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Will CU see the opposite of the "Flutie Effect?"

ScottyBuff

Well-Known Member
Will TCU See The "Flutie Effect?", by Darren Rovell

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34152537

Darren: It was estimated that George Mason would have had to spend $50 million for the publicity it received for the couple weeks during March Madness. What has this football season been worth to TCU?
Boschini: We couldn’t afford, especially a school like us, to buy the publicity we’re getting from this football team and so it’s hard to put a price on that because we could never afford it anyway.

Further evidence that success in NCAA football is extremely critical for a university.

The logic of retaining Hawkins flies in the face of a sound business decision, and CU will pay the price of that. This isn't just football fanatics crying for unrealistic expectations, but a very real and proven business model.
 
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Will TCU See The "Flutie Effect?", by Darren Rovell

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34152537



Further evidence that success in NCAA football is extremely critical for a university.

The logic of retaining Hawkins flies in the face of a sound business decision, and CU will pay the price of that. This isn't just football fanatics crying for unrealistic expectations, but a very real and proven business model.

Tell it to the Colorado voters and the regents. So far as I can tell, neither group is particularly interested in CU football, but ultimately influence the employement status of the highest paid state official. Everyone below them are just paid to come to work, avoid contoversy, and sugarcoat underperformance.
 
Tell it to the Colorado voters and the regents. So far as I can tell, neither group is particularly interested in CU football, but ultimately influence the employement status of the highest paid state official. Everyone below them are just paid to come to work, avoid contoversy, and sugarcoat underperformance.
yup. hes ****ing stupid (benson)
 
I wouldn't say CU would experience the opposite of the Flutie Effect, just because from my reading, it correlated football exposure with increased enrollment (or enrollment applications).

However, it would be nice if we had an administration that was intelligent enough to understand that successful athletic programs, especially football and basketball, can provide massive amounts of indirect money to the school. Whether that is through the "Flutie Effect" of increased applications to the school, or a higher quality of student, or increased donations to both the colleges and the athletic department, or ...

Either way, we haven't had those type of administrators for years.
 
Why should CU want to increase admissions at this point in time? With unemployement so high, enrollement numbers are up. Even with an historically bad football record, it's not as if the university has to compete with a robust jobs market.
 
Why should CU want to increase admissions at this point in time? With unemployement so high, enrollement numbers are up. Even with an historically bad football record, it's not as if the university has to compete with a robust jobs market.

They don't want to incease admissons, they want to increase applications. Every application costs something like $150 to submit. It may be more than that now.
 
Why should CU want to increase admissions at this point in time? With unemployement so high, enrollement numbers are up. Even with an historically bad football record, it's not as if the university has to compete with a robust jobs market.

CU wants to increase enrollment of out-of-state students. These students pay full tuition and fees subsidising the in-state students. As state funding gets more and more questionable a solid out-of-state student population ensures cash flow to maintain faculty positions, etc.
 
Well lookie here... exactly what I (and others) were talking about over the weekend in chat.

Football and basketball are the front door to major universities. To ignore that fact is costly.
 
The same thing happened to Boise State after the Fiesta Bowl........and the football team continues to put BSU on the map. Hard for the football haters to accept but it is a fact.
 
CU wants to increase enrollment of out-of-state students. These students pay full tuition and fees subsidising the in-state students. As state funding gets more and more questionable a solid out-of-state student population ensures cash flow to maintain faculty positions, etc.

Out of state admission numbers and instate tuition are both capped by the state legislature.

CU wants to increase out-of-state admission. CU wants to be able to raise instate tuition. CU wants to get more than 6% of it's funding from the state of Colorado.

But for CU to achieve any of those goals, it all starts with Benson being sucessful inside the State Capitol building.
 
The same thing happened to Boise State after the Fiesta Bowl........and the football team continues to put BSU on the map. Hard for the football haters to accept but it is a fact.

There was a time not so very long ago when Colorado teams played the best football in the mountain time zone. Now Colorado teams are among the worst.

Utah, Idaho, Arizona, have undenyably better college football. New Mexico and Wyoming share the basement with Colorado.

It's sad to see Colorado teams falter not only nationally, but also within the least relevent mainland time zone.
 
Amazing how fast the administration forgets the success that a winning football program brings to the university.

Example: My frosh year was 1991, the year after we won the NC. That year was the first year that out-of-state admissions outpaced in-state admissions something like 53%-47% (don't remember the exact numbers.) The ratio so pissed off Colorado residents that the legislature passed a law stating that in-state admissions had to be higher than out-of-state admissions.

