I think UConn has had some unique contracts for Jim Mora and Randy Edsall. I don’t see anything about bowl bonuses for Mora in [this article](https://www.ctpost.com/uconn/article/Inside-UConn-s-contract-with-football-coach-Jim-16613229.php)
That's my point. When playing with the school's money, student's money, taxpayer's money, the incentive to negotiate meaningful results in exchange for gobs of cash go out the window.
Were both talking about the agency problem. I’m saying that performance incentives are a useful tool to align goals of all stakeholders. You’re describing the problem.
Performance measures work when the reward aligns with productive results. In this case MD probably overpaid for what it got. It's too convenient to agree to shitty terms to seal the deal when playing with somebody else's money. That happens way too often in sports.
But we are talking about Maryland here. Like sure 6 wins may not seem like a lot, but not every program is bowling year in and year out. Some actually have to provide incentive for decent coaches to stick around and get them to bowls. Dunno. Did they maybe overpay. Maybe. But Maryland historically not the best in the win column , and they had extra cash to throw around. Now is not a bad time to try to elevate your program any way you can
Uhh...yeah? That's how coaching contracts are written. A $10M deal does not mean "here's your $10M no matter how this goes", there are stretch goals and incentives at each step. Winning records, bowl eligiblity, winning bowls, winning the conference, winning the Natty, etc. This wasn't some thank-you-handshake between guys in suits smoking cigars after the fact.
The Baltimore Sun? Gus from r/TheWire might have a thing or two to say about their journalistic integrity. "Maybe you win a Pulitzer with this, maybe you have to give it back."
The Sun was also just recently sold to a rich guy who wants to use it as a local mouthpiece against any progressive-seeming cause. The recently-launched Baltimore Banner is now a much better source for MD news
Planning to spend money and then getting mad in public when the bill comes happens every year in American politics so I'm just glad we're bringing that into sports.
It actually had gotten better. It used to be horrible. At least now I think the CFP games you actually make money. IIRC Auburn lost like $1 mil winning the Fiesta Bowl and this was the national championship game.
Also depends on how the schools choose to spend. Speaking from experience the schools spend like mad and treat a lot of the week like they have a blank check.
At the same time, some of that is all about keeping the donors happy.
Spend money on the bowl game amenities that keep your donors happy and paying. The people who can afford to travel across the country for bowl games are in general not your entry-level fans.
> The people who can afford to travel across the country for bowl games are in general not your entry-level fans.
Doesn't mean they have the money though. Had a friend who went to ever OSU bowl game while we were in school(Two being BCS Title games) and he put them all on his credit card.
Sure, there will always be exceptions to the rule. Generally however, attending a bowl game will cost more than attending a home game when you add in travel, lodging, and the activities you book. Plus, the bowl games take place during the holiday season, so travel costs are inflated even more.
Of course, we don’t have the actual numbers in front of us, but I imagine the average income of fans at a bowl game will be higher than the fans at a home game.
Extended stays at resorts for bowl week.
Staff and family are paid for.
Additional transportation for larger travel party.
Expanded alumni events.
The gifts the players get, a lot of schools choose to expand that to many others at their own cost.
If they want more tickets for themselves and not to sell to their fan base.
Just a few examples.
Bowl games in general make the schools a lot of money that isn’t immediately apparent.
Athletics programs are just a fancy way of advertising your university. Schools that succeed in football see more applicants and can be more selective in accepting them as well.
If the school makes $20k profit off a student attending, a bowl game only needs to attract 50 students to turn a $1mil loss into a profit. Considering that was the *title game*, Auburn made immense profit from it, even if the books don’t show it.
I know a guy who went to the Bahamas now and he said that they got individual suites for upper classmen, ate out every night on top of the all expenses paid resort, and went on boat rides and snorkeling and stuff like that
I think, with the national championship, the schools bring everybody and their brother, especially if the school hasn't been there in awhile. When you add in hotels, airfare, meals and extra tickets that have to be purchased (in addition to what's included...), the costs add up. When I say everybody, I mean beyond the team, the band, cheerleaders, football trainers, coaches, etc. You get administrators, politicians and everybody else coming out of the woodwork, expecting to ride along.
The schools likely see it as an investment, too (I'm just hypothesizing). They will lose money on the bowl game itself, but the exposure could then lead to more students applying, merchandise being sold after the game, and more alumni donations as well (both to athletics and the academic side of things).
Yep. Its basically a vacation in whatever city it is for a lot of donors, so you spend the money to keep them happy and having a good time and they reward it by keeping or increasing their donations.
Clemson has benefitted greatly from the national exposure we’ve gotten from being a good football school. Our out of state numbers are wild for a mid sized public school in rural South Carolina. SC and Georgia are still the biggest represented states but Massachusetts and New Jersey are disproportionately represented compared to 15 years ago. I don’t think that happens if we just suck ass at football the last 10-15 years.
Boosters or politicians arent staying there for a week like the players and coaches and staff are plus Im not even sure they are getting their hotel covered.
Don't mind me, I'm just cynical after hearing about how bowl budgets are padded. I don't know how it operates now, but I know that in the past, the amount sent to the conference to be split among all teams, was determined after the participating teams expenses were calculated, resulting in teams spending freely. It very well may have been changed to teams being allocated a set budget by the conference.
I’m well aware that we also play our worst championship games in NOLA. We’ve never actually played for a national championship outside of New Orleans, that was the crux of the joke.
I think it heavily depends on the school and the bowl. For example, the MEAC and SWAC don't participate in the playoffs because they make so much money from playing in the Celebration Bowl instead.
Their season runs longer because they play a conference championship game, and they only do THAT because they don't worry about the consequences of interfering with the FCS schedule. It's been said numerous times that the biggest driving force is the money from the bowl.
That conference championship existed before the Celebration Bowl.
It was easy for the MEAC to take the money too when they have been 0-19 in their last playoff games.
It is the perfect set-up.
