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Thread: How Should MSU Fans Look At MSU Athletic Budget?

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    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    How Should MSU Fans Look At MSU Athletic Budget?

    The SEC is the biggest arms race in American sports and I'm having trouble reconciling in my mind how I should look at MSU having the conference's lowest athletic budget, one of the most physically fit departments in the conference, and the fact that we have nowhere near the best facilities or recruiting classes.

    Basically, outside of preparing for a pandemic, why are we trying to save so much money? How do we justify that?

    On one hand there's being good stewards of your money and on the other hand, we are clearly not doing everything we can to win.

    Are we too conservative?

    Check out these two links:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/scoutstev...41718887079941

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spor...144193496/Amp/
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    Senior Member Jack Lambert's Avatar
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    If Cohen keeps it up we will be able to eat free hotdogs.

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    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Lambert View Post
    If Cohen keeps it up we will be able to eat free hotdogs.
    Good point. Free hot dogs right around the corner.

    I'm actually surprised there isn't more discussion on this. People accept us spending less and saving more than anyone else while we have 2nd rate SEC facilities, a trailer home in our South EZ, and a injury hazard on the East side.
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    Senior Member Dawgology's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    The SEC is the biggest arms race in American sports and I'm having trouble reconciling in my mind how I should look at MSU having the conference's lowest athletic budget, one of the most physically fit departments in the conference, and the fact that we have nowhere near the best facilities or recruiting classes.

    Basically, outside of preparing for a pandemic, why are we trying to save so much money? How do we justify that?

    On one hand there's being good stewards of your money and on the other hand, we are clearly not doing everything we can to win.

    Are we too conservative?

    Check out these two links:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/scoutstev...41718887079941

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spor...144193496/Amp/
    It's a good point. On the one hand you want to put something back each year but on the other hand you don't sacrifice recruiting and facility to save $200k in a $45 million operation.

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    I mean we have done A TON of capital improvements in recent years. In the last decade we?ve built a new football only facility, did a major renovation and expansion of the football stadium, built a brand new state of the art baseball stadium, did major facility upgrades for pretty much every Olympic sport, we pay our major sport coaches more than many of our peers and recently increased assistant coach salary pools. And we still are turning a profit. This isn?t even considering The Hump renovations that will break ground in the next year or two (I personally would prefer a new arena but if that?s not happening at least we are doing something to help The Hump).

    Are we still behind the big boys in many ways? Sure. And there?s a good chance that will always be the case on some fronts. But we have definitely come a long way and taken positive steps to close the gap. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the Templeton administration and administrations prior to that who really let us fall to the back of the pack in a big way. We have spent the last decade plus playing catch-up and still have plenty of room to grow.

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    Senior Member Gutter Cobreh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    Good point. Free hot dogs right around the corner.

    I'm actually surprised there isn't more discussion on this. People accept us spending less and saving more than anyone else while we have 2nd rate SEC facilities, a trailer home in our South EZ, and a injury hazard on the East side.
    We did upgrade the practice facility with Leach's Beach, so there is that.

    3 things that impressed me in the article:

    1) We all know that football is where the money is made and we were able to generate that much revenue with Joe as our coach!
    2) The staggering amounts of money from TX A&M and TX
    3) We generated more revenue than Ole Miss - who subsequently had a net loss of $4.6 million. (Guess those aluminum seats are more expensive than I gave them credit for.***)

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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    The SEC is the biggest arms race in American sports and I'm having trouble reconciling in my mind how I should look at MSU having the conference's lowest athletic budget, one of the most physically fit departments in the conference, and the fact that we have nowhere near the best facilities or recruiting classes.

    Basically, outside of preparing for a pandemic, why are we trying to save so much money? How do we justify that?

    On one hand there's being good stewards of your money and on the other hand, we are clearly not doing everything we can to win.

    Are we too conservative?

    Check out these two links:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/scoutstev...41718887079941

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spor...144193496/Amp/
    A few reasons we need to save a lot of money:

    (1) At some point, ticket revenues are going to stagnate if not drop based on current trends.

