So the topic of which sports SFA can/should sponsor has come up on individual threads & twitter lately, so I wanted to pose it to the community as a thread.

Here are our current sports:
Men's:

• Football (63)
• Baseball (11.7)
• Basketball (13)
• Cross Country (12.6 between CC & Track)
• Track & Field(see above)
• Golf (4.5)
• Total Scholarships(104.8)

Women's:

• Basketball (15)
• Bowling (5)
• Cross Country (18 including track & field)
• Golf (6)
• Tennis (8)
• Soccer (14)
• Softball (12)
• Track & Field (See cross country)
• Volleyball (12)
• Total (90)

Now for some parameters to guide the discussion. Because of NCAA Title IX rules, you have to have as many women's scholarships as men's. I show us at 104.8 scholarships on the men's side vs 90 on the women's. I think there are some proportional participation rules at play here, but I'm far from a Title IX expert. Let's assume that for the sake of the experiment that you can have no more than 104 scholarships each for men's or Women's sports.


If you want to know what the per sport scholarship limit for each sport is, check out this link:
http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html

I think we're honestly good where we are unless we try to go to a larger conference requiring us to add sports.
Baseball is by far our worst sport in every aspect, but baseball is also the SLC's strongest sport by far.
Any notion that football should be dropped is a horrible idea. It's our most profitable sport and is huge for the school just from a tradition standpoint.
Maybe we should add ice hockey.

SFA_03 said:

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Any notion that football should be dropped is a horrible idea. It's our most profitable sport.

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You sure about that? No doubt it is a sport that generates the most revenue, but let's see some numbers as far as net profit.

IMO, college sports exist for two reasons, adding to the campus culture/school pride & marketing purposes.

I enjoy watching football, Saturday's in the fall are tradition & a great way to bring the campus together. While not great for marketing at the FCS level, I think it adds to school pride & culture in ways that we can't measure just with dollars & cents. However, I don't think we make all that much from football.

However, I'd like to offer the caveat, that football in its current form is unsustainable. The lawsuits will come at some point, & we don't make near enough to justify the risks IMO. Also, it becomes harder and harder for me to watch football as athletes suffer injuries that last a lifetime. I personally don't think we'll be playing football in 20 years.

So, with culture/school pride & marketing being the main purposes of sponsoring sports teams, I'd propose the following changes. First, I don't see us dropping football for the time being.

So keeping football, I'd propose dropping baseball & & adding men's soccer to take it's place. This would allow us to build an on-campus track & field/soccer facility(assuming the dimensions fit), which means we could bring the stands in on Home Bryce in the future. Men's soccer programs will continue to grow, this would allow us to get in relatively early.

I don't actually see our golf team adding a lot of value in this case, but don't see a better sport to replace it at the moment. I could see an argument for olympic sports (swimming, triathlon, shooting, rowing), but would want to compete at the highest levels to make it make sense. Having an Olympian on campus would be worth it. Perhaps we make fishing more than a club sport?

However, with keeping football, I don't see a lot of value add outside of the baseball/soccer switch.

TT I agree with all of that, except that I think the campus pride and spirit component of football is probably more of a memory of times long gone than a reality. As I said in the other forum, we pay a lot to be bad at football, and even when we are good, no one shows up. Alumni don't tailgate, students don't show up. The preponderance of other school's gear worn by students on campus is shameful.

There are no sports on campus that pay for themselves. It's really just a question of which sport loses the least amount of money. Football only grosses about $250k per year, plus the 300-500k guarantee we get paid to take a whipping from a P5. Expenses are in excess of $2M. The difference is subsidized by the student service fee and donations.

I once tried to push cutting football to Robert Hill and one thing he brought up that really can't be measured, but that would surely be significant is how many angry donors there would be and how, subsequently, donations would decrease if football were cut. You can really only guess at the impact, but Robert and others in the know believe that both the bad feelings created and the financial backlash would be enough that it can't be a real consideration. I am also not certain that the Southland would allow it. I know that when they were adding new members, having football was a big consideration. I believe adding football was one of the reasons why HBU was chosen over UTPA (although UNO was also added, without FB).