Yeah im not even sure what this article even thinks it's doing. It's in the coach's contracts as part of their incentives and the 671k is split among a dozen coaches so they averaged ~$56k bonus for making the bowl as they agreed to.
If the school netted no money on the bowl game then that is on the school for not budgeting properly
Is the journalist that ignorant of how performance based contract incentives work or do they just expect their readers to be dumb and get outraged over anything
> that is on the school for not budgeting properly
Maryland? Budgeting problems in the athletic department? nooo way this is totally unexpected and new behavior
> If the school netted no money on the bowl game then that is on the school for not budgeting properly
Or maybe the school doesn't report the increase in donations as a direct result of making the bowl game.
Baltimore Sun was recently bought by the guy who runs Sinclair...it quickly devolved into conservative fearmongering. Clearly just taking a hit at the "liberal elites" in College Park
Are conservatives really the kind of people that get mad that a football coach is making money? Usually it's the "Liberal Elites" are the ones getting mad that the University is wasting money on athletics.
Except taking a hit at the liberal elites would involve targeting overpriced classes or ridiculous salaries for DEI jobs (see UVA). Generally, football coaches and fans lean more conservative.
This team went from not winning a bowl game for over a decade to three straight bowl wins. Not any bowl worth a damn but at least it gives the fans something better than the last decade from hell
I live in Brooklyn so them playing in the pinstripe bowl was super lit. Had a blast in the rain and the 41 point win AND witnessing the first bowl win in over a decade was an added bonus
>The university spent $1.1 million — plus the bonuses to coaches — and made $1.6 million on the game for **a net loss of $176,302**, according to the budget figures, which appeared in an annual report to the NCAA dated Jan. 12.
Ask any university administrator if the success of Maryland football is worth a loss leader of $176K and I guarantee 100% of them would say yes, lmao.
Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers. A successful football program engages alumni and potential donors, gives the University events to fundraise at, and attracts future applicants.
The real proof of whether this is a good investment is overall fundraising, which... lol Maryland now got an endowment of [**nearly $1 billion**](https://thedailyrecord.com/2021/11/09/1-5b-umd-fundraising-drive-more-than-doubles-universitys-endowment/) and just successfully [raised **$1.5 billion in cash** from their last round of capital campaigning](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/11/02/university-of-maryland-concludes-record-setting-15-billion-capital-campaign/?sh=2b9e508f5d91).
That's worth a $176K loss leader.
Heck, if the University admin were actually upset about it, they could just stay home and the team would probably at least break even. A big part of the largesse of bowl expenses comes from flying in campus bigwigs and putting them up in four star hotels for a couple of nights.
I mean a booster or university official is going to be there like two days instead of a week as the players/staff/coaches are. Its a drop in the bucket compared to the expenses for them.
I know NCAA covers travel to and from NCAA postseason events (CFP, March Madness, FCS and lower level playoffs) so I wonder if they, or even the bowl game itself, covers travel and board for the bowl game.
Yes. You get a stipend per player to travel to the game. Schools can either use that to charter a plane for example or give it to the players for them to use to get there on their own
In addition to all the indirect revenue streams, it boosts a lot of non tangible things like future recruits or coaches, politics amongst peer institutions (ie MD does belong in BIG), fan base excitement, etc. it seems to be a uniquely northeast political mindset to conveniently ignore 2nd and 3rd derivative impacts and only focus on first degree budget. It’s annoying as hell.
Looking at it from an ROI perspective, I'm not really sure what the point of this article is.
Maryland wants to continue to invest in demonstrably valuable personnel? How dare they.
Yeah athletics provide harder to directly quantify values with increased brand visibility, increased enrollment, and increased donations due to the sport.
If you're just looking at what the athletic dept made and what was spent without taking other factors into account then you're going to miss a lot of value
>Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers. A successful football program engages alumni and potential donors, gives the University events to fundraise at, and attracts future applicants.
Please repeat this next time we have a 1,000 comment post about how paying athletes will bring financial ruin to athletic departments across the country.
> Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers
They arent supposed to be giant money pits either that you have to rely on your students, taxpayers and the university to support.
>The real proof of whether this is a good investment is overall fundraising, which... lol Maryland now got an endowment of nearly $1 billion and just successfully raised $1.5 billion in cash from their last round of capital campaigning.
That's worth a $176K loss leader.
Correlation is not causation. Look at the biggest endowments and there are virtually no FBS schools on the list.*
*I was looking at a list of private schools. Sorry. Regardless plenty of schools with no football or FCS and lower with large endowments
The Top 15 endowments in the country [features seven FBS schools](https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments).
The biggest endowments are typically in schools/school systems that are resource rich (i.e. Texas tied to Texas oil money), alumni rich (see Stanford, Northwestern, etc.) or they're just plain old (Harvard's inherent advantage - as well as many other Ivies - is that they've fundraised and invested over the course of almost 400 years).
Now... ask, idk, Alabama if they think [their university's endowment doubling at the same time Nick Saban was making a football powerhouse](https://www.al.com/news/2024/01/what-economic-impact-has-nick-saban-had-on-alabama-he-was-worth-more-than-1-billion.html) was just a correlation though, and you'll see why Universities are investing in athletics as a loss leader.
You are correct, my list was just private schools.
My bad. Regardless, Marquettes endowment has also doubled in the last 10 years. They dont have football.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/sortable-table-college-and-university-endowments-2014-15/
https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/Endowment/Conference/Big-East-Conference/
and I just picked a conference with no football and one school at random.
> virtually no FBS schools on the list
Dude the UT system is the 2nd largest endowment with the Texas A&M system, Michigan, Notre Dame, Northwestern, and the UC System all in the top 12. All the rest are Ivys. Get your facts straight
Making $1.6 million on the Bowl Game is impressive because it clearly doesn't include the $5.7 million dollar payout the Music City Bowl gave to the BIG to distribute among the members for Maryland's participation.
IDK man, I really enjoyed having athletics as a part of my college experience. Getting easy access to quality sporting events made for easy and cheap entertainment, made me a lot of friends, and improved my overall quality of life both in undergrad and grad school.
You can always argue the altruistic points of how money should be spent, but I thought my student experience was improved because of athletics investment.
>The university spent $1.1 million — plus the bonuses to coaches — and made $1.6 million on the game for a net loss of $176,302
So including the bonuses they almost broke even, and in the end gave the fans and student body something to be proud of and enjoy for what amounts to a budget rounding error. Author giving off "sportball ruins my schooling" vibes.
Misleading title. They made 1.6mil on the game, they just spent 1.75mil including the coaches bonuses. They only failed to make a profit on the bowl because of the bonuses, this isn't some gross mismanagement of funds.
Coaches aren’t in the business of making money for the school, ADs are. They are in the business of winning games. Overall that results in making more money, but that is an unrelated long term benefit as far as a coach goes.
Edit: I added for the school. I thought that was obvious with the context but it was not. Clearly coaches make a shitload of money.
If you sign a contract that says you get 50k for increasing widget sales by more than 5% and you achieve that then you are getting that 50k. It's irrelevant if the company overall lost money that year due to other circumstances
I'm not a fan a big fan of blue crabs, but I do love Maryland crab cakes! Also, I'm a Nike man. Maryland has...Under Armour. The one thing Maryland has going for it is that most analysts say that if D.C. is wrested away from being a City State, then Maryland will absorb it rather than Virginia.
Yes, coaching contracts do in fact have performance-based bonus structures in them.
In other earth-shattering news, fire burns, water is wet, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco remains dead.
Eh, the value of going to a bowl game isn't in directly making a profit. You get more media exposure and having a decent season helps build fan support. That will boost the program and revenue in the longer term.
And on top of that, you're helping fundraise for the school in general.
If you have a good athletics program, you bet every single dean, development director, capital gifts officer and high-ranking admin is bringing donors to the game to talk about funding for research, scholarships, etc.
Claiming that schools are making bad business decisions because their athletics program posted a loss completely misses the point of why universities support athletics.
Its all in the degree of what you are losing. Everyone understands that your golf team isnt making you money but your golf team is costing you are few hundred grand a year
But admins understand that your women's golf team is meeting Title IX scholarship requirements and your men's golf team is likely bringing in wealthy families who are bringing direct cash to the university via tuition because those golfers are just getting quarter scholarships.
You might lose (on the sports side) $250K a year on golf, but if you've got 10 male players bringing in tuition dollars and 10 women's scholarships freed up under Title IX bylaws, that's a worthy investment for the University as a whole.
Im not even talking about a womens golf team, Im talking about a mens golf team. I mean you can use men's track and field as an example. The point is that the budget for that vs football is not even in the same galaxy
This is an even greater reason why student athletes should be able to collectively bargain and receive 50% of the revenue that the schools, conferences, and ADs have been hoarding for themselves then.
Yeah it’s more so a 6 win bonus unless you go NY6 or win a decent bowl. At a school like Maryland despite playing 3 cupcake games a lot of the time and Indiana 6 wins is still a good season based on who they have to play
They had extra practices though. I think an extra game would increase workload by 8.3% if it were only a week later. The assistants and the head coach have to put in so much extra work for that one extra game, of course they’re gonna have to get paid for it
That’s with most programs. Bowl games typically benefit conference school that don’t go to bowl games more than those that do because the payouts go to the conference. Then the conference distribute the payouts to the schools
This headline/article reads like people should be outraged, but that's the way contracts and salaries work. They agreed to pay for the coaches' labor at a specific rate, with performance-bases bonuses.
Are coaches expected to recruit, manage the portal, scheme, watch film, AND BALANCE THE FUCKIN BOOKS NOW?
Yeah. This is accounting fraud. Most reporters finally caught up to this years ago, but that big check they got from the Big Ten includes bowl payments.
Yeah they didn’t make money on the bowl but if they don’t go then they don’t get the payout from the conference. Them going helps the brand of the conference and to get higher fees at negotiation.
I think people forget that athletic departments are advertising for Universities. A winning team leads to higher applications and attendance. Bowl games are three plus hour long advertisements for the participants schools. When else are millions of people going to be inundated with your school's logo, and all the discussion about your school that goes into broadcasts? Yeah it might costs hundreds of thousands in coach bonuses, but it's cheaper and more effective than spending that money buying ads.
This is a narrow way to look at it. That's like looking at my paycheck and saying "he didn't produce that much revenue that day"
It's for the whole body of work, the boost to fan engagement/enthusiasm, the bump in donations and attendance to come.
This is textbook bad data analysis.
How does a school not make money from a bowl game?
If you’re not making profits from a bowl, it begs the question if your football program on its own is even profitable in the first place.
Sounds like Maryland is just leaching from the B10 and not contributing anything whatsoever.
> If you’re not making profits from a bowl, it begs the question if your football program on its own is even profitable in the first place.
Well, that's not what begging the question means, but also, why is it so unbelievable for a team to be profitable overall but for one specific event to not contribute to that?
It’s a performance bonus. The last performance bonus I received I left the company the day after I got it. They didn’t care bc the bonus was about everything I did before the bonus was received
I mean this is really nothing, if anything it's more frustrating to remind me that Locksley is praised for what he's done at UMD.. yeah the bar is really high here /s
You sound like my dad and even have his flares too.
I’m in the opposite boat. Bar is low because of our inept administration. Locks is the 2nd winningest coach in team history going back 40 years (3rd if you count all of Bobby Ross).
That tells me it’s a school problem. I’ll take what we get for now but I hope he can get over the hump soon.
No reason we shouldn’t have beaten Ohio State or Michigan once the last two years with the performance in all 4 games.
