oleschoolaggie
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Mar 6, 2019 14:34:44 GMT -5
man, for the last 3 or 4 years, a&t athletics as well as the university as a whole has been "lights out" amongst all other hbcu's. jay walker wasn't exaggerating when he stated on national tv that a&t is currently the hottest hbcu in the country.
just to list a few accomplishments; football speaks for itself, 3 out of the last 4 cb wins/bcf national championships, 4 out of the last 5 meac championships (2 outright and an undefeated season). track and field has "3-peated" the meac indoor track championships for both the men and women, and are not far behind for the same number of meac outdoor championships in the last 3 years. women's basketball are defending meac champions and are currently the #1 seed going into this year's meac tournament. men's basketball have put together 2 consecutive winning seasons (which was unheard of for over 2 decades) and are the #2 seed heading into this year's meac tournament. baseball are defending meac champs and are looking strong early this season. bowling has won a national championship in recent years and remains a top 2 program in the meac.
and on top of all that, a&t continues to be the largest hbcu in america, our enrollment continues to grow every year, sat scores and gpa's of incoming applicants are up, our campus is "expanding", we just opened a truly state of the art "premier" student center, we've broken ground on a new $90 million plus engineering building with the construction of a brand new 400 bed dorm not far behind.
man, i'm almost out of breath even though i'm only typing! right now we aggies are riding high!! its almost like a "dream"!! because not that long ago, things were nowhere near as good as they are now. i mean, does anybody actually remember "the streak"? hail, lol, i don't!! shoot, i went to the meac indoor track championships a couple of weeks ago and i swear, our men and women tracksters were so "dominant", i walked away from that event feeling as if we're a bunch of "badd azzes" because our performance was head and shoulders better than the 2nd best school.
yes, its never felt better being an aggie right now. but how long will this last? we're so dominant overall right now that sometimes i have to "pinch" myself to make sure its not a dream. but can we keep this up? and if so, for how long?
i'm of the belief that as long as dr. martin remains our chancellor and as long as earl hilton remains our athletic director, we will stay on top. i firmly believe that if hilton ever decided to leave a&t while dr. martin is still here, dr. martin would hire another very competent athletic director and we wouldn't miss a beat. but if dr. martin leaves? all bets are off. without dr. martin, no telling what direction our athletics and academics would take...
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oleschoolaggie
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Mar 6, 2019 14:39:52 GMT -5
to answer my own question, how long will a&t's success last? to me, it will last for as long as dr. martin remains our chancellor...
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Post by Bornthrilla on Mar 6, 2019 17:19:12 GMT -5
Right now, I believe we are out-spending most of our conference counterparts by a pretty good margin.
We have more resources and a better infrastructure than every other school in the MEAC. At the very least we should be able to dominate this pathetic conference for the next 10 years plus.
Of course, I have been on the record many times predicting that this pathetic conference will not be around in 5 years.
I say even with a new chancellor and AD we will continue to be the class of the MEAC as long as we maintain our current budget advantage. Once we stop spending the money, we will quickly come back down to the pack.
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oleschoolaggie
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Mar 6, 2019 17:48:48 GMT -5
I say even with a new chancellor and AD we will continue to be the class of the MEAC as long as we maintain our current budget advantage. Once we stop spending the money, we will quickly come back down to the pack. that's what i'm afraid of. if we had a new chancellor, i'm not very confident that he or she would maintain our current spending levels in athletics. i can't recall any other chancellor we've had in the past who funded athletics overall as much as dr. martin has...
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DECKS
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Post by DECKS on Mar 7, 2019 8:01:59 GMT -5
Financial stability helped propel us to the top of the MEAC.
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Post by durhamgsoaggie on Mar 7, 2019 10:06:37 GMT -5
In terms of athletics, let's understand the revenue streams. The list below is a rough estimate of the 2017-18 athletics budget:
Students athletic fees: Volume controlled by student enrollment - $9 million Guarantee games: Controlled by scheduling - $0.8 million Ticket revenue: Controlled by ticket pricing/purchase - $1.3 million Alumni donations: Controlled by alumni - $0.4 million on budget Celebration Bowl: Controlled by football results - $0.5 million on budget Parking/Tailgate/Vending: Controlled by purchase: -$0.3 million Other revenues (including sponsorship) - $0.3 million School transfer/support - $0.5 million
That totals out to a little over $13 million. That ranks in the bottom 15th percentile of D1 schools. And our school transfer amount is pretty low compared to some other MEAC schools.
We will continue to increase athletics revenue if: - Enrollment continues to grow - Alumni significantly increase donations to athletics - Sponsorship revenue is increased
Ticket revenue can be increased, but only goes but so far because of capacity. While there's room to grow with sponsorship in the short run, it will eventually be capped at a certain point because our alumni base isn't super-big.
Chancellor Martin is definitely a supporter of athletics. But if there's a notion that he releases millions in funds to athletics each year... that's not the case.
We've gotten enough increases in athletics revenue to go along with a hot streak on coach selection over the past 8 years. It's happened at other HBCUs over time (SCSU, FAMU, Hampton) but wasn't sustained simply because they didn't build the economic/facility infrastructure to do so while they were on their hot streak.