Anyway, here are the considerations, in my opinion:

1. We don't have enough money to properly support the sports we do have, so adding sports (other than women's sports like sand v-ball for Title IX compliance) is out of the question.

2. We have to sponsor at least 14 sports (with at least 6 for men...I believe this is the only rule in the entirety of the NCAA that actually somewhat protects men's sports). We currently sponsor 15 (6 men's and 9 women's) and I believe we are adding sand volleyball to make it 16.

Without looking at the aforementioned impact on donation and just looking at net loss, in a vacuum it would make the most sense to cut football and add the least expensive men's sport possible, which would probably be tennis. Half of the Southland sponsors men's tennis and we already have the best facility in the conference.

Soccer has a lot of positives, but is a much more expensive sport and because there are so few D1 teams in our region, travel costs would be prohibitive. Incarnate Word and HBU play in the WAC and spend a pretty penny to travel in-conference to San Jose State, UNLV, Utah Valley, Air Force, etc. Bottom line either way is that you could add a men's sport for a lower overall cost than what we pay Clint Conque annually, and then have all of that money left over to make our other sports great.

Cutting football ain't gonna happen, and I don't think there should be any changes barring that. What we need is more money. Most of our facilities would be bottom of the barrel in the wealthier TX high school districts. Our minor sports coaches get paid less than teachers and our major sport coaches are underpaid enough that if any one of them are any good, they get plucked. The University is not going to subsidize us and so far no T. Boone Pickens types are stepping up.

Not to hijack this thread to a different topic, but the new AD better be a heck of a fundraiser.

I agree regarding the culture and other things that football brings but..... the lawsuits ARE COMING. Homer Bryce would be an absolute cathedral for soccer. Not saying it's the best or only idea but let's face it ZERO of our sports (maybe basketball) generate a profit. That's the case for 90% of division 1. Period. We spend $6-7 million on football It's a source of pride for the university and its alumni. I love Saturday's in the fall. I've probably tailgated at 35-40 games over the past 14 years. I just believe reality is about to hit all but the 5-10% of the NCAA that doesn't break even.

I assume that those of us on here and among those who care the most, but the reality is that few others do. Football attendance tells you that, even when we are (were) good.

It's a lot easier to hire a good basketball coach and recruit 12 good players than it is to hire a good football coach and recruit 63 good players.

It's also a lot easier to fill a basketball arena 10-15 times per year with a NCAA March Mandess tournament-bound team than it is to fill a football arena 6-7 times no matter how good an FCS team is.

Agree with both of you guys. Football adds a lot to campus even if we are terrible. We were terrible this year and averaged what 11,000 per game? That's pretty significant interest for a school our size in the middle of East Texas. I think Hill is right that it would hurt the donations, unless a changing football climate(lawsuits) were seen to force footbal off campus.

I'd hope we're doing a good job of educating our donors how valuable the basketball team is for the brand. Kids at UT & A&M register our football program as an afterthought, if they even know it exists at all. Students & alumni in the greater Virginia region still hate our basketball team.

You'd also have to calculate football with a conference move up. No way the Southland would drop us, we're by far their most valuable property, even without football. But would a Conference USA or other higher conference consider us without a football team? They might very well think we're a more valuable property if they don't have to share the football money.

I think the most interesting thought experiment is to consider removing football, so here it goes.

We drop football, freeing up 63 scholarships. However, we don't want to replace football on a scholarship per scholarship basis, & still need to meet the requirements of fielding 14 sports. So let's say that our goal is to get to 75 scholarships & then we'll pour the extra money into competing better at the rest of our sports.

So on the men's side, we add Soccer, Tennis, while dropping golf. I just don't see what golf adds unless we're adding guys/gals who can actually make it to the PGA/LPGA in the future. To keep from dropping our more popular women's sports, we need to add roughly another 20 scholarship athletes, or we risk of running afoul of Title IX in the opposite direction. So I would suggest we also add Lacrosse, Rifle, & wrestling. I'd argue Hockey because I love to watch it, but I don't see that being economical.

On the women's side, we drop Bowling & Golf. I don't think bowling adds much unless we use it to justify an on campus bowling alley for student entertainment.