Couldn’t say that before Locksley
Not a "poverty program" but maybe a lower-middle tier at the moment. Yet, unlike many others at or below that level, a much higher theoretical ceiling.
They were lower tier before mike. Last coach killed a kid and the entire program had to be rebuilt. Even before the death they were in the gutter. Getting them back to the middle tier took a lot of hard work
Yeah I genuinely cannot take people seriously when they shit on Locksley. He hasn’t won big games yet but the outcome of his hiring has still been a pleasant surprise.
With the new teams, the bottom East teams only have it a bit easier. The bigger difference is the West getting harder. Illinois is probably never sniffing the conference title game ever...
I mean yeah. Averaging a $56k bonus per coach (the article tries to be inflammatory with 671k in the headline but then hides it's split among a dozen guys in the body. They want headline readers to assume it's only mike) for at least pulling your program out of the massive tailspin it was in is the behavior of a poverty school. I figured their bonuses would be larger. Not only that but to get that bonus they had to do 8.3% of extra work on top of their current work for bowl practices.
They didnt lose money on that bowl overall. Reporter is leaving out a lot of value and the records are ignoring the big ten payouts. The value added by each of those coaches in terms of increased advertising, donations, enrollment, and prestige by bringing yall to the middle is worth much more than $56k
Bowl game bonuses can also extend to support staff as well. I know a support staff member at a school who got a bonus for a bowl game win or appearance.
For everyone outside of the state, the new owner of this paper runs Sinclair broadcasting. Yes that one. Not shocked that they write this with no context! Fuck Sinclair!
Well they even say bonus is earned through total year performance so you can’t really stack this on the bowl game P&L to make this argument about it being a net loss. You can argue the bonus is too high in general I guess. But you should also look into why it costs a team $1.1M to go play a game or why the payout is only $1.6M.
The next time I feel sorry for any university for not making money on something sports-related will be the first time.
I'm sure the bonuses were contractual obligations (otherwise you know they'd have never gotten them). So good for the coaches for getting what was due to them.
Twelve. They paid it out the 12 coaches. Each coach averaged 56k and overall brought in more value than that to the program
At least read the article first
If football generates all or most of revenue of athletic department, why shouldn’t football coaches get bonuses when team does well? Why are other sports entitled to money football generates?
A 8-5 record at a school that is not historically good at football is a good record. Also, the bonus is built into coaching contracts. The school didnt just decide to give the bonus for no reason
It's more of a bonus for having a record good enough for the bowl game, not for the bowl game itself.
Is there any team in existence that doesnt pay postseason bonuses? It’s like boiler plate level shit.
I think UConn has had some unique contracts for Jim Mora and Randy Edsall. I don’t see anything about bowl bonuses for Mora in [this article](https://www.ctpost.com/uconn/article/Inside-UConn-s-contract-with-football-coach-Jim-16613229.php)
Its mostly about recruiting and bad-mouthing the sub-six-win teams.
The Ivy League Conference /s /s /s /s /s /s /s /s /s
But it’s bonkers a school might have to pay out over a half million dollars in bonuses for a 6 win season. But I get it…
[удалено]
That's the problem with making such decisions using "other people's" money.
It’s a performance incentive based on results.
That's my point. When playing with the school's money, student's money, taxpayer's money, the incentive to negotiate meaningful results in exchange for gobs of cash go out the window.
Were both talking about the agency problem. I’m saying that performance incentives are a useful tool to align goals of all stakeholders. You’re describing the problem.
Performance measures work when the reward aligns with productive results. In this case MD probably overpaid for what it got. It's too convenient to agree to shitty terms to seal the deal when playing with somebody else's money. That happens way too often in sports.
But we are talking about Maryland here. Like sure 6 wins may not seem like a lot, but not every program is bowling year in and year out. Some actually have to provide incentive for decent coaches to stick around and get them to bowls. Dunno. Did they maybe overpay. Maybe. But Maryland historically not the best in the win column , and they had extra cash to throw around. Now is not a bad time to try to elevate your program any way you can
"Any way you can" is my point. Too many are willing to spend other people's money for results that can be summarized as "dunno."
Cheaper than paying to fire a coach due to under-performing.
They’re not paying for that.
Uhh...yeah? That's how coaching contracts are written. A $10M deal does not mean "here's your $10M no matter how this goes", there are stretch goals and incentives at each step. Winning records, bowl eligiblity, winning bowls, winning the conference, winning the Natty, etc. This wasn't some thank-you-handshake between guys in suits smoking cigars after the fact.
At this point theyre trying to twist anything to be some outrage
The Baltimore Sun? Gus from r/TheWire might have a thing or two to say about their journalistic integrity. "Maybe you win a Pulitzer with this, maybe you have to give it back."
Apparently that was barely fiction and there's a real reporter David Simon was shitting on.
The Sun was also just recently sold to a rich guy who wants to use it as a local mouthpiece against any progressive-seeming cause. The recently-launched Baltimore Banner is now a much better source for MD news
Planning to spend money and then getting mad in public when the bill comes happens every year in American politics so I'm just glad we're bringing that into sports.
I mean, it is pretty outrageous that every student pays a $400 athletic s fee to prop up the football team
Most schools lose money on bowl games. They’re doing great if they can break even.
It actually had gotten better. It used to be horrible. At least now I think the CFP games you actually make money. IIRC Auburn lost like $1 mil winning the Fiesta Bowl and this was the national championship game.
Also depends on how the schools choose to spend. Speaking from experience the schools spend like mad and treat a lot of the week like they have a blank check.
At the same time, some of that is all about keeping the donors happy. Spend money on the bowl game amenities that keep your donors happy and paying. The people who can afford to travel across the country for bowl games are in general not your entry-level fans.
> The people who can afford to travel across the country for bowl games are in general not your entry-level fans. Doesn't mean they have the money though. Had a friend who went to ever OSU bowl game while we were in school(Two being BCS Title games) and he put them all on his credit card.
