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Does this mean tennis, gymnastics and swimming can now be saved?

with football back on...
No, still a huge loss in revenue and those sports were reportedly on the chopping block prior to COVID-19.
No, these sports aren't coming back. I would like to think that admins/ad have learned a lesson and will start to scale back on coaching salaries, practice facilities, stadium renovation, etc., and put funds aside for the next big financial crisis, but I doubt anything like that happens and they will just eliminate the non-profitable teams
interesting development. not sure if it will move the needle, however.

the 4 programs need $5M/year to operate

 
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I think you need a refresher on what "profitable" is. The swim programs are/were not profitable. End of discussion. Nobody but you is arguing that. We're done discussing it. They have been kept afloat by huge subsides from Football and Men's Basketball, just like almost all of the other programs that are still around due to Title IX. There isn't any tricky accounting involved. There isn't some grand scheme by the AD to make them reliant on subsidies. They need the money because they draw a handful of fans every meet and don't draw any marketing/viewership money. Without the subsidies they turn into club teams (which are still subsidized, just to a lesser extent), which is what they should be regardless IMO.

Saying you think they should continue to be subsidized by the AD for enrichment of the university, fitting in with other B1G teams, etc is fine. I strongly disagree, but it's your opinion. Trying to say they are in anyway profitable is laughable, and where you lose people.


No ****? It's almost like I said that already.




You don't think universities build aquatic/swimming centers for student/faculty use if they don't have swimming/diving programs? You know what rec centers are, right? Would it have been as nice? Probably not. Would it have had to be as nice? Certainly not. But when the AD doesn't want to show profit and needs to spend money, people will always bitch if it only goes to the same 4 programs all the time.

We're done here. If you want to keep pretending the programs were/are profitable, go for it. You'd be wrong, but that is your right. If you think they should continue to be subsidized, that's fine. I don't. If swimming takes off in popularity and the program shows they could bring in revenue, I'd change my stance. For the foreseeable future, it's a black hole which is propped up by Title IX.


You are so locked into your opinion you don't see reality. Coe college has a swim team. So do lots of division three colleges. None of those colleges have profit from their football teams. Want to know why sports aren't viewed as revenue vs nonrevenue in those schools? Because they are ALL revenue sports. Every single one of those kids pays their own way. The majority of the kids on the swim team and all the other sports outside of football and basketball pay a portion of not all of their own way as well. We refer to them as nonrevenue sports because we have isolated them from the total revenue that is generated by these students coming to campus unlike smaller schools. We do that for political reasons in order to claim out athletic department doesn't take tax money. The truth is of course more complicated than that.

By the way since we are talking about football being a for profit enterprise let's go ahead and start taxing them as just that.
 
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Are we looking at Coe or Iowa? Or are we thinking that Iowa should go D 3?

I have no idea what point hawkedoff is trying to make, Division III Coe and Iowa are different in how sports are funded, run and maintained. We all get how Division III sports run. No scholarships, kids are financing their own way through academic scholarships, money of their own or loans, or some combination thereof. Many students choose that route because they want to play sports in college but weren't quite good enough to play Division I. But that is not happening at Iowa or other Division I sports. There is zero, zero appetite to have the cost of sports at UI picked up by all the other students as part of their tuition. Not happening, and it should not happen. Barring a once in a century pandemic, athletics at Iowa had a model that allowed it to be self-sufficient, provide scholarships to hundreds of athletes a year and provide world-class training and amenities. COVID upended all of that. As it did as every other Division I athletic program that relies on football revenue.
 
I have a few questions here. Just looked up the swim and dive roster and it shows 33 people on the roster. In this thread it was stated we had 9.9 scholarships to give out. If we have somebody who swam or played tennis on this thread please jump in. Guessing nobody on the team gets a full ride w/only 9 scholarships. So if it's an out of state student, say from Illinois that would pay 45K all in if he was just a regular student, maybe he gets 10K from swimming and possibly another 10K if he has good grades and all and maybe that gets him down to 20-25K. At that point the student athlete is responsible for the other 20-25K on their own, so the University is still getting 20-25K, correct? I'm guessing almost every student is actually paying a fair amount of money to swim, play tennis, etc. Is that not correct? Just not exactly how the whole system works.
 