    (2) There are the tangible and intangible assets of the university athletic departments that you may not be considering. I don't mean tangible and intangible in the accounting sense, but the reality is all of the universities in the SEC, if shit hit the fan for them, have some donors they could go to that would dig a little deeper if the university athletic department was really in trouble. This "asset" for Mississippi state is probably smaller than most SEC universities.

    (3) THere's a lot of uncertainty on the table regarding paying athletes and NIL rules and how that's going to impact us. It might be that university giving dries up in exchange for funneling money directly to the players in "endorsement" deals. We're still going to have debt payments to make if that happens.

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    Senior Member Todd4State's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Falcon View Post
    I mean we have done A TON of capital improvements in recent years. In the last decade we?ve built a new football only facility, did a major renovation and expansion of the football stadium, built a brand new state of the art baseball stadium, did major facility upgrades for pretty much every Olympic sport, we pay our major sport coaches more than many of our peers and recently increased assistant coach salary pools. And we still are turning a profit. This isn?t even considering The Hump renovations that will break ground in the next year or two (I personally would prefer a new arena but if that?s not happening at least we are doing something to help The Hump).

    Are we still behind the big boys in many ways? Sure. And there?s a good chance that will always be the case on some fronts. But we have definitely come a long way and taken positive steps to close the gap. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the Templeton administration and administrations prior to that who really let us fall to the back of the pack in a big way. We have spent the last decade plus playing catch-up and still have plenty of room to grow.
    I think this is a really good point. We need to catch up on all of our facilities first as a whole before we go back and then start spending big in other areas. The Hump definitely needs it. And then we do need to enclose Davis Wade in some form or fashion soon after that. Otherwise I think we're mostly caught up on everything else facility wise unless there is something like soccer that needs it that I'm unaware of.

    We're turning enough of a profit I do think we could and should spend more on:

    1. Football recruiting. We could afford another recruiting analyst or two easily. Did we ever really replace Patrick Austin? We could also increase it on materials and things that we send players. I've always felt like we could do more as far as football recruiting than what we currently do.

    2. Hire a football only compliance staff. Make it lawyer based and try to hire someone from that firm in Birmingham that always gets Ole Miss off the hook.

    3. Buy back the interlocking MSU and use it at least once or twice a year along with the M-State logo.

  9. #9
    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Falcon View Post
    I mean we have done A TON of capital improvements in recent years. In the last decade we?ve built a new football only facility, did a major renovation and expansion of the football stadium, built a brand new state of the art baseball stadium, did major facility upgrades for pretty much every Olympic sport, we pay our major sport coaches more than many of our peers and recently increased assistant coach salary pools. And we still are turning a profit. This isn?t even considering The Hump renovations that will break ground in the next year or two (I personally would prefer a new arena but if that?s not happening at least we are doing something to help The Hump).

    Are we still behind the big boys in many ways? Sure. And there?s a good chance that will always be the case on some fronts. But we have definitely come a long way and taken positive steps to close the gap. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the Templeton administration and administrations prior to that who really let us fall to the back of the pack in a big way. We have spent the last decade plus playing catch-up and still have plenty of room to grow.
    We have done a ton, but with the amount of money we are making and saving, it's clear that we should be doing more. Unless Cohen and Keenum know of some reason to be running an overly frugal budget that other SEC ADs are unaware of.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    Good point. Free hot dogs right around the corner.

    I'm actually surprised there isn't more discussion on this. People accept us spending less and saving more than anyone else while we have 2nd rate SEC facilities, a trailer home in our South EZ, and a injury hazard on the East side.
    What is the injury hazard?

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    Senior Member Todd4State's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    We have done a ton, but with the amount of money we are making and saving, it's clear that we should be doing more. Unless Cohen and Keenum know of some reason to be running an overly frugal budget that other SEC ADs are unaware of.
    I'd like to know what the surplus we have made is. Because the 13 million is only for this year right? I know we spent a ton on the baseball field.