Now that law might be off the books, but if the "flagship" university is looking to increase it's out-of-state enrollment (and thus increase incoming $$$ as one year for an out-of-state student now costs something like $40K/year - straight from CU admissions offcials when they were here in Austin) they need to look no further than back 15 years in their own history.

Gee and Marolt understood this. The downward spiral started with Albino/Byyny and Tharp, we got a little uptick with Brown and Lengyel, and now we are in the seventh circle of hell with Benson/DiStefano and Bohn.
 
I just got an alumni mailer that said CU's enrollment tops 30,000, it's certainly not the time to be arguing that a losing football team hurts enrollment. As Skidmark points out, the # of out of state students is capped by the state, as is in-state tuition.

The argument that big-time football or basketball programs are some sort of financial or admissions boon to a university has always seemed specious to me. They don't play football at MIT and barely play it in the Ivy League.

That doesn't mean that universities shouldn't have and support their athletic programs, which do bring real benefits to a campus--like uniting a diverse population, teaching the things athletics teach, PR benefits, etc. The bottom line is that if the university is going to have an athletic program, it should strive to be the best, just like any other part of the university. I just think that the argument that successful sports teams are important to the success of a university as a whole is BS.
 
I believe the argument is not that success in athletics increases enrollment, it's that it is a lot of free advertising for the university. That increases applications, so the university can be more selective and thereby increase its academic standards. Also, it increases alumni awareness/pride and this makes it easier to raise money from boosters. Playing into the happy alumni base (and increased applications) is that increased notoriety of the university also increases the value of a degree from the institution on the job market.

Conversely, a national scandal has a powerful opposite effect on fundraising, applications and alumni support. At CU, fear of another scandal (and confidence that we would never have one with Hawkins) weighed heavily into the decision to retain our coach this year. Winning clean like Duke basketball is really the way that the formula discussed in the article works.
 
I just got an alumni mailer that said CU's enrollment tops 30,000, it's certainly not the time to be arguing that a losing football team hurts enrollment. As Skidmark points out, the # of out of state students is capped by the state, as is in-state tuition.

The argument that big-time football or basketball programs are some sort of financial or admissions boon to a university has always seemed specious to me. They don't play football at MIT and barely play it in the Ivy League.

That doesn't mean that universities shouldn't have and support their athletic programs, which do bring real benefits to a campus--like uniting a diverse population, teaching the things athletics teach, PR benefits, etc. The bottom line is that if the university is going to have an athletic program, it should strive to be the best, just like any other part of the university. I just think that the argument that successful sports teams are important to the success of a university as a whole is BS.

This ain't MIT or the Ivy league. Two totally different things here. Those schools have endowments that provide millions of dollars a year in revenues that help support their athletic departments. For example, a ticket on the 50 yard line at a Princeton game costs $7. Their attendance typically runs somewhere in the range of around 7,500/game. They just built a brand new stadium. You think they financed that with football revenues?

I have the unique perspective of growing up in the household of a Princeton grad and I went to CU. I know how it works in both places. You simply can't compare them. CU needs athletics in order to keep it's alumni engaged.
 
This ain't MIT or the Ivy league. Two totally different things here. Those schools have endowments that provide millions of dollars a year in revenues that help support their athletic departments. For example, a ticket on the 50 yard line at a Princeton game costs $7. Their attendance typically runs somewhere in the range of around 7,500/game. They just built a brand new stadium. You think they financed that with football revenues?

I have the unique perspective of growing up in the household of a Princeton grad and I went to CU. I know how it works in both places. You simply can't compare them. CU needs athletics in order to keep it's alumni engaged.

While that's true, I think the more general point BuffsNYC was trying to make, which I agree with, is that this whole "we need a successful football team to keep enrollment high" argument is a LOT less true for CU than it is for some school like, say, Kansas State.

That's the whole catch-22 of being CU and having "everything money can't buy". Rich Californians and east coast trustifarians will still flock to come here no matter how bad the football team is.

The irony is that this fan base wants to make these kinds of arguments for getting rid of a bad coach, then turns around and says "we don't need top notch facilities, we have mountains." :rolleyes:
 
I can attest first hand that the power of a commitment to popular athletics at a university is a huge financial boon. Here in Pueblo, they just recently brought back football after a 25 year hiatus. The University had been seeing declining enrollment for years, but when they brough football back, the now have so many applications and enrollments that they cannot even begin to fill. The on campus housing has already doubled over the past few years, and last year the still had to house several hundred students in nearby hotels for the whole semesters.

