Attendance

[JoinTheEAF]

For the Big Sky:
Cal Poly---------7520
EWU------------10123
Idaho State----6297
Montana-------23155
Montana St.---18617
UND-----------10428
NAU-----------6571
UNC-----------4383
Portland St.--4136
Sac State-----8315
S. Utah-------9538
Weber St.----8799


MVFC home attendance, including home playoff games. ISU counts butts in seats, not tickets sold.

Team ----- G - Total --- Avg
Illinois St 5 - 57,200 11,440 .. highest per game in Spack era (since 2009)
Indiana St 5 - 22,444 4,489
Missouri St 5 - 41,973 8,395
North Dakota St 9 - 164,966 18,333
No. Iowa 6 - 58,175 9,696
South Dakota 5 - 46,736 9,347
South Dakota St 8 - 95,951 11,994
So. Illinois 5 - 33,809 6,762
West. Illinois 4 - 13,907 3,477
Youngstown St 6 - 85,220 14,203

The SWAC's numbers for 2017

Alabama A&M-6,171
Alabama State-14,615
Alcorn State-13,846
Arkansas Pine-Bluff-5,171
Grambling State-14,952
Jackson State-17,958
Mississippi Valley State-4,819
Prairie View A&M- 17,803
Southern- 12,832
Texas Southern- 8,799

Patriot League w/ number of home games in parentheses
Bucknell 2,886 (6)
Colgate 4,788 (5)
Fordham 4,681 (5)
Georgetown 2,166 (5)
Holy Cross 7,200 (5)
Lafayette 5,589 (5)
Lehigh 7,137 (6)

CAA:

JMU 21,724
DE 16,648
UNH 11,024
W&M 8,236
UR 8,185
SB 7,355
Elon 7,020
ME 6,858
UA 5,802
Nova 5649
Tow 5,377
URI 4,488

 

[kalm]

Going off memory, UNH and SDSU appear to be up significantly following their stadium improvements.

In the Big Sky, Southern Utah appears to be on the rise. I was searching for when their most recent upgrades appeared and stumbled across this article on Dixie State's $35 million stadium expansion. Funding for phases I and II is already in place and they will be completed this year.

I know how tirelessly the our Athletic Department has worked toward stadium upgrades and I do not blame them at all. It's the administration and BoT that I'm wondering about. We aren't just losing arms races to peer institutions like Montana and MSU we are losing them to fucking DII'S. hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno: hno:

(Sorry for the profanity, Vic :mrgreen: )

And then Mike Houston inks a 10 year deal with JMU (I'm sure there's not much of a buy out clause) and he will be making 600,000-700,000K with incentives and playoff runs. I'm guessing the assistant salaries are up as well. We need not only facilities investments but human investments to attract and retain quality staff down the road.

Anyhoo, here's the article on DSU...

So far everything is on schedule and on budget as DSU continues to invest in its athletic programs. The total cost of the renovation is estimated to be around $35 million.

Legend Solar Stadium, which currently seats 5,000, will soon double in size with a new east-side grandstand which will also be home to locker rooms, concessions, restrooms, ticket offices and storage among other things.

When pictures of DSU’s new football field surfaced and quickly made the rounds on social media, one student wrote on her Twitter account: “What's not to love about Dixie, constantly upgrading.”

That, of course, leads right into the final phase which includes a three-level press box on the west side that will include club seating and private suites and will be used for alumni functions, banquets, private weddings, high school dances, etc.

http://www.thespectrum.com/story/sports/college/dixie-state/2017/06/10/dixie-state-begin-phase-two-legend-solar-stadium-renovation/384856001/

 

[LDopaPDX]

We draw over 10k on average and stick 2,500 of those people into terrible seats. Just imagine if we had a level-appropriate stadium and actually treated those 2,500 people we dick over every home game to a nice seat with a nice view?

What hurts so bad is whenever you hear these schools upgrading, they always talk about things like image, perception, and fan experience. Those seem like curse words around Eastern.

I don't know if I can agree on how tirelessly our AD has worked on this project. The ADs job is to advocate for the welfare of the athletics department. If we aren't being funded appropriately, then someone is struggling with job performance. I don't use the word "AD" to describe any single person, I'm using it as a collective for the whole department. Outreach to donors simply isn't working as it should.

As mentioned a thousand times before, Eastern fundraising is pathetic. It isn't *just* athletics, the entire university is light-years behind our peer institutions at fundraising. Our levels may have made sense when we were an 8,000 student commuter school with no identity, but it's scary that we're such a fast-growing school but the fundraising hasn't improved a bit.

