Athletic finances

[LDopaPDX]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/schools/finances/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A tale of half-empty vs half-full

The half-full crowd can look at this and note how impressive our results are for the minimal amount of money invested. Very few legitimate programs in any sport spend less than Eastern.

The half-empty crowd can wonder why Eastern doesn't open up the wallet a little more; certainly a growing university should garner a few more bucks to the AD? It's hard to justify building a new stadium for 6x our annual athletic budget.

Some interesting notes:

North Dakota leads the Big Sky in spending... not a big surprise given their nationally recognized hockey program. Montana is #2, spending more the FBS no-name Idaho. Sac State (???) is third in spending. Eastern is second-to-last only leading Southern Utah. For a school with no money (supposedly), Portland State outspends us by $1.6mm.

Region seems to have a large influence on spending, with Northeastern schools spending a lot more than anywhere else with schools around our level. New Hampshire spends $26mm annually, while McNeese State is at $9mm. James Madison appears to be the biggest spender among FCS schools not moonlighting in a top-tier b-ball conference.

For an awful return on investment, look no further than 90 miles South in Pullman, where the Cougs spent a whopping $36mm more than us and is no better than a coin toss to beat us in either football or basketball. Interestingly, their head coach alone makes within a half million of Eastern's entire football budget.

Shockingly, CS-Northridge--- with no football program--- outspends Eastern. How the hell does that happen?

 

[LDopaPDX]

My bad, actually it is UC Davis leading the Big Sky in spending. Wow, what are they wasting money on? Their b-ball team is decent, and football has be embarrassing. No hockey program, either.

 

[EWURanger]

I seem to recall last year this being in the $13M range. Either way, these figures can be a bit misleading when taken at face value. Idaho State's budget is a tad higher than ours, but think about how many out of state scholarships they are using for football. That's the saving grace for us. Washington has a lot more DI level HS athletes which means we keep a large amount of our scholarship money for football in-state as opposed to paying for a large number of out of state tuition scholarships. Some of those schools like Montana, MSU, UND etc. have to spend a lot of scholarship money on out of state kids at a higher tuition rate because their states simply don't have many DI athletes. I.E. they must have bigger budgets than us just to be able to compete at this level. There's lots of things that factor into these things...you can't just look at them at face value.

And wow, those figures for WSU are absolutely horrible. It's hard to see how the state can allow them to operate with a 7-8 million dollar annual deficit...and that's with their Pac-12 network money. But somehow they have millions to spend on Martin Stadium. Very strange indeed.

 

[bertram]

Info is what was released early 2014 with 2013 data; I look forward to comparing last years info when it comes out

 

[sammamisheag]

The only way to turn this around is to upgrade academics so EWU produces higher income graduates.

I'd be interested to see the average income per alumnus in the BSC for each school. If you look at engineering for example all of these schools have programs that are solid. EWU opened their Eng school in 2005.

Cal Poly
UC Davis
Montana State
Port State

 

[tomq04]

The only way to turn this around is to upgrade academics so EWU produces higher income graduates.

I'd be interested to see the average income per alumnus in the BSC for each school. If you look at engineering for example all of these schools have programs that are solid. EWU opened their Eng school in 2005.

Cal Poly
UC Davis
Montana State
Port State

This is important.

Of the many people I know from my 2010 graduating class (all in our late 20s) only 1 is making more than $70k, many of us are in the 40s still...hard to give money when we are still paying loans and trying to start families. Most kids from good engineering schools will start in the 60s and move up from there annually.

 

[FormerSwoop]

Those kids from the good engineering schools will also have a lot more debt.

 

[Rjones61]

UC Davis has twice as many official sports team as Eastern Washington. Probably where a lot of that money goes.

 

[LDopaPDX]

The only way to turn this around is to upgrade academics so EWU produces higher income graduates.

I'd be interested to see the average income per alumnus in the BSC for each school. If you look at engineering for example all of these schools have programs that are solid. EWU opened their Eng school in 2005.

Cal Poly
UC Davis
Montana State
Port State

Engineering degrees? Shit, get better Finance profs in the Business Dept, that's where I should have gone. My I-Bus BA is fine, but the real money is in finance. Most people I know with finance degrees are all raking in $250k+ or own their own businesses.