We're at that point right now. Enrollment is trending up, but will eventually slow down. If we don't increase alumni donations & sponsorship in the short term, we will stall out.
The alumni donations is on us. And AAF is US. So we can't sit on our laurels.
The good news is that AAF increased its calendar year donations from over $600K in 2017 to $900K in 2018. So that should increase the amount going on the athletics budget for fiscal year 2018-19 (ends June 30, 2019). We hit 1,000 donors for the first time in calendar year 2018. Improvements are slowly starting to be made in gateways to give. But we all have to keep working.
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Gator
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Post by Gator on Mar 7, 2019 11:00:39 GMT -5
Your AD was just selected as Athletic Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA)/Under Armour FCS.
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Post by durhamgsoaggie on Mar 7, 2019 11:08:59 GMT -5
Right now, I believe we are out-spending most of our conference counterparts by a pretty good margin. We have more resources and a better infrastructure than every other school in the MEAC. At the very least we should be able to dominate this pathetic conference for the next 10 years plus. Of course, I have been on the record many times predicting that this pathetic conference will not be around in 5 years. I say even with a new chancellor and AD we will continue to be the class of the MEAC as long as we maintain our current budget advantage. Once we stop spending the money, we will quickly come back down to the pack. Based on these references, we're not outspending BCU (private), Norfolk and NCCU.... and Delaware St. isn't that far behind us. sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/www.dailypress.com/sports/dp-spt-hampton-big-south-finances-1123-story.html
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oleschoolaggie
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2009 Poster of the Year, 2009 Most Knowledgeable Poster
Posts: 24,074
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Mar 7, 2019 11:53:15 GMT -5
hey, i also forgot to mention that we aggies also won the meac "cross country" championship this school year!! so add that to our pile of athletic accomplishments this year...
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Post by Bornthrilla on Mar 7, 2019 12:14:24 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm gonna have to see some receipts for every school you just named. Aint no way.
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Post by durhamgsoaggie on Mar 7, 2019 12:19:30 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm gonna have to see some receipts for every school you just named. Aint no way. Those are receipts as far as I'm concerned. Do your own homework if you don't believe the numbers past that.
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Post by Bornthrilla on Mar 7, 2019 12:24:54 GMT -5
BTW: It has been proven that we will put out some inaccurate "official" numbers when it comes to athletics. See the recent football stadium capacity question.
I am almost positive that we are outspending every single school in the conference in the marquee sports ... but it is possible we are doing some creative accounting to fudge the overall numbers. Not sure why we would do that, but again I am not sure why we would blatantly lie about our stadium capacity either.
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Post by neighborhoodsuperstar on Mar 7, 2019 12:28:11 GMT -5
Whatever we’re doing, keep doing it....and continue to push the envelope beyond our MEAC boundaries....
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Post by durhamgsoaggie on Mar 7, 2019 12:44:41 GMT -5
BTW: It has been proven that we will put out some inaccurate "official" numbers when it comes to athletics. See the recent football stadium capacity question. I am almost positive that we are outspending every single school in the conference in the marquee sports ... but it is possible we are doing some creative accounting to fudge the overall numbers. Not sure why we would do that, but again I am not sure why we would blatantly lie about our stadium capacity either. Capacity is one thing... especially since we don't sit people on the track anymore and no one is auditing those numbers. Budget amounts are a whole different animal. And you can make a request to athletics to get the exact numbers for A&T or any state institution, if you want to take the time to do so. The other thing that has to be considered when comparing budget sizes is tuition cost. Schools that have higher tuition costs have less to spend on operational costs after they pay for scholarships. So it's possible to have an overall budget less than another school and still be able to have equal or more operating capital that the school with the larger budget.
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Post by Aggie Monster on Mar 7, 2019 14:59:39 GMT -5
BTW: It has been proven that we will put out some inaccurate "official" numbers when it comes to athletics. See the recent football stadium capacity question. I am almost positive that we are outspending every single school in the conference in the marquee sports ... but it is possible we are doing some creative accounting to fudge the overall numbers. Not sure why we would do that, but again I am not sure why we would blatantly lie about our stadium capacity either. Capacity is one thing... especially since we don't sit people on the track anymore and no one is auditing those numbers. Budget amounts are a whole different animal. And you can make a request to athletics to get the exact numbers for A&T or any state institution, if you want to take the time to do so. The other thing that has to be considered when comparing budget sizes is tuition cost. Schools that have higher tuition costs have less to spend on operational costs after they pay for scholarships. So it's possible to have an overall budget less than another school and still be able to have equal or more operating capital that the school with the larger budget. Yep, people dont realize that the cost of the student to attend the school fulltime is part of the budget. So 50 players at Hampton cost way more on their budget than 50 players at A&T. Those types of numbers are what I call imaginary inflation. Tuition cost are not really costing the school that exact amount unless the athlete is taking up space for someone that would otherwise be paying and were not allowed to attend because we gave that spot to an athlete.
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