So that leaves us with 77.8 men's scholarships, & 79 on the women's side. That's prior to sponsoring beach volleyball, which I think makes sense for SFA. We could still do some balancing, but I think that's probably our best bet on setups that would mix the culture/marketing requirements.

So this would be our current sports:
Men's:

• Soccer (9.9)
• Tennis (4.5)
• Baseball (11.7)
• Basketball (13)
• Cross Country (12.6 between CC & Track)
• Track & Field(see above)
• Wrestling (9.9)
• Lacrosse (12.6)
• Rifle (3.6)
• Total Scholarships(77.8)

Women's:

• Basketball (15)
• Cross Country (18 including track & field)
• Tennis (8)
• Soccer (14)
• Softball (12)
• Track & Field (See cross country)
• Volleyball (12)
• Total (79)

So that would save us 38 scholarships per year or 570,000 in costs. Not to mention the costs saved on football coaches & other losses. It also gives us the ability to re-arrange campus a bit, without the need for a dedicated football stadium/seperate soccer field. So we should have room to bring baseball on campus, add a basketball practice facility, & perhaps an indoor track facility of some sort in the future. Yes, men's soccer would cost more for travel, but in this scenario we're assuming more & more local teams will pop up in the future, so we'll be ahead of the curve for men's soccer in Texas. I think coach Dempsey would agree.

Is that the most economical package? Probably not. You could skip adding sports like men's soccer & wrestling to add very cheap sports like bowling, etc. I'm just trying to balance the marketing/school pride aspect. I think our student body would probably be more excited to make Quidditch a scholarship sport than to have another bowling team. So I tried to balance that in my sport lineup.

Honestly, I think that even with the more expensive lineup including men's soccer, we'd still save enough from cutting football & scholarships that we'd roughly equal the athletics fee that the students voted down. Just my two cents.

And yes, the next athletic director ought to be a hell of a fundraiser. Combine that with a new President who's an excellent strategist/coalition builder and we'll be in business!

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It would be hard to justify dropping bowling seeing as they are our only team to win a Div 1 national championship.

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Exactly right, plus it's a very inexpensive sport to carry and provides us with women's scholarships to balance the numbers out.

All of these ideas are very interesting in a vacuum, but you've got to remember that there is a human cost involved as well. This is not like Sim City (am I dating myself?) where you can just tear stuff down and build it with no emotional repercussions. Every team no matter how poorly supported has fans and former players and alums who care about it and want it to go on - especially football.

My point is that it's not realistic to cut this and add that willy nilly. I have been a part of cuts both in the athletic and corporate world and it is not pretty. You have athletes that love SFA and will be faced with the tough choice of staying in Nac as a regular student (their scholarships would be honored) or transferring out to play somewhere else. I know it doesn't seem that tough to an adult, but if you can put yourself back into the shoes of your 19 year-old self and even if you were not an athlete imagine that happening to you, it would be hard to be ripped out of that situation. Also coaches are real people and have families and it's not easy to get a D1 coaching job. Do you want to be the guy to tell to tell Trey Schroeder (an A+ human being BTW) who played for us in the 90s and has been the golf coach for 12 years that he's out of a job and has to uproot his family? Didn't think so. It's actually a lot easier to do this in football where coaches are so transient and leaving is an expectation.

Another factor: There are only so many NCAA men's sports and some of them we just can't carry because no one nearby competes. Here is the complete list with (o) next to the ones we already have and an (x) next to the ones that are not realistic because of geographic/financial concerns.

Fall:
Cross Country o
Football o
Soccer
Water Polo x

Winter:
Basketball o
Fencing x
Rifle x
Skiing x LOL, maybe if it was water skiing!
Swimming & Diving
Indoor Track o
Wrestling x

Spring:
Baseball o
Golf o
Lacrosse x
Tennis

So basically our choices for a new men's sport are Soccer, Swimming & Tennis. Swimming isn't financially reasonable so it would be between Soccer & Tennis and Men's Tennis is already a Southland sport and far, far cheaper.

