The Washington Post did an article on college athletic programs that are losing money. That article identifies Virginia Tech as one of the 28 programs out of 48 in the P-5 who are losing money.
What gives? I thought VT was one of those programs in the black? I'm guessing they aren't including student fees, but if they're going to claim a program is losing money, shouldn't they list only the ones who are actually losing money?
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According to the charts, What we are down seems to be comparable to what we are still paying Greenburg and Johnson.
Plus shelling out for Buzz. And we're going to pony up for our next football coach too. But you gotta spend money to make money!
They also seem to think VT lost money in 2004.
I think there is some loose change in the couch cushions that isn't being reported.
Ive seen similar reports, I cant necessarily speak to this one, per say, without seeing exactly what they are looking at, but in the past they've failed to include non-sports royalties, and treated construction investments as one time deals and not annuities. Past attempts I've read have been against college football programs, over-exagerating expenditures and under-calculating 'true' revenues. People buy school affiliated paraphernalia, because of the sports programs primarily, it does not make sense to not include those revenues.
Im not positive this report excludes those, but if it does, it paints an untrue picture of college football programs.
Well that new indoor practice facility was not free...
But it was paid for almost 100% by private donations.
This.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain to people still at Tech that the practice facility isn't the reason why their fees went up or why Schiffert and Cook Counseling are inadequate (their words, not mine).
Athletic Budget is totally separate from all other budgets.
People are stupid.
All true. But a dollar donated to the facility is, in theory, a dollar that could have been donated and spent elsewhere in the athletics dept instead of a student fee dollar. Opportunity costs...
Now, I'm not arguing against the practice facility...I'm just saying that just because it was funded by private donations, it still could have indirectly impacted student fees, etc.
Complaining about student athletic fees at Virginia Tech shows ignorance. Virginia Tech has some of the lowest fees in the country.
Yep. Looks like they're subtracting out subsidies. What they don't know -- and can't know -- is how much an athletic department might be subsidizing back to the university through cost accounting.
And having spent 2 years doing cost accounting for a telecom company, it is ASTOUNDING how much legal (I think) maneuvering a creative accountant can do. Glad I got back into engineering, where the numbers actually mean something.
I learned a long time ago that when looking at financial statements, the real story is often in the footnotes.
Yes, footnotes are just as important. Often help to show the breakdown of the full line item.
I don't mind them doing these kinds of articles, but it seems to me they should be accurate about it. My impression until now is that VT runs a pretty tight ship financially, and that has put VT in a position to spend a little more on the next coaching hire.
The WaPo analysis excludes student fees. Per the right side bar:
Per Slides 14-16 of the March 30, 2015 BOV Meeting Minutes, the Athletic Department FY 2014-15 Budget has Revenue of $74,727,217 and Expenses of $73,490,231, yielding a surplus of $1,236,986. If you subtract the $7,866,883 of student fee revenue (as the WaPo article does), then yes, we would be operating at a deficit of $6,629,897.
Thanks for posting that.
Seems like the Washington Post could have provided that information, instead of going for the sensationalist headlines.
If the university has student fees, then it seems that should have been included. Still, almost $8 million in student fees? Really? Wow...
EDIT: I guess it makes sense, and students get either subsidized or free admission to a lot of athletic events. When you break it down per student, it seems affordable.
And we are charging on the low end nationally. It should be higher
We are one of the lowest student athletic fees in the state.
To put in perspective, VT currently charges about 150 per year, UVA is at 650
When I divided out the numbers listed above, it seemed to be more like $268 per student, but I don't have a source on the actual figure.
Still didn't seem unreasonable.
You are actually pretty on. It was actually 144, and I think that was PER SEMESTER. which is much more in line with your numbers.
Makes sense. That looks pretty reasonable to me.
If the battle of the facilities would settle down, a lot of the lower level schools wouldn't be struggling fiscally. However, they also would have a hard time recruiting. Facilities are a recruiting gold mine, and only now are we catching up.
Per filings with the Department of Education, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, Virginia Tech's gross revenue was $81,298,133, gross expenditures were $78,786,724 for a surplus of $2,511,409, FWIW.
Not to mention we didn't hardly sell out Lane this year. New coach has a good chance to sell it out next year and push that farther into the black.
At least two games were sellouts from a the ticket office standpoint.
Hm, that's right.
Weren't the OS and UNC games both sellouts?