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    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
    I'd like to know what the surplus we have made is. Because the 13 million is only for this year right? I know we spent a ton on the baseball field.
    When I looked at the reported financials for one of my roof posts, on paper we had well over $60 mil saved. Maybe we’re just better at accounting than everyone else, but my guess is that we’re just being overly conservative.

    Yes.... we’ve won a lot but outside of DNF, we’re chasing the rest of the conference in virtually every other facility.

    Why? Why are we choosing to chase instead of taking the lead?

    And to the person that I know will respond with “write a check”. We’re the 5th most profitable department in the SEC.

    If we’re making a profit, why can’t they spend money we already have?

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    Senior Member msbulldog's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    The SEC is the biggest arms race in American sports and I'm having trouble reconciling in my mind how I should look at MSU having the conference's lowest athletic budget, one of the most physically fit departments in the conference, and the fact that we have nowhere near the best facilities or recruiting classes.

    Basically, outside of preparing for a pandemic, why are we trying to save so much money? How do we justify that?

    On one hand there's being good stewards of your money and on the other hand, we are clearly not doing everything we can to win.

    Are we too conservative?

    Check out these two links:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/scoutstev...41718887079941

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spor...144193496/Amp/
    Gun I'm going to respond to this before I read the rest of the responses, because I am sure someone else will bring these points up. Because of the fiscal responsibility of our athletic department, we are better set to withstand the economic problems that this virus is putting on us. We are better off than most of the SEC schools that have smaller budgets like us. Hell, Ole Miss is handing out salary cuts to coaches and staff in their athletic dept. If you're worried about what we spend on recruiting, let me ask what in recruiting costs money? You can't pay recruits or their coaches, you can't give them gifts. You have travel and maybe airfare, but damn MSU owns a boat load of planes. The money most schools spend on recruiting is in recruiting staff (see Alabama). How many people do you need to track basically 1500 or so high school players? I might add our current staff does a helluva job. Gun, I think you're just starting a thread to get posts. Does ED pay you?
    Praise The Lord and Go Dawgs!!!

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    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by msbulldog View Post
    Gun I'm going to respond to this before I read the rest of the responses, because I am sure someone else will bring these points up. Because of the fiscal responsibility of our athletic department, we are better set to withstand the economic problems that this virus is putting on us. We are better off than most of the SEC schools that have smaller budgets like us. Hell, Ole Miss is handing out salary cuts to coaches and staff in their athletic dept. If you're worried about what we spend on recruiting, let me ask what in recruiting costs money? You can't pay recruits or their coaches, you can't give them gifts. You have travel and maybe airfare, but damn MSU owns a boat load of planes. The money most schools spend on recruiting is in recruiting staff (see Alabama). How many people do you need to track basically 1500 or so high school players? I might add our current staff does a helluva job. Gun, I think you're just starting a thread to get posts. Does ED pay you?
    So our athletic department knew about COVID before it happened?

    Yes, they look good right now, but were we really saving money for a pandemic? I'm happy we're on the position we are in, but it does bring up questions about why we apparently aren't doing everything we can to win.

    Again, outside of baseball, we are in the bottom tier of SEC facilities.

    Do you think better facilities than our competition helps you win? I do.

    Mainly, I don't want MSU to settle for "good enough". People say we've been to 10 bowl games in a row, etc but we haven't won anything. We haven't won the West and haven't won a Natty in any sport.

    It's not good enough. If we're making a profit than we should be investing that into the programs and facilities. No saving for a once in a lifetime pandemic.
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    Senior Member ShotgunDawg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by msbulldog View Post
    Gun I'm going to respond to this before I read the rest of the responses, because I am sure someone else will bring these points up. Because of the fiscal responsibility of our athletic department, we are better set to withstand the economic problems that this virus is putting on us. We are better off than most of the SEC schools that have smaller budgets like us. Hell, Ole Miss is handing out salary cuts to coaches and staff in their athletic dept. If you're worried about what we spend on recruiting, let me ask what in recruiting costs money? You can't pay recruits or their coaches, you can't give them gifts. You have travel and maybe airfare, but damn MSU owns a boat load of planes. The money most schools spend on recruiting is in recruiting staff (see Alabama). How many people do you need to track basically 1500 or so high school players? I might add our current staff does a helluva job. Gun, I think you're just starting a thread to get posts. Does ED pay you?
    I agree our staff does a hell of a job, but that doesn’t mean they’re above questions.