I have a few questions here. Just looked up the swim and dive roster and it shows 33 people on the roster. In this thread it was stated we had 9.9 scholarships to give out. If we have somebody who swam or played tennis on this thread please jump in. Guessing nobody on the team gets a full ride w/only 9 scholarships. So if it's an out of state student, say from Illinois that would pay 45K all in if he was just a regular student, maybe he gets 10K from swimming and possibly another 10K if he has good grades and all and maybe that gets him down to 20-25K. At that point the student athlete is responsible for the other 20-25K on their own, so the University is still getting 20-25K, correct? I'm guessing almost every student is actually paying a fair amount of money to swim, play tennis, etc. Is that not correct? Just not exactly how the whole system works.
Money is fungible. The cost for an in State student vs. an out of State student is negligible. Plus, the true cost of adding 1 student to a class that is not full is nearly zero. But yeah, full rides are rare in Olympic sports.
 
You are so locked into your opinion you don't see reality. Coe college has a swim team. So do lots of division three colleges. None of those colleges have profit from their football teams. Want to know why sports aren't viewed as revenue vs nonrevenue in those schools? Because they are ALL revenue sports. Every single one of those kids pays their own way. The majority of the kids on the swim team and all the other sports outside of football and basketball pay a portion of not all of their own way as well. We refer to them as nonrevenue sports because we have isolated them from the total revenue that is generated by these students coming to campus unlike smaller schools. We do that for political reasons in order to claim out athletic department doesn't take tax money. The truth is of course more complicated than that.

By the way since we are talking about football being a for profit enterprise let's go ahead and start taxing them as just that.
If Iowa ran its non-revenue sports like DIII programs run their programs people would scream discrimination / sexism.

All of this is just noise. Outside power 5 schools almost all athletes at all levels are not pampered like power 5 school athletes. They simply don’t have the money.
 
Which is a nice accounting trick to separate the athletic department from the University to give the appearance no tax dollars are used to support sports. The truth though is that each student is a profit center for the University and athletes are no different. Substitute the marching band for swimmer and the point becomes clear on the issue. We don't think of the marching band student as nonrevenue but we do classify the swimmer that way.
I'm fine cutting the band if it helps football. Pretty sure the overhead of the band is much less too. One or 2 road games and uniforms?
 
I was on the swim team at Iowa and you are correct, there are very few full rides, maybe 1 or 2 on the team at a time and the bulk of the team are walkons. When I was there, I was a high school All-American, listed as the #2 recruit in my class (by one publication), and received about a 20% tuition scholarship. The 9.9 scholarships can be divided many ways, some of my teammates scholarship was "books"; which is just as it sounds, it paid for their books each year, not much.

There were often games that had to be played in order to get those full scholarship kids on campus. One year we were recruiting a world record holder. If anyone deserved to be on a full ride it was him, but the money wasn't there. The coaches called a meeting of anyone "on money" and asked that people give up scholarship dollars for the good of the team. I have no idea who gave up money or how much they gave up but we got him.

I think the $5M figure in savings is a bit disingenuous. Looking at just swimming because, it is the largest of the sports cut (and I know the most about it) I would guess their cost for both teams is less than $2M per year. The largest expense is scholarships. Men have 10 and women 14 so at an average of $40,000 each that is less than $1M. The head coach makes right around $100,000 and the assistants probably account for another $400,000 so that puts you at $1.5M. Travel is almost all by bus and university owned vehicles, equipment/uniforms are cheap so there is no way all of these costs are more than another $100,000.

The big cost is maintenance of one of the best pools in the country. This cost is already shared with rec services so even if the athletic department sheds their portion (doubtful, why would rec services agree to this) the university still has to pay for the upkeep so there is no cost savings to the university as a whole.

If the two swim teams cost $1.6M (or so) there is no way the tennis and gymnastics teams cost over $3M per year given they are much smaller, fewer scholarships, fewer coaches, etc.

