TOPSTRAIGHT wrote:IMO the only way Murray State can afford the move will be finding more money.
1.)They will need to either drop football OR go to the Pioneer League(I-AA non-scholarship).This would free up a LOT of money making the move affordable.
2.)Need to come in with a close travel partner.BELMONT is the best choice or some other newly added school within a four hour bus ride.This cuts travel cost for ALL your sports,promotes rivalries,and gives other MVC schools a 2 game southern swing trip for several sports.SEMO would work--at least geographically speaking.
3.) They will need to increase fund raising from private sources.State of Kentucky continues to cut higher education.One help may be starting or increasing some sort of small athletic fee on all students(if you can get it passed).
I think the OVC exit fee is one million.They also recently cut men's tennis and considered cutting others.
At least two of these three would need to happen.It would be a great move for Murray and the MVC!
1. There have been numerous discussions on our board in the past 2 or 3 years about just cutting out football. We lose money every time we have to open the stadium only to fill it about 1/4 of the way to capacity. There is not much push from the community for football. So I agree with this. We also have Morehead in the OVC that plays non scholarship football and plays OVC basketball so it would not be anything new.
2. This is something that is debatable. We are only a 2 1/2 hour drive or so from Evansville and about the same to Carbondale. So we already have our travel partners if we join. Belmont would be another 2 hours south for the northern teams and also Belmont has stated they do not want to dish out any more than they have to for travel and added expenses.
3. Sadly this is how it is in any state funded school. Doesn't matter if it's Illinois, Indiana, or us. Money is tight everywhere. Adding an additional cost to students is always touchy since they usually aren't happy anyway to be paying so much. But also it does not help that the university is usually mailing out donor letters with little to no return. We have the alumni to provide generously if they just would.
Yes I agree that this an outstanding opportunity for our university and hopefully, if all that has been going around is true, the administration will not screw this up.