Bottom line is that you cut teams for financial reasons and for financial reasons only and then obviously if you add teams you do it only because you must, and you add the ones that make most financial sense. It's fun to think about men's soccer, but it will never happen. If you think it's going to be bad cutting football, think about how the old school crowd is going to feel about cutting it to add sissy futbol. I love soccer, but I guarantee you that is how most East Texans are going to feel. Plus the primary crowd and supporters are going to be Hispanic. I have zero problem with that, but a lot of people are not going to agree. Sad and backwards, but an indisputable fact.

• I'm not sure if it's even realistic to think about cutting football, but if you do, you add an extremely cheap men's sport (tennis) and you maybe cut a woman's sport to get down to the minimum # necessary and use your money most effectively.

• I think it is probably realistic to cut baseball and add men's tennis . You'd save in excess of $500,000 annually - that's significant. You would also be able to stop trying to fund-raise for a baseball facility and spend that time and energy raising money for football and basketball.

• Another option would be to cut men's and women's track. I think you would have to add sand volleyball, but would be fairly inexpensive as well. Cutting both track programs saves you nearly $1M! Again, I wouldn't want to be the guy to tell Coach Olsen that we are cutting his highly successful program and by the way thanks for your 20 years of loyal service and for never leaving us for a bigger school and this is how we are thanking you.

Will be interesting to see what the new guy does. No one wants to cut anything, but finances probably force their hand.

Agree. A National Championship gets you at least a 10 year window where you don't have to worry about your program, and a solid 5 bad years before you can question the staff.

The National Championship has to weigh in for track as well. Dani's individual championship just speaks to the quality of our track team which by many benchmarks is the most successful SFA program.

Men's soccer seems the best for me. It would build on our women's success. And, it's one sport where schools our size can compete with major programs with some development.

nacluth said:

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The National Championship has to weigh in for track as well. Dani's individual championship just speaks to the quality of our track team which by many benchmarks is the most successful SFA program.

Men's soccer seems the best for me. It would build on our women's success. And, it's one sport where schools our size can compete with major programs with some development.

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I agree with you 100% on track. The only way you cut it is if your hand is forced. $1M is a lot of money and if you are in survival mode you cut the heaviest weight you can.

Men's soccer is expensive. It's a big squad and the only conferences we could join require extensive plane travel. The whole point of cutting sports is to save money. Nobody cares about men's tennis and very few care about men's soccer and that's just the truth, especially in ETX.

IF we cut a men's sport it would be to save money and put that money into potential revenue-generators (basketball) and we would not add ANY men's sports if it was possible. The only reason to add is because we have to and so you add the thing that costs you the least. We can debate it all day long but in real life the debate is over as soon as you see that soccer costs you $500,000 and tennis costs you maybe $200,000.

Yep, your reasoning for cutting & adding is much more based on reality, mine was based on the hypothetical of balancing the cut with trying to get as much marketing/school pride out of the cut that you can.

The reason I added those sports for men's is that you have to keep scholarships relatively balanced for Title IX reasons, & football is such a huge chunk of scholarships that women's spending would outweigh men's. So you either have to add a few men's sports or drop some of the core women's sports like softball, etc.

Obviously, none of this happens in a vacuum either. I think the only legitimate way in Texas to cut football is if you are forced to cut football from mounting lawsuits, etc. Sure, football has it fanatics, of which I am one, but no one at the University will try to save the team if it means taking on liabilities in the range of millions of dollars for injuries. That's what the scenario that nixes football will look like.

Also, I don't think a bowling championship buys much time away from the cutting block if we cut a men's sport. Honestly, we added it solely to balance scholarship numbers. The biggest thing keeping it on the sports list is how cheap it is, IMO.

Lumberjack Ice Hockey. I'm just saying. Jacks on ice. Would be fun to see.

nacluth said:

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The National Championship has to weigh in for track as well. Dani's individual championship just speaks to the quality of our track team which by many benchmarks is the most successful SFA program.

Men's soccer seems the best for me. It would build on our women's success. And, it's one sport where schools our size can compete with major programs with some development.