That's pretty good for ticket sales these days.
What about the Friday night game, anybody know the sales from that one?
My point is that five years ago, you had to be a hokie club member to get a shot at season tickets. And pretty much all of Lane's tickets went to season ticket holders. The last couple of years, Tech has had a lot of tickets to sell to anybody who wants to buy.
I don't think we will ever see Lane filled with season ticket holders, it seats 66,000, 5,000 tickets go to opponent many get returned, the Hokie Club has just a hair over 10,000 members so it would take each member buying 6 tickets each to fill it with just season ticket holders. When was the last time season tickets were sold to just Hokie Club members and what was the capacity of Lane at the time?
You're forgetting about the students...
Are there more than 6,000 students at each game?
The number I've heard for student seating allotment was something like 17,000. I think that includes the Corps of Cadets, the MV's and then the general student sections in the North & South EZ and East Stands
As a % VT also has a Student Section very much on the large side amongst the FBS, it could theoretically get smaller in the future.
This is not unique to VT. Most programs not in the national championship hunt (and even some that are...ahem, UNC) are having attendance issues.
This is true, but it's also true that season tickets were sold out and most mini-plans sold largely because they included OSU, the national champion last year who lost to VT. Some bought those tickets just to go to a game or two.
So there is room for improvement both in ticket sales and concessions, and those are linked to winning.
Next year's home schedule is not attractive. There may be a small bump early due to new coach excitement, but I expect overall home ticket revenue to be down next year if prices remain the same.
I would expect a decent contingent of LU fans for our FCS home opener. I think we (LU fans/Alumni) tend to travel relatively well for an FCS school and we're only about an hour and a half away. I really want to make it for that game since Tech is a closer drive for me than going to an LU home game (though I also want to make it back for an LU home game this year since I haven't been able to make it to one since I graduated in 07-08) and the only VT game I've been to was the 2006 game against Clemson.
There's no headliner OOC game like Ohio State, but we do get our most bitter rivals all at home next season, so that's a plus. Add our ACC cross-division "rival" Boston College, and our CUSA 'rival' ECU to Georgia Tech, Miami and UVA and you get a relatively intense set of home games.
As much as I dislike playing ECU and wish we'd replace them with a P5 series, we need to get revenge before cutting them out of the schedule. The only really weak spot is Liberty, and they serve as a nice warm-up game before playing Tennessee.
Liberty didn't have a very good season this year record wise finishing 6-5 and missing the FCS Playoffs after making our first appearance last year, but we did beat two FCS playoff teams (Montana and Coastal Carolina) and one of the FBS teams we played (Beat Georgia State, lost to WVU). I plan to do a more in depth insider look at the Flames post as the 2016 season approaches, but I expect the game to be close early and VT to pull away later in the game unless Tech's players have overlooked the game in anticipation of playing UT.
It's basically the same schedule and "intense" rivalries that saw attendance down about 5% in 2014 from 2013. Replacing W&M with Liberty brings in maybe an additional 5k fans?
If you want sellouts, you need to a) win, and b) schedule OOC opponents people want to see.
The OOC games next year include Tennessee & Notre Dame. Unfortunately you can't play all OOC opponents people want to see at home if you want to have any chance of success.
Tennessee isn't a home game -- it's in Bristol.
That's correct for the general budget, but as a VT employee I can tell you that there are more 'funding sources' than Walgreen's has drugs. Some items are funded through fees, special programs, the VT Foundation, and so on ad nauseum. VT also gets some major projects funded as separate line items straight from the General Assembly. I'm not the expert, but it's amazing to me that a single professional development trip can involve monies from three or four separate funding sources. Kudos to the Finance gurus that keep us straight. If our small department is that confuddled, I can only imagine that the Athletics Department finances resemble the swamp on Dagobah. No matter where you get the numbers, I'm sure (outside of the Athletics administration) getting a true picture is somewhere between .
The minutes of the Board of Visitors meetings often provides some excellent insight into how the university funds - and spends - money. Take a look at the "Presentations" section to really get a look at what's out there. The Building and Grounds Committee is always a good read.
Shoddy journalism by WaPo?
Yes, that never happens.
/S
OK, The second article in the series is up, where they bash universities for student fees related to athletics.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-bill-for-college-sports-and-how-some-are-fighting-back/2015/11/30/7ca47476-8d3e-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_ncaa-fees-315pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory