" This was the year Rutgers University athletics expected to be on firm financial ground. Instead, the move to the Big Ten means anything but that."
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Shocking article. In that 2nd graph, it appears to show Rutgers has over $8 million in ticket sales and Ohio State is at $65million in ticket sales. How do our ticket sales compare ?
My gut feeling is that we aren’t even close to Rutgers in ticket sales.
Edit: Per Daily Cougar - little over 1/2 of Rutgers
As a whole, UH athletics ticket sales saw a slight boost, jumping from $4.31 million in fiscal year 2018 to $4.88 million in 2019.
But the football team, despite a 2018 season that saw the Cougars win five games at home, averaged just under 30,000 fans in attendance and took a near $1 million hit in ticket sales, continuing a downward trend.
The football team’s figures peaked in fiscal year 2017 at $5.53 million, dropping in 2018 to $3.66 million and to $2.68 million in 2019.
UH athletics annual spending skyrockets by $16M after big year - The Cougar
Those airlines miles commercials got to them. They charged everything and now the 21% interest is killing them.
What’s in your wallet, Rutgers?
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Rutgers to the Big 10 was always a weird thing. No one in the Big 10 views them as aBig 10 school.
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I just hope we aren’t piling on that kind of debt. Yikes! $90 million per team distribution by 2026? Mind-boggling. But if they keep doing this, they stay broke. Getting ready to borrow more to build more premium seating they may not sell. Crazy. They suck and are competing with the Giants and the Jets for dollars.
What is a stupid expense is the opaque wall that turns clear to show the courts. If that’s what it takes to impress the kids, sports has really gotten out of hand.
Staff expenses skyrocketed for them. What are they doing, assigning three people to watch each athlete? Crazy.
One hell of an article. Somebody will get nominated for a prize.
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Its easy guys, just mandate all students at UH to live on campus and only offer the most expensive meal plans. We’ll raking in the cash to spend on our deficit.
Yeah I went to an Iowa-Rutgers game a few years ago with the family at East Brunswick.
Very strange experience. Rutgers definitely loves being in the BiG10. I mean really loves it. Honestly, Rutgers kind of suffers from the same fate UH does, except in some ways even worse. Rutgers is a great university, it’s an AAU member with a medical school, two law schools, big alumni base and connections to J&J (whose HQ is literally interwoven with the main campus in East Brunswick. Problem it has is that it is surrounded by Ivy League institutions in Princeton and Colombia, not to mention Penn State and Syracuse for sports. It sort of steals its thunder.
I think the fact it is on the east coast is what makes it odd. Same vibe at Maryland.
But BiG10 loves the NYC market so it was a good move from a TV rights perspective. They are the only major college football conference in the area (Syracuse doesn’t count).
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That’s a good summary of the Rutgers situation with
a perspective I didn’t have.
Now this paragraph from the article scares me :
The evidence is stark — Rutgers was dead last among 52 public universities in the five richest conferences in donations to athletics for operations in 2019-20, based on data provided by USA TODAY Sports and Syracuse University’s S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications. Rutgers was next to last in ticket sales and 50th in generated revenue.
Where will we fall now that we are in one of the five
richest conferences ? From numbers I’m seeing among the public fifty something schools we may be the new rutgers in terms of donations and ticket sales 
Back in the day (demographics have changed) the NYC college football school was Notre Dame. Way behind in second place was Boston College.
Really? I can see ND, but Boston College is a surprise.
I used to work with a guy who was a BC alum. Was there when Flutie won the Heismann. Always thought a rebound was just around the corner. Poor guy lost the office college football pool every year.
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First job out of college was running a bar attached to J.P. Morgan Headquarters. Literally, “The House of Morgan” steps away from Stock Exchange.
Must have been an H.R. Director that went to BC, The place was filled with BC alums. Seriously, in those days the middle level and lower level jobs on the Street were Irish Jobs. Not talking the real big shot Ivy leaguers (not their bar). In any case, that is why I have BC on my mind…
The customer was always right, but I let them know that I was a Coog, before they tried to stick my head in the deep fat fryer.
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Born and raised in Westchester (go Dobbs Ferry). No one gave a rat’s patootie about BC.
Everything in the 70s was about ND and Penn State. Pitt, Syracuse, Army, and Rutgers were mere after thoughts. BC wasn’t even on the radar.
I might have walked into a micro-cluster over there. I had no bouncer and when the St. John’s guys and BC guys went at it, well duck.
Neither is Maryland. Makes no sense to add either one since everybody has always seen the Big10 as a Midwestern conference and Maryland was already making big bucks from ESPN and had terrific rivalries with ACC schools.
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Fascinating and frightening at the same time.
Sunday morning before the NFL two college highlight shows were shown on TV. ND and Grambling.
Army had been very popular into the 1950’s but declined in competitiveness so by the late 60’s were an afterthought. Nebraska beat them 77-7.
Don’t get me started on positions with no meaning.
There are tons of admins who have specialized jobs cause their connected to a person which is basically babysitting - all these “student-athlete” development/diversity/communicator etc
When they’re let go they have no value elsewhere cause they don’t know enough of one thing.
Are we the dog that caught the car? $5M for Holgorsen isn’t sustainable without great success.
Are schools like Tulsa, ECU and Tulane in worse shape with on campus facilities and rising costs? Tulsa can’t afford to fire Montgomery in football.
Yes and no. We are Houston and we have a history of doing more with less.
We also don’t have the baked in higher cost of living ( and construction) that exists in the north east. Because of these things, we don’t have to be the new Rutgers.
As for coaching salary, I can’t say if it’s sustainable or not. Based on the size of
Cougar Pride and money from small time donors, probably not. If big money people like
Tillman think it’s necessary and willing to fund it, we probably can continue to have a competitive
coaching salary, for whoever that may be.
I’m not well versed on our big time donors and can only think of Tillman and John Moores.
And John seems to have lost interest in us presently. Probably a dozen or so of the BIG money types out there who may want to get involved now with the B12 invite ? But these guys are going to have to starting buying (NIL) our good players too. I have yet to see evidence of this happening, but it is still early in NIL game.
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