It feels to me now like every admin person at Eastern just wants fans to shut up as it relates to this issue. Unfortunately, as our peer institutions continue to make upgrades, this situation just gets more dire and deserves more conversation until action is taken.

 

[scottywashere11]

Thanks for posting these stats!

Have we collectively given up on stadium renovations? In order to avoid spending the money and time, is the current administration's strategy to just let the 2010 fire smolder and die? It seems to me that is exactly what is happening. Less people are demanding answers and the momentum seems to be whithering away. We do not have a Beau Baldwin anymore (although I'm a huge fan of AB), we no longer have the Kupp caliber players, and we missed the playoffs. The bus has left the station and we are still sitting on the bench. The only remaining hope lies in the hands of a philanthropy group that we know very little about. This is torture lol.

Edit: I just saw Dopa's post. He hit the nail on the head... Stadium Renovations really are like a curse word in Cheney. They just want us to shut up on the topic. It's thrown back in your face with "well... do you have $30m?" ... no but that is what fundraising is for. Cmon EWU.

 

[Seattle Eagle]

It feels to me now like every admin person at Eastern just wants fans to shut up as it relates to this issue. Unfortunately, as our peer institutions continue to make upgrades, this situation just gets more dire and deserves more conversation until action is taken.

Unfortunately for them, we won't shut up about it.

 

[kalm]

We draw over 10k on average and stick 2,500 of those people into terrible seats. Just imagine if we had a level-appropriate stadium and actually treated those 2,500 people we dick over every home game to a nice seat with a nice view?

What hurts so bad is whenever you hear these schools upgrading, they always talk about things like image, perception, and fan experience. Those seem like curse words around Eastern.

I don't know if I can agree on how tirelessly our AD has worked on this project. The ADs job is to advocate for the welfare of the athletics department. If we aren't being funded appropriately, then someone is struggling with job performance. I don't use the word "AD" to describe any single person, I'm using it as a collective for the whole department. Outreach to donors simply isn't working as it should.

As mentioned a thousand times before, Eastern fundraising is pathetic. It isn't *just* athletics, the entire university is light-years behind our peer institutions at fundraising. Our levels may have made sense when we were an 8,000 student commuter school with no identity, but it's scary that we're such a fast-growing school but the fundraising hasn't improved a bit.

It feels to me now like every admin person at Eastern just wants fans to shut up as it relates to this issue. Unfortunately, as our peer institutions continue to make upgrades, this situation just gets more dire and deserves more conversation until action is taken.

Compared to what? (Honest question)

We had the 3rd highest deficit of BSC schools behind Montana and Portland State in '14-'15 but according to the article I linked below, our budget is right in the middle of the conference. Portland State has around double our enrollment so the argument that because we've grown makes fundraising easier is not necessarily the case. Plus, much of that growth has occurred in the past decade or so and alumni probably don't open up the check books until they're professionally established and making higher salaries.

Earlier this year, I compared Southern Conference schools with our budget and it was lower than most of theirs but still within a couple million dollars (We were around $15 million). Again you're dealing with some apples to oranges comparisons as you're bound to experience in FCS, but Wofford and Furman, for example, have tiny enrollments but endowments of $185 million and $650 million compared to EWU's $19 million. I know endowments and total budgets are not the same as donations but there has to be some commonalities.

Which leads to another possibility...that EWU, being primarily a teachers college for so long has mostly middle income alumni with less $'s to donate.

Historically, it seems we've been very limited in fundraising along with many other things. Remember, we didn't even have a full time compliance officer under Wulff. My un-scientific sense of this over the past decade is that we've seriously stepped up our game in athletics administration, marketing, and fundraising and are making constant efforts to form relationships with well-heeled donors and host fundraising events inside and outside our local footprint.

I don't know how we stack up to the performance of peer institutions and would be interested to see a comparison of athletics donations. I just get a feeling that greater donations are not from a lack of effort or talent on behalf of the athletics department but more due to 1) demographic challenges 2) the fact that we started from such a low point, and 3) a lack of vision and support from school administration and the BoT.

We had some success playing in Div II Woodward Stadium for our first 20 years of DI football and I think the same can be said for just about every aspect of our athletics infrastructure and resources...DII level everything but still managing to somehow compete in DI. I think Chaves and company have at least raised that bar to where were comparable to other BSC schools.

The athletic department has done a decent job at controlling its expenses. According to the NCAA Financial Reporting System, EWU is at the 26th percentile in expenses in all of Division I while the BSC is at the 29th percentile and the FCS is at the 35th.

“Our line is below the Big Sky [conference] and all of FCS. That gives you some perspective though, in Division I, where do we fit?” EWU Athletic Director Bill Chaves said.
The athletic department is also improving its generated revenue, and it is in the middle of the pack in the FCS and BSC at just over $4 million, according to the NCAA Financial Reporting System.