    A good fan base SHOULD ask questions. That’s the impact we can have to assure ourselves of a continued successful athletic department.

    Do you wish people would’ve asked LT questions?
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    The SEC is the biggest arms race in American sports and I'm having trouble reconciling in my mind how I should look at MSU having the conference's lowest athletic budget, one of the most physically fit departments in the conference, and the fact that we have nowhere near the best facilities or recruiting classes.

    Basically, outside of preparing for a pandemic, why are we trying to save so much money? How do we justify that?

    On one hand there's being good stewards of your money and on the other hand, we are clearly not doing everything we can to win.

    Are we too conservative?

    Check out these two links:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/scoutstev...41718887079941

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spor...144193496/Amp/

    The next six months are critical for the survival of sports as we know it...whether or not we are willing to admit it...life as we have known it will be forever changed...governors and mayors now have the authority to dictate what activities we can Or can't attend (including church) all in the name of "public safety". The lost revenue from this panic will be devastating for many of the schools outside the the power 5. Professional sports are on a suicidal spiral with this BLM and China love..I doubt the WNBA will survive.

    So I'd say it's smart to be fiscally responsible as it may determine whether or not we will be one of the viable athletic programs going forward.

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    Senior Member Todd4State's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ezsoil View Post
    The next six months are critical for the survival of sports as we know it...whether or not we are willing to admit it...life as we have known it will be forever changed...governors and mayors now have the authority to dictate what activities we can Or can't attend (including church) all in the name of "public safety". The lost revenue from this panic will be devastating for many of the schools outside the the power 5. Professional sports are on a suicidal spiral with this BLM and China love..I doubt the WNBA will survive.

    So I'd say it's smart to be fiscally responsible as it may determine whether or not we will be one of the viable athletic programs going forward.
    I agree that we should re-assess where our athletic department is financially after this COVID crisis is over. That's just common sense. The good news is after that is over we'll probably have enough money to do some really good things.

    It does seem like our athletic department is always so proud of what they saved- it's very LT-ish. I wish there was more thinking about what we CAN do and not as much what we can't do. But that does need to happen after this pandemic is over and things settle down.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
    I agree that we should re-assess where our athletic department is financially after this COVID crisis is over. That's just common sense. The good news is after that is over we'll probably have enough money to do some really good things.

    It does seem like our athletic department is always so proud of what they saved- it's very LT-ish. I wish there was more thinking about what we CAN do and not as much what we can't do. But that does need to happen after this pandemic is over and things settle down.
    I just hate to see what the permanent repercussions are going to be....how much of the classroom time will forever be transferred to the online world? what will happen to attendance overall? I believe the path forward will be different than what we have come to know we have to be right . as has been stated by Cohen and others that a lost football season could jeopardize the Hump renovations which is the biggest need now....

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    Senior Member Dawgpile's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
    When I looked at the reported financials for one of my roof posts, on paper we had well over $60 mil saved. Maybe we’re just better at accounting than everyone else, but my guess is that we’re just being overly conservative.

    Yes.... we’ve won a lot but outside of DNF, we’re chasing the rest of the conference in virtually every other facility.

    Why? Why are we choosing to chase instead of taking the lead?

    And to the person that I know will respond with “write a check”. We’re the 5th most profitable department in the SEC.

    If we’re making a profit, why can’t they spend money we already have?

    [Tweet2]1283895845147082753[/tweet2]

    https://twitter.com/bulldawgs247/sta...95845147082753
    2013-2018 we've banked $48 million. (quickie math from THIS website)

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    Senior Member Maroonthirteen's Avatar
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    The joke goes....

    Msu fans have one maroon shirt with a $20 in the front pocket. ....and they don't change either.

    "Keeping it in the black"

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