Agreement keeps more money in athletics

[FiveWeight]

Athletic dept. will keep additional $2 million instead of giving back to the university. Thought I'd mention it here since it's been brought up before. Note the comment below.

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/purdue/2015/03/01/agreement-keeps-money-inside-purdue-athletics/24230199/


"out in the blogs - there's been this criticism that there isn't a support of intercollegiate athletics," Burke said. "A lot of people give you rhetoric but this is a very substantial action that will allow us to take care of cost of attendance, allow us to buy down the student rates so we could offer a very attractive package," Burke said."

 

[boilerdub]

It's obviously more complicated than this because of things like the TV contracts, but it sounds to me like the university will offset the costs so they can lower the student price of attending mostly terrible sporting events. They'll probably offset those costs by raising tuition.

This of course gives them an opportunity to blame the students for not attending their very affordable if mostly awful games.

 

[mathboy]

Originally posted by FiveWeight:
Athletic dept. will keep additional $2 million instead of giving back to the university. Thought I'd mention it here since it's been brought up before. Note the comment below.


"out in the blogs - there's been this criticism that there isn't a support of intercollegiate athletics," Burke said. "A lot of people give you rhetoric but this is a very substantial action that will allow us to take care of cost of attendance, allow us to buy down the student rates so we could offer a very attractive package," Burke said."

It's about flipping time this was done. Our athletic department has been underfunded for a long time, and the results show it. This is an important step to getting back to competitive levels. Thank you Mitch!

 

[lbodel]

Is this really much of a difference in student ticket pricing?

Tickets for football will be $99. The last price I can find is $119 for student football season tickets. I mean it's nice to save $20, but not sure that will have some substantial effect on student attendance.

The article compares the cost to $250 - but does the $99 price include basketball? The original article on here says it includes "access" to it. The Indy Star article says that it gives students "the opportunity to purchase" them.

 

[GodFamilyCountryPurdue]

$99 covers ALL sports.

 

[Statey]

Wow, this is a really big deal. Kudos to Burke/Daniels/Purdue for figuring something out. But overall, if Burke wants this then he should own it. For example, take a look at this quote:

"I made it clear from day one that we expect to pay for the services we
receive, but could we look at other allocation methods," Burke said. "I
don't want the faculty and the campus to say - Mitch is subsiding
athletics. The university still feels it appropriately represents the
services that we consume internally."

Come on... that can't be true. The University can't possibly believe that it was both fair to charge $3.5M for these admin services in year X, and only $1.5M in year Y, all else equal. That just doesn't compute. I'm not sure what the various options are for allocating these costs, but square footage sounds like a more reasonable approach than percent of revenue. I'd venture to guess that reason that percent of revenue was even considered is because it resulted in a lower rate. To be clear, if the University and Athletic Department want to do this, I'm totally ok with it. But don't do this under the guise of saying the rate is just as fair to University as it always was. It's a handout... if you take a handout, at least own it while you do.


This post was edited on 3/2 3:50 PM by Statey

 

[lbodel]

I guess I don't understand how this benefits Purdue Football (which is the issue) or this makes sense.

When Purdue's good in basketball, it sells out of the all-sports pass which is $250 (around 5,000 of them). However, these people clearly do not come to Purdue football games en masse - they're buying the pass to get men's basketball tickets.

So how is this helping increase attendance at football? I mean, it's nice for them to discount the tickets I guess - but I don't see how it really increases student attendance when people were already buying the all-sports pass and not going to football games. Are we sure it includes men's basketball? The Star article explicitly said students have to buy basketball tickets on top of that price.

Also, if Purdue sells 6,000 of these $99 passes, how are they doing men's basketball tickets if it's included in the price? Or are they only selling 5,000 of these passes?

 

[Midway55]

The $99 boarding pass guarantees tickets to all football games, and will have access to men's basketball games (as well as women's volleyball and basketball). The only way to guarantee tickets to basketball games is by joining the Paint Crew for $15.

My guess is there will be a limit on the paint crew, and if there are more Boarding Passes sold than student basketball seats available, then the basketball tickets for non-paint crew members will either be first-come first serve or a lottery system for bigger games.