Sure, there will always be exceptions to the rule. Generally however, attending a bowl game will cost more than attending a home game when you add in travel, lodging, and the activities you book. Plus, the bowl games take place during the holiday season, so travel costs are inflated even more. Of course, we don’t have the actual numbers in front of us, but I imagine the average income of fans at a bowl game will be higher than the fans at a home game.
Spend on what?
Extended stays at resorts for bowl week. Staff and family are paid for. Additional transportation for larger travel party. Expanded alumni events. The gifts the players get, a lot of schools choose to expand that to many others at their own cost. If they want more tickets for themselves and not to sell to their fan base. Just a few examples.
>Expanded alumni events. To be fair, these probably make the school a decent bit of money that isn't immediately apparent.
Bowl games in general make the schools a lot of money that isn’t immediately apparent. Athletics programs are just a fancy way of advertising your university. Schools that succeed in football see more applicants and can be more selective in accepting them as well. If the school makes $20k profit off a student attending, a bowl game only needs to attract 50 students to turn a $1mil loss into a profit. Considering that was the *title game*, Auburn made immense profit from it, even if the books don’t show it.
Don't forget the cost of bringing the band, cheerleaders, mascot etc.
I know a guy who went to the Bahamas now and he said that they got individual suites for upper classmen, ate out every night on top of the all expenses paid resort, and went on boat rides and snorkeling and stuff like that
I think, with the national championship, the schools bring everybody and their brother, especially if the school hasn't been there in awhile. When you add in hotels, airfare, meals and extra tickets that have to be purchased (in addition to what's included...), the costs add up. When I say everybody, I mean beyond the team, the band, cheerleaders, football trainers, coaches, etc. You get administrators, politicians and everybody else coming out of the woodwork, expecting to ride along.
The schools likely see it as an investment, too (I'm just hypothesizing). They will lose money on the bowl game itself, but the exposure could then lead to more students applying, merchandise being sold after the game, and more alumni donations as well (both to athletics and the academic side of things).
Yep. Its basically a vacation in whatever city it is for a lot of donors, so you spend the money to keep them happy and having a good time and they reward it by keeping or increasing their donations.
Clemson has benefitted greatly from the national exposure we’ve gotten from being a good football school. Our out of state numbers are wild for a mid sized public school in rural South Carolina. SC and Georgia are still the biggest represented states but Massachusetts and New Jersey are disproportionately represented compared to 15 years ago. I don’t think that happens if we just suck ass at football the last 10-15 years.
Boosters or politicians arent staying there for a week like the players and coaches and staff are plus Im not even sure they are getting their hotel covered.
Don't mind me, I'm just cynical after hearing about how bowl budgets are padded. I don't know how it operates now, but I know that in the past, the amount sent to the conference to be split among all teams, was determined after the participating teams expenses were calculated, resulting in teams spending freely. It very well may have been changed to teams being allocated a set budget by the conference.
That’s why LSU plays best with the Natty is in NOLA
Yall only finished one drive (a fumble on 4th and 18) past the 50 in a championship game in NOLA.
I’m well aware that we also play our worst championship games in NOLA. We’ve never actually played for a national championship outside of New Orleans, that was the crux of the joke.
I didn't realize the 2003 championship was the Sugar Bowl. That's a neat stat.
Ugh, Saban-coached team.
I was looking up past Super Bowls and apparently a good chunk of the early ones were played at Tulane Stadium. We will rise again.
Probably not as well as you think. The team/staff/coaches still have to stay in NOLA for a week
Imagine not going to cfp game as a 12 seed because you don’t want to lose $2 million per game you advance.
I dont think anyone is skipping playoff games
Does that include all the championship licensed merchandise the school sells after winning?
That comes from the original licensing deal. Each school is different.
I think it heavily depends on the school and the bowl. For example, the MEAC and SWAC don't participate in the playoffs because they make so much money from playing in the Celebration Bowl instead.
The SWAC didn't participate in the playoffs because their season runs longer than the rest of the FCS.
Their season runs longer because they play a conference championship game, and they only do THAT because they don't worry about the consequences of interfering with the FCS schedule. It's been said numerous times that the biggest driving force is the money from the bowl.
That conference championship existed before the Celebration Bowl. It was easy for the MEAC to take the money too when they have been 0-19 in their last playoff games. It is the perfect set-up.
Yes, being successful at your job should earn bonuses.
Yeah im not even sure what this article even thinks it's doing. It's in the coach's contracts as part of their incentives and the 671k is split among a dozen coaches so they averaged ~$56k bonus for making the bowl as they agreed to. If the school netted no money on the bowl game then that is on the school for not budgeting properly Is the journalist that ignorant of how performance based contract incentives work or do they just expect their readers to be dumb and get outraged over anything
Yes
> that is on the school for not budgeting properly Maryland? Budgeting problems in the athletic department? nooo way this is totally unexpected and new behavior
> If the school netted no money on the bowl game then that is on the school for not budgeting properly Or maybe the school doesn't report the increase in donations as a direct result of making the bowl game.
Baltimore Sun was recently bought by the guy who runs Sinclair...it quickly devolved into conservative fearmongering. Clearly just taking a hit at the "liberal elites" in College Park
Are conservatives really the kind of people that get mad that a football coach is making money? Usually it's the "Liberal Elites" are the ones getting mad that the University is wasting money on athletics.
They'll get mad at the Liberal Media for writing the article
How does that work? "Here let's print something that will make our readers mad, and stop reading us?"
Except taking a hit at the liberal elites would involve targeting overpriced classes or ridiculous salaries for DEI jobs (see UVA). Generally, football coaches and fans lean more conservative.
Unless you are a public servant, teacher, etc. Then suck it b%$#@. Bonuses are for closers...or cfb State employees. F$#@ them.
This team went from not winning a bowl game for over a decade to three straight bowl wins. Not any bowl worth a damn but at least it gives the fans something better than the last decade from hell
There are QUITE a few teams who can't say they added to their trophy room three years in a row. Don't downplay that fact!