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If... and it's a huge if we bumped football it would have to be soccer. I don't see any reason to change anything else unless it was to add men's tennis. We already have the facilities etc so it would essentially allow SFA to cut the huge expense of football and add more money to basketball and baseball while funding soccer. And still leave money left over. We just don't have that many donors that account for more than $100k a year.

Yeah I guess it's just a matter of whether you want to be competitive within our conference, which we usually are across the board already, or if you want to be a national presence. The latter would be better for the University and long-term for Nac, in my opinion.

I just don't think we will ever have the resources to compete steadily on a national level in any sport while also trying to sponsor baseball, football AND track.Sure we can be good temporarily if we hire the right coaches, but aside from Phil Olsen there isn't a single coach that can compete on a national level that hasn't been swiped by a bigger program. Aside from the obvious budget and facility issues, the main factor is that we have to be able to pay our coaches enough to keep them. Wichita State has just now gotten there and it's possible for us too. There is no reason why we can't be in whatever the future version of C-USA or even the American will be so long as we don't keep spreading ourselves so thin.

There is plenty of evidence linking athletic success with higher application volume and eventually higher academic standards. Some people don't want to grow and don't want Nac to change and that's fine - we don't necessarily have to grow. Higher application numbers would still enable us to be more selective with our student body, give us a better overall profile, and make it a more attractive school to a larger number of students and student-athletes.

There was a time when SFA and Texas Tech were not very different, and Lord knows Nacogdoches is a better place in every aspect to Lubbock. Tech made smart & aggressive athletic choices and we made conservative ones, and that's the main difference today.

I would probably disagree with why Tech and SFA are on different levels. One school was formed as a technical school pumping out engineers and the like and added a medical and law school and the other started as a teaching university and has a good forestry and nursing program. There is a reason their endowment is 10X ours. Teachers and nurses don't get paid what engineers and doctors do.

No attendance ain't the best, but we do better than most in the FCS.

FCS Attendance Rankings (Lead the SLC the last two seasons) 124 FCS programs

2017 #21 (11,376) SFA

2016 #29 (9,848) SFA

I also think in today's world (technology) we just don't have the attention span to sit through a football game. Look at football stadiums around the country.

CLHawkins said:

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I would probably disagree with why Tech and SFA are on different levels. One school was formed as a technical school pumping out engineers and the like and added a medical and law school and the other started as a teaching university and has a good forestry and nursing program. There is a reason their endowment is 10X ours. Teachers and nurses don't get paid what engineers and doctors do.

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It's way more than 10x ours and there is obviously a lot of truth to what you are saying, but at the end of the day, even if it's not apples to apples, Tech made more aggressive choices both academically (as you have pointed out) and athletically.

UH is another example. Yes, they were helped by being in the city of Houston and all that entails, but they made aggressive, forward-thinking choices.

My point isn't that we have failed by not keeping up with other schools - we have done just fine, all things considered. My point is that we are about to be at a crossroads and I hope that the leaders decide to make smart choices and IMO considering we don't have the budget to be great at everything athletically, being great at less is better than continuing to be good at more and is what will help us continue to move in a positive direction and not get left behind.

SFAXE93 said:

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No attendance ain't the best, but we do better than most in the FCS.

FCS Attendance Rankings (Lead the SLC the last two seasons) 124 FCS programs

2017 #21 (11,376) SFA

2016 #29 (9,848) SFA

I also think in today's world (technology) we just don't have the attention span to sit through a football game. Look at football stadiums around the country.

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Fair and true points, but the team is still losing a ton of money.

Sully said:

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Another factor: There are only so many NCAA men's sports and some of them we just can't carry because no one nearby competes. Here is the complete list with (o) next to the ones we already have and an (x) next to the ones that are not realistic because of geographic/financial concerns.

Fall:
Cross Country o
Football o
Soccer
Water Polo x

Winter:
Basketball o
Fencing x
Rifle x
Skiing x LOL, maybe if it was water skiing!
Swimming & Diving
Indoor Track o
Wrestling x

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Just a quick comment... You crossed out Water Polo and Wrestling as not being realistic because of geographic/financial concerns. I can't speak to other areas of Texas, but those two sports, even though they are not UIL-sponsored ones (although water polo seems to be headed that way soon), are very big in many Houston area high schools. If those high schools can afford those sports then why couldn't SFA? And they are producing talented kids that have no where to go nearby to continue playing their sports after graduation.