Looking at the revenue side, with a combined roster of about 60 athletes between the two swimming teams and 24 scholarships, that leaves 36 full pay students (or the equivalent) most from out of state. This is revenue to the university of almost $1.5M (using the $40,000 figure from above). In the end almost a wash, recognizing that is not the full story and is very dirty math.

This decision was not about money. I am certain it has been in the works for quite some time and Corona gave Barta the excuse to pull the trigger and this is why I am upset. Barta has come out and said that privately funding a sport will not bring it back. Why? Those are fundraising dollars coming into the department, the one thing Barta is given credit for from almost all supporters. Why turn down "free" money? The lack of honesty is what really bothers me about the whole situation. I had a conversation with one of the most recognizable Iowa football alums last week and he said the same thing. He is disgusted with many of the issues Iowa has seen over the last several years (lawsuit, racism allegations, etc.) and this is the straw that has broken his camel's back and it all centers on doing things the right way, which it appears is not one of Barta's strong qualities.
 
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When you are talking coaching salaries you need to remember IPERS contributions, the matching social security and income taxes, health insurance, and likely several other benefits.

that stuff adds up in a big hurry.
 
So if the decision was not about money, why were the sports cut?

My guess is it is a combination of competitive results and the nature of the state of Iowa from a recruiting standpoint.

Neither swimming team nor men's gymnastics has been in the race to win the big ten championship in this century. Middle of the pack finished just don't cut it.

The state of Iowa just does not produce high level talent in the sports that were cut and I think that Barta understands to a certain degree the athletic opportunities in the non-revenue sports should reflect the local demographics. Baseball would have been a bigger financial and title IX win to cut (ask Iowa State) but the state of Iowa does produce division one quality recruits, not so much with swimming and men's gymnastics in the last 20+ years.

Field Hockey and Rowing do not meet this local reflection but that is a title IX issue, they are big rosters to offset football and will never go away. There are not enough female sports to add, that reflect state of Iowa demographics, to make up for the roster size.
 
What about women's basketball? Data shows that it is the largest bleeder whether it's the canceled sports or the ones still existing.
 
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with football back on...
With no fans, no parking revenue and no concession revenue. You can’t be serious. Hopefully, they can find creative ways through alumni to save the sports. I trust all the Presidents that voted against FB and the BIG Commissioner have sent personalized letters to all cut sport athletes explaining their rationale. Yeah, right.
 
I was on the swim team at Iowa and you are correct, there are very few full rides, maybe 1 or 2 on the team at a time and the bulk of the team are walkons. When I was there, I was a high school All-American, listed as the #2 recruit in my class (by one publication), and received about a 20% tuition scholarship. The 9.9 scholarships can be divided many ways, some of my teammates scholarship was "books"; which is just as it sounds, it paid for their books each year, not much.

There were often games that had to be played in order to get those full scholarship kids on campus. One year we were recruiting a world record holder. If anyone deserved to be on a full ride it was him, but the money wasn't there. The coaches called a meeting of anyone "on money" and asked that people give up scholarship dollars for the good of the team. I have no idea who gave up money or how much they gave up but we got him.

I think the $5M figure in savings is a bit disingenuous. Looking at just swimming because, it is the largest of the sports cut (and I know the most about it) I would guess their cost for both teams is less than $2M per year. The largest expense is scholarships. Men have 10 and women 14 so at an average of $40,000 each that is less than $1M. The head coach makes right around $100,000 and the assistants probably account for another $400,000 so that puts you at $1.5M. Travel is almost all by bus and university owned vehicles, equipment/uniforms are cheap so there is no way all of these costs are more than another $100,000.

The big cost is maintenance of one of the best pools in the country. This cost is already shared with rec services so even if the athletic department sheds their portion (doubtful, why would rec services agree to this) the university still has to pay for the upkeep so there is no cost savings to the university as a whole.

If the two swim teams cost $1.6M (or so) there is no way the tennis and gymnastics teams cost over $3M per year given they are much smaller, fewer scholarships, fewer coaches, etc.

