head coach. Clearly it has not worked.
To put things into perspective, Schiano had a bowl record of 5-1 with Rutgers in his last 7 years in New Brunswick after starting his tenure with 4 straight losing seasons.
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Post by mm67 on Dec 18, 2022 13:42:20 GMT -5
In my youth there were some who said, "No one wants to die for dear old Rutgers." At the time I thought it was silly, unfair. Hope the taxpayers are happy[ with ROI.
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Post by purplehaze on Dec 18, 2022 14:36:49 GMT -5
All of these problems also leads to not enough NIL money to compete with the top of the Big 10 - and Schiano will whine about that when recruiting falls short
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 19, 2022 14:49:33 GMT -5
All of these problems also leads to not enough NIL money to compete with the top of the Big 10 - and Schiano will whine about that when recruiting falls short This is why I wonder how long the secondary state schools and the privates (minus ND, USC, Stanford, Baylor) will be able to compete with the real true powers in the NIL world. In the past, a scholarship to Alabama and a scholarship to Rutgers were of equal value => a free ride to play football. Where the financial differences came into play were in facilities and coaches' salaries. So the Rutgers' of the world would focus all their fundraising efforts in these areas. Now they still have to compete for quality coaches and try to keep up in the facilities' arms race. All the while having to find a way to raise hundreds of thousands to facilitate NIL deals to first recruit players and then keep them. Alabama, Oregon, Ohio State and Texas have the massive support base to do all of this. Rutgers, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Kansas State, BC, Wake Forest, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech and Washington State do not. |
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Post by princetoncrusader on Dec 19, 2022 15:28:03 GMT -5
OMG. Self Deception. Awful! But, how did this happen at Rutgers? What were the stakeholders thinking or more appropriately feeling - alums. administrators, etc.? How did this happen? Pure fantasy? Money for outsider corporate & political. Did love of school and the personal need for vicarious thrills push Rutgers into fantasy land? Rutgers provides a warning to HC administrators & alums. I believe the driver of this move to put RU in the big time world of college sports was the late Sonny Werblin, who was the director of the NJ Meadowlands sports complex. It started in the late 1970s. Believe it or not, RU football used to play Colgate, Princeton, Bucknell and even HC. RU finally seems to have gotten men's basketball "right", but that is about the only sport outside of perhaps baseball. The once powerful women's basketball program got blown out by Princeton on Thursday in one of the more remarkable games of the season. As a NJ taxpayer, I find this rather depressing. The RU athletic department is yet another example of a poorly run state enterprise. |
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 19, 2022 15:43:18 GMT -5
Off topic, but Princeton WBB must be pretty good. Saw some ESPN highlights of them taking UCONN into the final minute.
Rutgers seems to have a nice thing going in MBB going now but don't expect it to last. That program was in total shambles for 30 years in the Big East. Like Fordham in the A-10 level bad.
They also were in the Men's Lacrosse Final Four last year IIRC.
I totally forgot about the Rutgers ladies winning the NCAAs. And kind of sad that the thing people in metro NY remember most about that run was a deplorable comment made by Don Imus the morning after on WABC radio.
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Post by longsuffering on Dec 19, 2022 16:25:13 GMT -5
I was listening to Imus when the planes flew into the world trade center.
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Post by rgs318 on Dec 19, 2022 16:31:01 GMT -5
The coverage he and his sportscaster provided on that day was very good.