“We’ve made some fairly good progress over the last five years,” said Chaves. “We’ve gone from the 24th percentile to the 40th percentile in all of Division I with externally-generated revenue.”
Standing where it does now, the department looks to improve on these numbers to decrease its deficit.

“When we won the National Title in 2010, we were at the 11th percentile in spending in all of Division I,” said Chaves. “In relative terms right now, I think we’re still in the bottom quartile of spending when it’s all said and done. We’ve just got to make sure the right financial model is in place for us, and I think we’ve done fairly well as far as generating revenue from an external standpoint over the last five years, but we need to continue to do so.”

https://easterneronline.com/37609/sports/ewu-athletic-department-budget-in-middle-of-the-pack-compared-to-other-big-sky-schools/

 

[clawman1]

Does BOR have open meetings?
Public comments?
Answer questions?

 

[LDopaPDX]

Kalm--- I get what you're saying... but what I specifically refer to as our fundraising issues come from two different areas. First, our endowment is PATHETIC for a university our size. The figure I have as our endowment is $27mm, and you quote $19mm. I don't know which of these is accurate or if these are just a consequence of different accounting functions. If the $19mm is correct, then we have the smallest endowment in the conference. If $27mm is accurate, then it is the second smallest in front of only Southern Utah. Why? Idaho has lost enrollment rather consistently over the last 20 years and has close to 10x that amount. I would say that is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. UC Davis- which is a much larger school, granted- is close to $1bn. How do endowments grow? Fundraising, This stat alone shows our failures in this area.

More important as it relates to football, it's the facilities expenditures. People have been posting on here for years about all of our FCS peer institutions making large strides in football facilities improvements. In the past few years, we've seen major investments by New Hampshire, Albany, Jacksonville State, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Prairie View, Alabama State... and both Montana schools, Weber State, and NAU in our own conference with sizeable improvements on the slate for both Cal Poly and UC Davis in the future. What's important to mention is that every school I mentioned sans maybe UNH and Albany *already had* much better facilities than Eastern when they embarked on their projects. The need at Eastern isn't some issue of wanting more than we deserve, most are just asking for enough improvements to get us somewhere near a level playing field with the teams we compete against.

I can't say this enough... I don't think anyone is demanding top of the conference state-of-the-art facilities. I just want something that isn't completely embarrassing. When CWU is capable of moving quickly on an upgrade and we seem mired in perpetual neutral, what does that tell you?

 

[LDopaPDX]

Here's one other thing to note... Public funds used for stadium improvements would almost certainly NOT come from the AD budget. A stadium expansion wouldn't affect athletic expenditures. The university has a separate facilities budget where the money should and ought to come from. It would be a university project no different than a library or science building expansion.

Regardless of what finally gets completed on the stadium, there's going to have to be public monies thrown at the project. And frankly, the university should be on the hook for some of the money. Roos Field is an open stadium, and it is used for lots of things other than just football. If private ones is expected for the whole project, than it should be completely off limits to the rest of the university. No graduations, no intramural events,no students on the track. Etc.

If you go back to the late 90s when the stadium renovation was delivered the first time, it was almost all public money that was to be used. The East grandstand was to contain classroom space and a campus child care facility. In my opinion, this is the right way to move forward. Tie the grandstand into a campus building that is multi-use. If we're going to need a new fill-in-the-blank building anyway, why not use the building to also house a new grandstand. Two birds with one stone.

 

[clawman1]

Here's one other thing to note... Public funds used for stadium improvements would almost certainly NOT come from the AD budget. A stadium expansion wouldn't affect athletic expenditures. The university has a separate facilities budget where the money should and ought to come from. It would be a university project no different than a library or science building expansion.

Regardless of what finally gets completed on the stadium, there's going to have to be public monies thrown at the project. And frankly, the university should be on the hook for some of the money. Roos Field is an open stadium, and it is used for lots of things other than just football. If private ones is expected for the whole project, than it should be completely off limits to the rest of the university. No graduations, no intramural events,no students on the track. Etc.

If you go back to the late 90s when the stadium renovation was delivered the first time, it was almost all public money that was to be used. The East grandstand was to contain classroom space and a campus child care facility. In my opinion, this is the right way to move forward. Tie the grandstand into a campus building that is multi-use. If we're going to need a new fill-in-the-blank building anyway, why not use the building to also house a new grandstand. Two birds with one stone.

Do you have any idea or know if the info is avail, how much public money went into the new Husky stadium or athletic facilities in Pullman?