Looking at the revenue side, with a combined roster of about 60 athletes between the two swimming teams and 24 scholarships, that leaves 36 full pay students (or the equivalent) most from out of state. This is revenue to the university of almost $1.5M (using the $40,000 figure from above). In the end almost a wash, recognizing that is not the full story and is very dirty math.

This decision was not about money. I am certain it has been in the works for quite some time and Corona gave Barta the excuse to pull the trigger and this is why I am upset. Barta has come out and said that privately funding a sport will not bring it back. Why? Those are fundraising dollars coming into the department, the one thing Barta is given credit for from almost all supporters. Why turn down "free" money? The lack of honesty is what really bothers me about the whole situation. I had a conversation with one of the most recognizable Iowa football alums last week and he said the same thing. He is disgusted with many of the issues Iowa has seen over the last several years (lawsuit, racism allegations, etc.) and this is the straw that has broken his camel's back and it all centers on doing things the right way, which it appears is not one of Barta's strong qualities.
So the 40 people who lost their jobs in the department, that wasn't about money either?
 
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Still have the 70k people x $100 per ticket (don't know what the average really is) x 7 home games = $49,000,000 ticket revenue deficit from a normal year.
More like around $65 a ticket not counting donations, service fees etc...
 
Football is the golden goose but it is also the reason these other programs were actively discouraged to not build their own sustainable budget model. They were made to be dependent rather than forced to find their own support from varies sources. That includes by the way raising scholarship support from their own wealthy alumni or taking annual support and building an endowment that would eventually pay for scholarships.

Smaller schools definitely pay less for these programs but they also recognize that the student athletes pay their way overall to the institution. We have separated the overall value of the student athlete away from the entire budget of the UI and instead are only viewing these programs as being sufficient as a stand alone away from tuition dollars. Coe college doesn't do that accounting trick and recognizes that the investment in sports bring a return in tuition and fees

The swim program at Iowa has incredibly wealthy alumni as an example. How many scholarships do they need nd what is the endowment needed to sustain them? Same for coaching and recruiting expense? Now where can those funds come from on an annual operational need and where can they be raised and out away to sustain the program over time? Donors could but they also have done really nothing when it comes to marketing themselves.

The golden goose has been good to college athletics but the welfare has made them short sighted and lazy on a marketing and budgeting model
So tell us, how do you propose the swim team, gymnastics team, row teams etc make enough money so that they no longer need money from the football program?
 
You are so locked into your opinion you don't see reality. Coe college has a swim team. So do lots of division three colleges. None of those colleges have profit from their football teams. Want to know why sports aren't viewed as revenue vs nonrevenue in those schools? Because they are ALL revenue sports. Every single one of those kids pays their own way. The majority of the kids on the swim team and all the other sports outside of football and basketball pay a portion of not all of their own way as well. We refer to them as nonrevenue sports because we have isolated them from the total revenue that is generated by these students coming to campus unlike smaller schools. We do that for political reasons in order to claim out athletic department doesn't take tax money. The truth is of course more complicated than that.

By the way since we are talking about football being a for profit enterprise let's go ahead and start taxing them as just that.
You’re the one locked into your opinion. You should really just stop.
 
Yes, he is locked in, but explain how he's wrong, especially w/what hawkdiver just stated. As explained, about 36 kids are actually paying FULL tuition. As explained that's 36 x 40K which comes out to 1.4 Million. So it's basically a wash, or a small amount of a loss. Those 36 kids that are paying full price are obviously going to go somewhere else and give them their money. It's similar to Drake in FB. It's a non scholarship team, and Drake would be the same at about 40K. I'd guess the average player pays around 18-20 a year to go there. That's somewhere around 1.7 million in money.
 
Yes, he is locked in, but explain how he's wrong, especially w/what hawkdiver just stated. As explained, about 36 kids are actually paying FULL tuition. As explained that's 36 x 40K which comes out to 1.4 Million. So it's basically a wash, or a small amount of a loss. Those 36 kids that are paying full price are obviously going to go somewhere else and give them their money. It's similar to Drake in FB. It's a non scholarship team, and Drake would be the same at about 40K. I'd guess the average player pays around 18-20 a year to go there. That's somewhere around 1.7 million in money.