I don't think there is a division 1 program for either of those sports in the state of Texas. I think OU and OSU have wrestling teams but outside of them the travel would probably wind up being too much. This is based on my 5 minutes of research so could be overlooking some closer programs.

CLHawkins said:

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I don't think there is a division 1 program for either of those sports in the state of Texas. I think OU and OSU have wrestling teams but outside of them the travel would probably wind up being too much. This is based on my 5 minutes of research so could be overlooking some closer programs.

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Five minutes of research on the interweb thingy before commenting on anything is way above the national average. I'm impressed!

edstile said:

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Just a quick comment... You crossed out Water Polo and Wrestling as not being realistic because of geographic/financial concerns. I can't speak to other areas of Texas, but those two sports, even though they are not UIL-sponsored ones (although water polo seems to be headed that way soon), are very big in many Houston area high schools. If those high schools can afford those sports then why couldn't SFA? And they are producing talented kids that have no where to go nearby to continue playing their sports after graduation.

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I had similar thoughts in regards to rowing & waterpolo, & even swimming to an extent. On swimming & waterpolo, I'd imagine it's just because we don't have a great swim center on campus and it would be costly to build 1.

That said, between rowing & water polo, I'd imagine the parents of kids who play said sports could be lucrative to the University. Same with Lacrosse, 90% of the kids i knew in Austin who played Lacrosse went to pricey private schools.

Sully said:

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My point isn't that we have failed by not keeping up with other schools - we have done just fine, all things considered. My point is that we are about to be at a crossroads and I hope that the leaders decide to make smart choices and IMO considering we don't have the budget to be great at everything athletically, being great at less is better than continuing to be good at more and is what will help us continue to move in a positive direction and not get left behind.

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We're definitely at a crossroads, atleast on the University side. The Sams of the world have outpaced us with growth & Tarleton/UT Tyler's of the world are catching us in enrollment & degree programs.

I think being sports' success can be a huge driver for the University, which is why our basketball team is infinitely valuable. Not much else moves the needle on the FCS level, unfortunately.

Maybe we should be a basketball only school? Kidding, kind of.

edstile said:

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CLHawkins said:

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I don't think there is a division 1 program for either of those sports in the state of Texas. I think OU and OSU have wrestling teams but outside of them the travel would probably wind up being too much. This is based on my 5 minutes of research so could be overlooking some closer programs.

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Five minutes of research on the interweb thingy before commenting on anything is way above the national average. I'm impressed!

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There are three SLC teams with men's soccer. HBU. UIW and UCA.

Yes wrestling & water polo aren't feasible not because athletes aren't available, but because competition is not available nearby. Also the building and maintenance of a college level natatorium is costly.

Same problem to a lesser extent in men's soccer. TCU cut their team when I was in college and for a long time SMU was the only division 1 mens soccer team in the state. As mentioned, HBU and incarnate word have teams now as well as UTRGV.

What about getting Clint Dempsey to come back and coach and maybe build a facility when he's done playing?

What interest if any for a soccer team would there be though? Football brings tv exposure at times(SFA Home games have believe it or not been televised outside of ESPN3). College soccer is really only ever televised for really big games, which we would certainly not be apart of for years.

There isn't any sport that we could add that would be televised (outside of ESPN3). Soccer might have the potential if Dempsey was our coach, but I can't see that in his future. I don't know if any sport needs to be added, but outside of our hoops squad, there is no sport that's making it to television (a FCS Championship run excepted).

Honestly, the only potential I see for a sport to match the publicity that basketball gives us is a Clint Dempsey led soccer team. It'd be a moon shot, we've got as good of a chance of funding athletics through lotto tickets as we do of making him our coach.

But otherwise, basketball is our ticket to the big time & universal awareness.

Only chance a Clint Dempsey led SFAsquad generates any kind of attention at all is if we immediately dominate. Like immediate top 25.
Outside of that( college soccer is at the d-1 level is much worse than FCS football. It's worse than women's basketball.