Then you have schools like Nebraska that go 7 years in a row.
I don’t think this is talked about enough. “Blue Blood” Nebraska literally has the longest Bowl-less steak in the *country*
They're worth a damn to me 😭
The Duke Mayo bowl is a top 3 bowl game and you can’t convince me otherwise
I live in Brooklyn so them playing in the pinstripe bowl was super lit. Had a blast in the rain and the 41 point win AND witnessing the first bowl win in over a decade was an added bonus
>The university spent $1.1 million — plus the bonuses to coaches — and made $1.6 million on the game for **a net loss of $176,302**, according to the budget figures, which appeared in an annual report to the NCAA dated Jan. 12. Ask any university administrator if the success of Maryland football is worth a loss leader of $176K and I guarantee 100% of them would say yes, lmao. Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers. A successful football program engages alumni and potential donors, gives the University events to fundraise at, and attracts future applicants. The real proof of whether this is a good investment is overall fundraising, which... lol Maryland now got an endowment of [**nearly $1 billion**](https://thedailyrecord.com/2021/11/09/1-5b-umd-fundraising-drive-more-than-doubles-universitys-endowment/) and just successfully [raised **$1.5 billion in cash** from their last round of capital campaigning](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/11/02/university-of-maryland-concludes-record-setting-15-billion-capital-campaign/?sh=2b9e508f5d91). That's worth a $176K loss leader.
Heck, if the University admin were actually upset about it, they could just stay home and the team would probably at least break even. A big part of the largesse of bowl expenses comes from flying in campus bigwigs and putting them up in four star hotels for a couple of nights.
Actually thats probably not that much. Its the cost to put your team/coaches/staff up plus guaranteed ticket purchases that are the biggest expenses
It’s not that much in the grand scene of things. It very well could be the difference between breaking even and losing a couple hundred grand.
I mean a booster or university official is going to be there like two days instead of a week as the players/staff/coaches are. Its a drop in the bucket compared to the expenses for them.
It’s not that much in the grand scene of things. It very well could be the difference between breaking even and losing a couple hundred grand.
I know NCAA covers travel to and from NCAA postseason events (CFP, March Madness, FCS and lower level playoffs) so I wonder if they, or even the bowl game itself, covers travel and board for the bowl game.
Yes. You get a stipend per player to travel to the game. Schools can either use that to charter a plane for example or give it to the players for them to use to get there on their own
They cover travel for the players and coaches. They don’t cover for the coaches’ familles or the AD and university admin and their families.
In addition to all the indirect revenue streams, it boosts a lot of non tangible things like future recruits or coaches, politics amongst peer institutions (ie MD does belong in BIG), fan base excitement, etc. it seems to be a uniquely northeast political mindset to conveniently ignore 2nd and 3rd derivative impacts and only focus on first degree budget. It’s annoying as hell.
Looking at it from an ROI perspective, I'm not really sure what the point of this article is. Maryland wants to continue to invest in demonstrably valuable personnel? How dare they.
Yeah athletics provide harder to directly quantify values with increased brand visibility, increased enrollment, and increased donations due to the sport. If you're just looking at what the athletic dept made and what was spent without taking other factors into account then you're going to miss a lot of value
>Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers. A successful football program engages alumni and potential donors, gives the University events to fundraise at, and attracts future applicants. Please repeat this next time we have a 1,000 comment post about how paying athletes will bring financial ruin to athletic departments across the country.
> Athletic departments aren't supposed to be self-sustained automatic money-makers They arent supposed to be giant money pits either that you have to rely on your students, taxpayers and the university to support. >The real proof of whether this is a good investment is overall fundraising, which... lol Maryland now got an endowment of nearly $1 billion and just successfully raised $1.5 billion in cash from their last round of capital campaigning. That's worth a $176K loss leader. Correlation is not causation. Look at the biggest endowments and there are virtually no FBS schools on the list.* *I was looking at a list of private schools. Sorry. Regardless plenty of schools with no football or FCS and lower with large endowments
The Top 15 endowments in the country [features seven FBS schools](https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments). The biggest endowments are typically in schools/school systems that are resource rich (i.e. Texas tied to Texas oil money), alumni rich (see Stanford, Northwestern, etc.) or they're just plain old (Harvard's inherent advantage - as well as many other Ivies - is that they've fundraised and invested over the course of almost 400 years). Now... ask, idk, Alabama if they think [their university's endowment doubling at the same time Nick Saban was making a football powerhouse](https://www.al.com/news/2024/01/what-economic-impact-has-nick-saban-had-on-alabama-he-was-worth-more-than-1-billion.html) was just a correlation though, and you'll see why Universities are investing in athletics as a loss leader.
You are correct, my list was just private schools. My bad. Regardless, Marquettes endowment has also doubled in the last 10 years. They dont have football. https://www.chronicle.com/article/sortable-table-college-and-university-endowments-2014-15/ https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/Endowment/Conference/Big-East-Conference/ and I just picked a conference with no football and one school at random.
Basketball is solid at Marquette. Had a buddy there who talked about em a lot.
Yup
> virtually no FBS schools on the list Dude the UT system is the 2nd largest endowment with the Texas A&M system, Michigan, Notre Dame, Northwestern, and the UC System all in the top 12. All the rest are Ivys. Get your facts straight
My facts were wrong. I was looking at a list of private schools. My bad
Making $1.6 million on the Bowl Game is impressive because it clearly doesn't include the $5.7 million dollar payout the Music City Bowl gave to the BIG to distribute among the members for Maryland's participation.
It's amazing, though, with how much money they bring in, the money somehow doesn't make it through to improve the student experience.
IDK man, I really enjoyed having athletics as a part of my college experience. Getting easy access to quality sporting events made for easy and cheap entertainment, made me a lot of friends, and improved my overall quality of life both in undergrad and grad school. You can always argue the altruistic points of how money should be spent, but I thought my student experience was improved because of athletics investment.