The issue is the accounting for athletics and the university are separate. There are still costs for operating a swimming or gymnastics team, including salaries and insurance, travel, equipment, etc. Athletics have to pay for all of that themselves, plus make direct payments to the UI general fund for the scholarships in the sports themselves. Yes, it's true that 36 kids or whatever are paying full tuition. At schools where there are not athletic scholarships (Division III) the cost to "pay" for sports programs are absorbed/included in the overall tuition costs for that school. It's not that way in Division I sports. We can argue forever about whether or not that should be the case. I don't know how much would have to be added to the tuition amount for every UI student to pay for "non-revenue" sports but in the current environment it won't fly. There is zero appetite to raise tuition for everyone so that swimming, gymnastics, baseball, softball, etc can be funded.
 
I have a few questions here. Just looked up the swim and dive roster and it shows 33 people on the roster. In this thread it was stated we had 9.9 scholarships to give out. If we have somebody who swam or played tennis on this thread please jump in. Guessing nobody on the team gets a full ride w/only 9 scholarships. So if it's an out of state student, say from Illinois that would pay 45K all in if he was just a regular student, maybe he gets 10K from swimming and possibly another 10K if he has good grades and all and maybe that gets him down to 20-25K. At that point the student athlete is responsible for the other 20-25K on their own, so the University is still getting 20-25K, correct? I'm guessing almost every student is actually paying a fair amount of money to swim, play tennis, etc. Is that not correct? Just not exactly how the whole system works.

And that is exactly the point. No such thing as a nonrevenue sports.

Coe isn't Iowa as one poster said above. And yet they can afford a swim team. Strange isn't it?
 
The issue is the accounting for athletics and the university are separate. There are still costs for operating a swimming or gymnastics team, including salaries and insurance, travel, equipment, etc. Athletics have to pay for all of that themselves, plus make direct payments to the UI general fund for the scholarships in the sports themselves. Yes, it's true that 36 kids or whatever are paying full tuition. At schools where there are not athletic scholarships (Division III) the cost to "pay" for sports programs are absorbed/included in the overall tuition costs for that school. It's not that way in Division I sports. We can argue forever about whether or not that should be the case. I don't know how much would have to be added to the tuition amount for every UI student to pay for "non-revenue" sports but in the current environment it won't fly. There is zero appetite to raise tuition for everyone so that swimming, gymnastics, baseball, softball, etc can be funded.

Yes they are separate and that is entirely a political move so that Iowa can say to the state legislature that athletics doesn't use any tax money. That is why we hear stupid phrases like nonrevenue sports. There is revenue to the University. We as a tier one research university can afford all the sports programs we have bit we isolate the budget for political reasons

And yet the University of Northern Iowa is almost entirely funded by tax dollars so let that sink in a bit.
 
Yes they are separate and that is entirely a political move so that Iowa can say to the state legislature that athletics doesn't use any tax money. That is why we hear stupid phrases like nonrevenue sports. There is revenue to the University. We as a tier one research university can afford all the sports programs we have bit we isolate the budget for political reasons

And yet the University of Northern Iowa is almost entirely funded by tax dollars so let that sink in a bit.
UNI athletic budget is $14 million. The amount of state aid is about $4 million from what I could find.

maybe the state should cut everything but pure academic support. we can argue what pure academic covers.
 
And that is exactly the point. No such thing as a nonrevenue sports.

Coe isn't Iowa as one poster said above. And yet they can afford a swim team. Strange isn't it?
You must be literally the only person in the world that thinks there’s no such thing as a non revenue sport.
A non revenue sport is a sport that doesn’t generate immediate revenue from spectators of the sport. So yes, swimming, rowing etc are non revenue sports. There are literally hundreds of articles about non revenue sports. Let me guess, every single person that wrote those articles calling them non revenue sports are wrong and you’re right?
 
You must be literally the only person in the world that thinks there’s no such thing as a non revenue sport.
A non revenue sport is a sport that doesn’t generate immediate revenue from spectators of the sport. So yes, swimming, rowing etc are non revenue sports. There are literally hundreds of articles about non revenue sports. Let me guess, every single person that wrote those articles calling them non revenue sports are wrong and you’re right?

