As of 8:10am this morning one of the finer programs in the country is lost due to "budgetary" problems.
No one saw it coming and they just recently signed some top level recruits that gave them one of the top 3 recruiting classes in the country.
I agree with you that football and basketball are key drivers for alumni donations. They are also the sports most popular with the student body. Women's basketball draws a good crowd at a few schools. Women's soccer averaged almost 5,000 per game at Texas A&M.
One of the reasons I enjoy college football is how alive the campus becomes on game day. Just about nothing else can do that to a large campus.
This statement is often made and simply assumed to be true. Have either of you seen proof of it? Since it is often used to justify the existence of (marginal) football programs it would seem in need of some examination. I don't think it would be all that difficult to do.
A friend of mine -- a former college swim coach -- claims to have seen studies that disprove it (or, more accurately, fail to prove it). I have not followed up myself.
Personally, I doubt that it is true for ALL types of schools. Where I work, football games are poorly attended -- the campus certainly does NOT "come alive" on game days. If current students don't care much about the team, how would it induce them to give more money after they graduate?
My own giving to my alma maters (one of which is a "football school") is not at all correlated to the existence of the football program or how well the team is doing.
What seems to me to be important for alum giving is to create "warm fuzzy" feelings associated with a school (school pride, etc). Football can accomplish that, but so can other sports (as Dan himself says) and even non-sport organizations. So I suspect that the common assertion that we must keep football programs to raise money for the school is a weak one, except for the big powerhouse programs whose football programs directly generate lots of revenue.
I agree with you that football and basketball are key drivers for alumni donations. They are also the sports most popular with the student body. Women's basketball draws a good crowd at a few schools. Women's soccer averaged almost 5,000 per game at Texas A&M.
One of the reasons I enjoy college football is how alive the campus becomes on game day. Just about nothing else can do that to a large campus.
This statement is often made and simply assumed to be true. Have either of you seen proof of it? Since it is often used to justify the existence of (marginal) football programs it would seem in need of some examination. I don't think it would be all that difficult to do.
A friend of mine -- a former college swim coach -- claims to have seen studies that disprove it (or, more accurately, fail to prove it). I have not followed up myself.
Personally, I doubt that it is true for ALL types of schools. Where I work, football games are poorly attended -- the campus certainly does NOT "come alive" on game days. If current students don't care much about the team, how would it induce them to give more money after they graduate?
My own giving to my alma maters (one of which is a "football school") is not at all correlated to the existence of the football program or how well the team is doing.
What seems to me to be important for alum giving is to create "warm fuzzy" feelings associated with a school (school pride, etc). Football can accomplish that, but so can other sports (as Dan himself says) and even non-sport organizations. So I suspect that the common assertion that we must keep football programs to raise money for the school is a weak one, except for the big powerhouse programs whose football programs directly generate lots of revenue.