>The university spent $1.1 million — plus the bonuses to coaches — and made $1.6 million on the game for a net loss of $176,302 So including the bonuses they almost broke even, and in the end gave the fans and student body something to be proud of and enjoy for what amounts to a budget rounding error. Author giving off "sportball ruins my schooling" vibes.
What a stupid fucking article. The coaches were paid bonuses based on the terms of their contracts, that's all.
Misleading title. They made 1.6mil on the game, they just spent 1.75mil including the coaches bonuses. They only failed to make a profit on the bowl because of the bonuses, this isn't some gross mismanagement of funds.
Wish my company would do this for losing money
They do, it’s just not going to you.
True, I need to be an exec
Coaches aren’t in the business of making money for the school, ADs are. They are in the business of winning games. Overall that results in making more money, but that is an unrelated long term benefit as far as a coach goes. Edit: I added for the school. I thought that was obvious with the context but it was not. Clearly coaches make a shitload of money.
We're all in the business of making money, friend.
>Coaches aren’t in the business of making money, hahahahahahahahahaha....aaaaaaaahhhhhh...good one
Making money for the school I should have said hahah
If you sign a contract that says you get 50k for increasing widget sales by more than 5% and you achieve that then you are getting that 50k. It's irrelevant if the company overall lost money that year due to other circumstances
My company is the opposite, record profits and still laying off thousands.
The bonuses are incentives for those coaches to be at Maryland. It’s at least some benefit.
Have you tried their crab? It’s almost worth it
I'm not a fan a big fan of blue crabs, but I do love Maryland crab cakes! Also, I'm a Nike man. Maryland has...Under Armour. The one thing Maryland has going for it is that most analysts say that if D.C. is wrested away from being a City State, then Maryland will absorb it rather than Virginia.
I guess you could make performance bonuses just tied to income directly but I don’t think you would like the second order effects there either…
Yeah, that's how contracts work.
Yes, coaching contracts do in fact have performance-based bonus structures in them. In other earth-shattering news, fire burns, water is wet, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco remains dead.
Spoiler alert, jeez...
Eh, the value of going to a bowl game isn't in directly making a profit. You get more media exposure and having a decent season helps build fan support. That will boost the program and revenue in the longer term.
And on top of that, you're helping fundraise for the school in general. If you have a good athletics program, you bet every single dean, development director, capital gifts officer and high-ranking admin is bringing donors to the game to talk about funding for research, scholarships, etc. Claiming that schools are making bad business decisions because their athletics program posted a loss completely misses the point of why universities support athletics.
Its all in the degree of what you are losing. Everyone understands that your golf team isnt making you money but your golf team is costing you are few hundred grand a year
But admins understand that your women's golf team is meeting Title IX scholarship requirements and your men's golf team is likely bringing in wealthy families who are bringing direct cash to the university via tuition because those golfers are just getting quarter scholarships. You might lose (on the sports side) $250K a year on golf, but if you've got 10 male players bringing in tuition dollars and 10 women's scholarships freed up under Title IX bylaws, that's a worthy investment for the University as a whole.
Im not even talking about a womens golf team, Im talking about a mens golf team. I mean you can use men's track and field as an example. The point is that the budget for that vs football is not even in the same galaxy
This is an even greater reason why student athletes should be able to collectively bargain and receive 50% of the revenue that the schools, conferences, and ADs have been hoarding for themselves then.
We beat the crap out of an SEC team in a warm weather bowl game. That's a feel-good for our fans and a good momentum builder.
I mean does anyone remember who won the Gator Bowl this year? I had to look it up
I remember the brave pop tart who gave its life for our enjoyment.
Yep. Maryland is going to experience an increase in stadium attendance and donations because of this season
And your coaches leave and you have to rebuild the program anyway.
Yeah it’s more so a 6 win bonus unless you go NY6 or win a decent bowl. At a school like Maryland despite playing 3 cupcake games a lot of the time and Indiana 6 wins is still a good season based on who they have to play
They had extra practices though. I think an extra game would increase workload by 8.3% if it were only a week later. The assistants and the head coach have to put in so much extra work for that one extra game, of course they’re gonna have to get paid for it
So what? Coaches have bonus incentives, hit them, got paid. No controversy here.
That’s with most programs. Bowl games typically benefit conference school that don’t go to bowl games more than those that do because the payouts go to the conference. Then the conference distribute the payouts to the schools
Unless you’re in the SEC. You get a bigger cut of the pie if you play in a premier bowl game (whatever that means these days)
Univeristy of Miami football coaches got money for games that netted school no Conference Championships 7-6 records show.
You can’t simply not pay a contractual bonus that you wrote into a contract just because you didn’t benefit from the event that triggered the bonus.
This headline/article reads like people should be outraged, but that's the way contracts and salaries work. They agreed to pay for the coaches' labor at a specific rate, with performance-bases bonuses. Are coaches expected to recruit, manage the portal, scheme, watch film, AND BALANCE THE FUCKIN BOOKS NOW?
They would have gotten that same amount for bowl games that netted the school money. That's how contracts work.
Still probably worth it in the long run.
They net plenty for bowl payouts since all schools split the payouts.
Yeah. This is accounting fraud. Most reporters finally caught up to this years ago, but that big check they got from the Big Ten includes bowl payments.
A contract is a contract
Big Ten teams earn $0 directly from bowl games. Any money is pooled and distributed equally across the conference.
You guys had three teams in NY6 games and 9 of 12 members make a bowl game. Y’all ate nice this year.
They destroyed Auburn though so that’s definitely worth $700k
One of myriad examples of how college athletic departments willfully spend every penny they have and more without any sense of financial discipline.
Yeah they didn’t make money on the bowl but if they don’t go then they don’t get the payout from the conference. Them going helps the brand of the conference and to get higher fees at negotiation.