The alumni have been reengaged into the university and the football team has become the centerpiece of the social life for the town. And that was just by getting football back. The success of the team in a short time span will help to maintain the financial viability for the program as the "face of the school".

I think that the economic and marketing impact that successful athletics has for public universities is extremely important. Success is the most attractive part of why you go to school, people follow success. Whether it is high-profile alumni, olympic athletes, or football teams. Football just happens to be the most popular spectator sport, and therefore commands the most headlines and TV coverage.
 
While that's true, I think the more general point BuffsNYC was trying to make, which I agree with, is that this whole "we need a successful football team to keep enrollment high" argument is a LOT less true for CU than it is for some school like, say, Kansas State.

That's the whole catch-22 of being CU and having "everything money can't buy". Rich Californians and east coast trustifarians will still flock to come here no matter how bad the football team is.

The irony is that this fan base wants to make these kinds of arguments for getting rid of a bad coach, then turns around and says "we don't need top notch facilities, we have mountains." :rolleyes:

Those same trustafarians will go back to wherever they came from eventually. The only tangible thing they have to connect to the university is the athletic department. We stand a much better chance of engaging them and getting long term support from them if they can watch the football team win on Saturdays.
 
Those same trustafarians will go back to wherever they came from eventually. The only tangible thing they have to connect to the university is the athletic department. We stand a much better chance of engaging them and getting long term support from them if they can watch the football team win on Saturdays.

You have hit on what frustrates this out-of-state alumnus. The football and athletic teams serve as ambassadors to CU. The watch parties bring alumni together.

If just under half the students come from OOS. It's not too much of a stretch to believe a large portion of alumni reside OOS. Certainly a large portion of CU's former athletes no longer live in Colorado.

Due to conference revenue sharing and network revenues, and OOS season ticket holders, a large portion of the CUAD's funding comes from sources outside of the state borders.

Based on Hawkin's body of work at CU, the decission to fire or retain Hawkins looks like a no brainer.

However, Hawkins is an employee of the State of Colorado. The decission to extend Hawkin's contract is driven by Colorado politics, as administered by elected regents and their appointees, and the statutory framework of the University. OOS fans are powerless in this equation.

Out of state alumni have no voice in this process other than the decission to buy tickets and/or donate directly to the CUAD.

No regent or CU official makes political decissions based on what some OOS alumni thinks.

Some tree hugging, football hating activist in Fort Collins has more sway over his or her CU Regent than some booster from outside the state lines. Bensen has to appeal broadly to CO voters to pursue his legislative agenda, even when that means throwing the CUAD under the bus.

The out of state fan has no voice in the matter as we are detached from the politics that drive decissions.

OOS alum have three choices. 1) Keep paying money that enable the university to maintain the status quo. 2) Withhold funds in hopes that CU can starve itself into success; or, 3) establish some fake grass roots PAC that stimulates voters and lawmakers to pull thier heads out of their asses and get behind the buffs.

It's time for Colorado voters to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Ya'll are messin' with my football team.
 
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Some tree hugging, football hating activist in Fort Collins has more sway over his or her CU Regent than some booster from outside the state lines. Bensen has to appeal broadly to CO voters to pursue his legislative agenda, even when that means throwing the CUAD under the bus.

Tom Lucero is the Regent from the 4th district and is a supporter of the athletic department. Just sayin'.

I hear what you're saying, though. You have no voice in the debate. If this were a private institution, you'd have a lot more. I think we're headed in that direction, frankly. It'll be tough, though, because in order to do it, the Regents would have to take the action. The Regents are elected representatives. By going private, they'd be working to the detriment of the very people who elected them. Tough situation to be in.
 
This ain't MIT or the Ivy league. Two totally different things here. Those schools have endowments that provide millions of dollars a year in revenues that help support their athletic departments. For example, a ticket on the 50 yard line at a Princeton game costs $7. Their attendance typically runs somewhere in the range of around 7,500/game. They just built a brand new stadium. You think they financed that with football revenues?

I have the unique perspective of growing up in the household of a Princeton grad and I went to CU. I know how it works in both places. You simply can't compare them. CU needs athletics in order to keep it's alumni engaged.

Those are also private institutions. To support sacky here, trying to compare private and public institutions is comparing apples and oranges.
 
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