It's a circular argument. It took me about 10 messages to get at what he/she was saying. I get that there are plenty of athletes on those teams who are paying some/all of their tuition, but what they are paying in goes to support their academic endeavors at Iowa. It pays for the professors, room/board, the buildings, etc. Just like what tuition money for non-athletes goes for. Making the argument that we should keep these sports because they "generate revenue" for the university is technically true, but misses the point entirely. There is cost associated with having those sports (the scholarships that are provided, the coaches' salaries, facilities, administrators, equipment, travel, etc.) If the argument is that there should be no athletic scholarships and tuition should support the cost of athletic programs just like they do at Division III, that is an argument but probably not one that will gain much traction. But trying to claim that Iowa is revenue positive from keeping all the sports is not an accurate one. You have to recognize the model that the sports operate in.

It doesn't mean that I'm supportive of the sports being cancelled or that the whole situation couldn't have been handled better. It's possible Iowa could keep the sports, if they are willing to take on the additional debt/deficit from this year. It doesn't appear that the people making the decision want to do that. It sucks that those athletes have had their sports eliminated, no other way around it.
 
It's a circular argument. It took me about 10 messages to get at what he/she was saying. I get that there are plenty of athletes on those teams who are paying some/all of their tuition, but what they are paying in goes to support their academic endeavors at Iowa. It pays for the professors, room/board, the buildings, etc. Just like what tuition money for non-athletes goes for. Making the argument that we should keep these sports because they "generate revenue" for the university is technically true, but misses the point entirely. There is cost associated with having those sports (the scholarships that are provided, the coaches' salaries, facilities, administrators, equipment, travel, etc.) If the argument is that there should be no athletic scholarships and tuition should support the cost of athletic programs just like they do at Division III, that is an argument but probably not one that will gain much traction. But trying to claim that Iowa is revenue positive from keeping all the sports is not an accurate one. You have to recognize the model that the sports operate in.

It doesn't mean that I'm supportive of the sports being cancelled or that the whole situation couldn't have been handled better. It's possible Iowa could keep the sports, if they are willing to take on the additional debt/deficit from this year. It doesn't appear that the people making the decision want to do that. It sucks that those athletes have had their sports eliminated, no other way around it.

You are almost there. Is the University revenue positive in music? In theatre?

The fact is the separation of the budget for athletics is a false construct. If we are revenue negative because of athletics budgets as a university then we are spending too much for those programs and a plan needs to be implemented to make them net neutral or positive while incorporating the students entire revenue into the equation. Then make decisions including what we pay the coaches. Once football revenue resumes at a decent level start endowing each sport rather than constantly spending everything that comes into the department. If we can raise money for a new gold clubhouse we can raise money for the coaching and scholarship expenses for the golf program whether that comes from football or donors or incorporating the net profit students provide when viewed as their total cost and revenue statement to the UI.

There isn't any difference between the programs at Iowa and a place like Coe other than the level of competition and what we believe we need to spend.
 
So why as a state is the University of Northern Iowa athletic department funded by taxpayers?
 
So why as a state is the University of Northern Iowa athletic department funded by taxpayers?
Why isn’t every building in Iowa City just a well insulated Metal shed? Why support art or dance ? You can draw pictures at home and dance at clubs. YouTube can help if you need it.

your line in the sand isn’t everybody’s.

maybe Iowa should take half their BTN money and divide among the student body. Not like they are going to get kicked out of league if they don’t win quite as much.
 
Why isn’t every building in Iowa City just a well insulated Metal shed? Why support art or dance ? You can draw pictures at home and dance at clubs. YouTube can help if you need it.

your line in the sand isn’t everybody’s.

maybe Iowa should take half their BTN money and divide among the student body. Not like they are going to get kicked out of league if they don’t win quite as much.

So because Iowa has the ability to pay for everything without tax dollars in most years they shouldn't get some money from the state to bridge a bad year while UNI never supports itself?

Lets go ahead and cancel their entire athletic department
 
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