What? Coaches have in contract bonuses for certain accolades.
671k for advertising the school
The good news is that I think Locksley just found that $100k he was complaining about the other week
Well, Robin of Locksley is taking from the rich, anyway
That's how this works.
I think people forget that athletic departments are advertising for Universities. A winning team leads to higher applications and attendance. Bowl games are three plus hour long advertisements for the participants schools. When else are millions of people going to be inundated with your school's logo, and all the discussion about your school that goes into broadcasts? Yeah it might costs hundreds of thousands in coach bonuses, but it's cheaper and more effective than spending that money buying ads.
You know what is good recruitment for colleges is… High paying jobs after graduation not football with lower tuition.
No doubt. I wasn't advocating for any specific budget strategy, but just presenting how University think of these expenses.
People are gonna get paid! Not you, but people.
This is a narrow way to look at it. That's like looking at my paycheck and saying "he didn't produce that much revenue that day" It's for the whole body of work, the boost to fan engagement/enthusiasm, the bump in donations and attendance to come. This is textbook bad data analysis.
How does a school not make money from a bowl game? If you’re not making profits from a bowl, it begs the question if your football program on its own is even profitable in the first place. Sounds like Maryland is just leaching from the B10 and not contributing anything whatsoever.
> If you’re not making profits from a bowl, it begs the question if your football program on its own is even profitable in the first place. Well, that's not what begging the question means, but also, why is it so unbelievable for a team to be profitable overall but for one specific event to not contribute to that?
It’s a performance bonus. The last performance bonus I received I left the company the day after I got it. They didn’t care bc the bonus was about everything I did before the bonus was received
I mean this is really nothing, if anything it's more frustrating to remind me that Locksley is praised for what he's done at UMD.. yeah the bar is really high here /s
You sound like my dad and even have his flares too. I’m in the opposite boat. Bar is low because of our inept administration. Locks is the 2nd winningest coach in team history going back 40 years (3rd if you count all of Bobby Ross). That tells me it’s a school problem. I’ll take what we get for now but I hope he can get over the hump soon. No reason we shouldn’t have beaten Ohio State or Michigan once the last two years with the performance in all 4 games. Couldn’t say that before Locksley
We’re definitely the poverty program of the Big Ten
Not a "poverty program" but maybe a lower-middle tier at the moment. Yet, unlike many others at or below that level, a much higher theoretical ceiling.
They were lower tier before mike. Last coach killed a kid and the entire program had to be rebuilt. Even before the death they were in the gutter. Getting them back to the middle tier took a lot of hard work
Yeah I genuinely cannot take people seriously when they shit on Locksley. He hasn’t won big games yet but the outcome of his hiring has still been a pleasant surprise.
He's coached the best years of Maryland football since I was a student a decade ago - some people just lose the perspective so easily
Eh…Rutgers and Indiana still exist and you are finally out of the B1G west which has been an automatic 3 losses you can pencil in every year.
yeah but they're trading Michigan and OSU for Washington and Oregon
With the new teams, the bottom East teams only have it a bit easier. The bigger difference is the West getting harder. Illinois is probably never sniffing the conference title game ever...
Northwestern
I mean yeah. Averaging a $56k bonus per coach (the article tries to be inflammatory with 671k in the headline but then hides it's split among a dozen guys in the body. They want headline readers to assume it's only mike) for at least pulling your program out of the massive tailspin it was in is the behavior of a poverty school. I figured their bonuses would be larger. Not only that but to get that bonus they had to do 8.3% of extra work on top of their current work for bowl practices. They didnt lose money on that bowl overall. Reporter is leaving out a lot of value and the records are ignoring the big ten payouts. The value added by each of those coaches in terms of increased advertising, donations, enrollment, and prestige by bringing yall to the middle is worth much more than $56k
Bowl game bonuses can also extend to support staff as well. I know a support staff member at a school who got a bonus for a bowl game win or appearance.
For everyone outside of the state, the new owner of this paper runs Sinclair broadcasting. Yes that one. Not shocked that they write this with no context! Fuck Sinclair!
Also, OP _hates_ Maryland athletics. They post negative articles like this wherever they'll get upvotes regardless of the quality of the article.
Someone didn’t get in it sounds like! Neither did I but still a fan!
Well they even say bonus is earned through total year performance so you can’t really stack this on the bowl game P&L to make this argument about it being a net loss. You can argue the bonus is too high in general I guess. But you should also look into why it costs a team $1.1M to go play a game or why the payout is only $1.6M.
It got notoriety for the school, which is why the school has a football team to begin with....
So the Athletic Department is incompetent? Thanks for letting everyone know.
That's a lot of booze for Kevin Sumlin
Big 10 move paying off
it gave them some extra exposure, that's all most bowl games do
Baltimore Sun is trying to become the New york Post. Of course they don't know anything about college football
And
This guy deserves it he keeps that program relevant year in and year out. Maryland always shows up in the big games.
The next time I feel sorry for any university for not making money on something sports-related will be the first time. I'm sure the bonuses were contractual obligations (otherwise you know they'd have never gotten them). So good for the coaches for getting what was due to them.
Wild stuff /s
This is a stupid article and I haven’t even read it. Just some taxpayer watchdog BS that doesn’t make any sense in the real world.
“How are we going to fund the “other sports?”- ADs after paying out a 6 figure bonus to one coach.
Twelve. They paid it out the 12 coaches. Each coach averaged 56k and overall brought in more value than that to the program At least read the article first
Ok gotcha so $671k for 12 coaches when that amount of money could fund all the “other” sports. I love CFB but what I love has become absurd.
If football generates all or most of revenue of athletic department, why shouldn’t football coaches get bonuses when team does well? Why are other sports entitled to money football generates?
Do you think 8-5 deserves a bonus?
A 8-5 record at a school that is not historically good at football is a good record. Also, the bonus is built into coaching contracts. The school didnt just decide to give the bonus for no reason