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Post by timholycross on Dec 20, 2022 12:04:17 GMT -5
In my youth there were some who said, "No one wants to die for dear old Rutgers." At the time I thought it was silly, unfair. Hope the taxpayers are happy[ with ROI. There ya go.... HC doesn't have a line of credit similar to Rutgers' backing from the State of New Jersey. Bad decisions for a small private college (albeit well-endowed) are extremely limited. The only thing I would disagree with is when the original poster alluded to RU cutting "successful minor sports". We don't have any of those to cut, do we? |
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Post by hchoops on Dec 20, 2022 14:03:44 GMT -5
Off topic, but Princeton WBB must be pretty good. Saw some ESPN highlights of them taking UCONN into the final minute. Rutgers seems to have a nice thing going in MBB going now but don't expect it to last. Unless Steve Pikell cannot compete with the rest of the NIL money of the Big 10 in recruiting, he will be competitive since he is.a very good coach |
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Post by rgs318 on Dec 20, 2022 15:36:15 GMT -5
In my youth there were some who said, "No one wants to die for dear old Rutgers." At the time I thought it was silly, unfair. Hope the taxpayers are happy[ with ROI. There ya go.... HC doesn't have a line of credit similar to Rutgers' backing from the State of New Jersey. Bad decisions for a small private college (albeit well-endowed) are extremely limited. The only thing I would disagree with is when the original poster alluded to RU cutting "successful minor sports". We don't have any of those to cut, do we? The worst cut was crew...now only a club. They had regular success and sent many to the Olympics. And, they didn't even have a special box to host recruits.  They also changed to clubs the men's swimming, men's tennis which had the same budget as football for hotel rooms for home games - I wonder where that money went? |
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Post by longsuffering on Dec 20, 2022 16:40:41 GMT -5
There ya go.... HC doesn't have a line of credit similar to Rutgers' backing from the State of New Jersey. Bad decisions for a small private college (albeit well-endowed) are extremely limited. The only thing I would disagree with is when the original poster alluded to RU cutting "successful minor sports". We don't have any of those to cut, do we? The worst cut was crew...now only a club. They had regular success and sent many to the Olympics. And, they didn't even have a special box to host recruits. They also changed to clubs the men's swimming, men's tennis (which had the same budget as football for hotel rooms for home games - I wonder where that money went? For the football players to have hotel suites instead of rooms before home games. |
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 21, 2022 20:13:29 GMT -5
Sometimes "country club sports" or "prep school sports" like crew, squash and golf get moved to club status because the administration knows that a) most of the perspective student athletes are full pay attendees to whom scholarship $$ is no object and b) there will plenty of well-heeled alumni and parents willing to make up the funding difference for coaches, uniforms, travel and lodging. Plus, "club" teams can still compete for NCAA championships. The only difference is the funding.
Cutting Men's Track & Field used to be a popular choice. But that's become more taboo because it's a sport that draws a more ethnically diverse pool of student athletes than the prior sports I mentioned. Not to mention students who would otherwise not be able to afford to attend a private university without financial assistance.
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Post by longsuffering on Dec 22, 2022 23:45:49 GMT -5
I look at each varsity D-1 Sport as an asset of the college which helps PVR in his quest to move HC up in the USNWR ranking. HC can compete for some high academic prospects who might go elsewhere if their chosen sport was club as opposed to D-1 varsity.
In practice we should be beating some NESCAC schools and others like Brandeis or Wellesley ahead of us in the rankings for some student athletes. If we aren't the solution would seem to be to invest in our many sports to make them more attractive to high academic student athletes instead of ending them and risk some of the current solid student athletes transferring out.
To invest new funds you have to raise new funds so PVR and his hire ADKH have to exert themselves to do so with great support from the large Development Dept.
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Post by DFW HOYA on Dec 23, 2022 14:00:05 GMT -5
Sometimes "country club sports" or "prep school sports" like crew, squash and golf get moved to club status because the administration knows that a) most of the perspective student athletes are full pay attendees to whom scholarship $$ is no object and b) there will plenty of well-heeled alumni and parents willing to make up the funding difference for coaches, uniforms, travel and lodging. Plus, "club" teams can still compete for NCAA championships. The only difference is the funding. Club teams cannot compete for NCAA championships--they must be varsity sports to be eligible. That said, there are sports which hold championships outside the NCAA (rugby, sailing, squash, men's rowing) where club teams can compete alongside varsity teams. |
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