Is UL Athletics Broke?

[fanof71]

Maybe if they pay for it they will attend. We always seem to think in small amounts to keep things cheap.

James Madison University has mandatory comprehensive student fees of $2,704 per semester. Of that amount, $1,166 per semester goes to support intercollegiate athletic programs for men and women. The rest goes to transportation services, student health services, auxiliary services, facilities, and student activity. JMU has 20,070 undergrads and a total enrollment of 22,206, just a little larger than UL. Do the math. That's $23,401,620 per semester ($1,166 X 20,070) or $46,803,240 per year in fees only. I don't think students voted for this, it is just a part of tuition as it is at most schools, if you want to attend. Hard to compete when we don't have such a fee. Excellence costs money. JMU gets it.

On top of that, JMU collects $775 per semester per undergrad student for Facilities (that would be total university facility, not just athletics). That is $15,554,250 per semester of $31,108,500 per year to maintain all facilities and we don't know how much of that is contributed to athletics.

Nice work on this sir! I believe, but I'm not 100% sure, but that mandatory student fee is law in Virginia. Again, not positive, just something I may (or may not) have read...

[fanof71]

Pulled from Sportico website

OPERATIONAL EXPENSES 2020-2021
1) Coastal Carolina: $36,086,347
4) Louisiana: $34,129,724
9) ULM: $18,140,898

PROFIT/LOSS 2020-2021
1) Coastal Carolina: $658,821
6) Louisiana: -$862,391
7) ULM: -$1,320,345
9) South Alabama: -$2,644,738

GENERATED REVENUE 2020-2021
1) App State: $14,220,988
2) Louisiana: $11,267,394
9) ULM: $4,230,473

LOUISIANA PROFIT/LOSS BY YEAR
2020-2021: -$862,391
2019-2020: -$5,980,700
2018-2019: -$4,559,770
2017-2018: +$82,086

Very nice work Sir!

[lafman1]

Desormeaux was the target before Napier left, for whenever he left.

All the salary $ justification (then and now) is reverse engineering Desormeaux's true value.

So no thought was given to the idea of who could we hire besides Desormeaux?

[CajunT]

thanks---Did Maggard indicate to you that we could not be successful because of our budget? Did CMD indicate we could not be successful because of our budget? Why is everyone using our budget as a reason we cannot be successful if Maggard and CMD have not used that as an excuse?

If they feel they cannot succeed with the budget they have, they need to resign now.

We lost to a team that has a much lower budget than ours.

Budget has nothing to do with this.

The accountability to produce results is on Maggard and CMD.

You would have to ask both of them, that discussion did not come up. But he did say that his peers at other institutions were dealing with similar concerns of lost revenue. The greatest difference as others have discussed is student athletic fees. We have some auxiliary fees, but a large percentage of those go towards facilities.

As to your opinion that they should resign if they can't get it done with the current budget, I would remind you that Billy Napier didn't grow his organization and support staff to it's largest in program history on peanut butter and popcorn. A lot of that growth was covered by RCAF donations and other creative methods. Once Covid hit, the money was gone and some of it never came back. That also applies to season tickets sales when it comes to corporate or company tickets that no longer exist and or those that reduced their staffs by large numbers. That's the reality of our situation.

[ZoomZoom]

Bonus, CMD would probably finish his career here if he ends up earning the right to stay.

We already have plenty of staff working in their LASER retirements, and mediocracy abounds.

Can’t wait to see the basketball hire when that plays out…

Good work 71, shows the COVID impact.

[zeppelincajun]

https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/...ns/6412655001/

In a renegotiated contract approved earlier this year, Napier had $2.5 million pool for 10 assistant coaches, plus a pool of at least $510,000 for football support personnel and his chief of staff, a $485,000 pool for strength and conditioning coaches, a $225,000 pool for up to 11 quality control coaches and up to $50,000 for a football academic support/player development coordinator. Athletics director Bryan Maggard said Tuesday that UL will match for Desormeaux the assistant coach, strength staff and support staff budget that Napier was afforded.

[CajunNation]

You would have to ask both of them, that discussion did not come up. But he did say that his peers at other institutions were dealing with similar concerns of lost revenue. The greatest difference as others have discussed is student athletic fees. We have some auxiliary fees, but a large percentage of those go towards facilities.

As to your opinion that they should resign if they can't get it done with the current budget, I would remind you that Billy Napier didn't grow his organization and support to staff to it's largest in program history on peanut butter and popcorn. A lot of that growth was covered by RCAF donations and other creative methods. Once Covid hit, the money was gone and some of it never came back. That also applies to season tickets sales when it comes to corporate or company tickets that no longer exist and or those that reduced their staffs by large numbers. That's the reality of our situation.

Everybody needs to read this and internalize it.

Then, remember that 11 starters from the SBC Champ game plus Lacy, M. Johnson and E. Bailey are not here. On top of that, most of the coaches from that game are gone as well.

I repeat, a winning season would be success.

[CajunVic]

So if there is nothing there, offering Napier $3.2 was a non-starter, even if he wanted to stay.

We would have let him walk because we would have expected him to go back to $750,000.

Come on Vic, if nothing is there, nothing is there.

You "think" and you "believe."

I can usually follow your thoughts but you got me here. I have no clue what you are saying or trying to say here.

[BabbForHeisman]

Pulled from Sportico website

LOUISIANA PROFIT/LOSS BY YEAR
2020-2021: -$862,391
2019-2020: -$5,980,700
2018-2019: -$4,559,770
2017-2018: +$82,086

So riddle me this, anyone...

2017-2018, balanced budget
2018-2019, lose $4.5mln, why? Increased spending on football staff with Napier coming in? That seems like too big a number to be just that.
2019-2020, lose $6 mln, why? Everything from previous year, plus we lose spring sports attendance with covid?
2020-2021, somehow we reign it in and lose less than $1mln, despite that being the year that covid affected football the most. How did that happen?

It's pretty clear to me that we made some strategic expenditures in 2018-2020, but then got it back relatively balanced (- covid related attendance losses) in 2020-2021.

So where's money? I mean, isn't it right there? Someone tell me what I'm missing.

[CajunT]

https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/...ns/6412655001/

In a renegotiated contract approved earlier this year, Napier had $2.5 million pool for 10 assistant coaches, plus a pool of at least $510,000 for football support personnel and his chief of staff, a $485,000 pool for strength and conditioning coaches, a $225,000 pool for up to 11 quality control coaches and up to $50,000 for a football academic support/player development coordinator. Athletics director Bryan Maggard said Tuesday that UL will match for Desormeaux the assistant coach, strength staff and support staff budget that Napier was afforded.

His assistant pool did not change. His salary is $1.2M less and that certainly didn't go back into institutional support. In addition to that, we won't know how much was cut from the recruiting budget and travel cost until we see the state audit when it's released. But you can ask Sam Landers how much RCAF raised to supplement those losses, he can tell you since he hosted the event.

Again, I'm not making the argument that this is entirely our problem right now. But much like the losses in organization, there have been cuts in the budget across the board for the athletic department and even on the academic side.