uniguy wrote:Thats a good point. Although you could make the argument that UNIs budget is artificially high due to Jakes salary since it is partially donor funded. If he left a new coach wouldn't get that much.
Jake's is fully funded through private donors, AFAIK. To some extent that's a valid point. However, unlike tuition it is basketball specific funding. It is funding that our athletic department has mad a point to get and put towards the program. It's not UNI's fault no one else left in this conference can/does do the same. I would also add that the next coach won't see a significant/if any drop from where Jake is now. Gone are the 300-500K base pay days at UNI. Here to stay are the 750-850k base pay plus media and other bonuses pushing to over a million. The donors are there to make sure that the best replacement coach, whenever that time comes, is found and paid for.
The interesting thing to me is if facility rental should* be taken out of the spending. In the case of Evansville that is another $345,000 for the year that those numbers are from (based on reported numbers for what it costs to rent the Ford Center from posts on this board). This year it is a minimum of $285,000, and that will go up if they host a CBI/CIT game. I would argue that is artificially inflating budget numbers for those schools as well to some extent. Yes, it's basketball specific spending. It's basketball specific funding only because UE isn't/wasn't willing to fund their own building that they owned and control. On top of paying ~300K per year just to be able to play home games, UE is losing out on any revenue from events that could be brought in. UNI's basketball arena and football stadium bring in millions of dollars a year to the university. We also don't know how UNI splits McLeod Center operations costs between mens basketball, womens basketball, volleyball and general athletic department expenses. Without rental fees (and I don't know what the other schools pay per year/game) UE falls to about 1.9m in basketball specific funding. Which still confuses me with where that money is going - especially if the rumored salary for Marty is actually where the rumor puts it. UE may have the single worst ROI in the conference. Bradley is probably worse given their last 8 years, or so. However, they still have a S16 banner, multiple other NCAA trips, NITs, etc... to their name. UE has 1 NCAA trip, no NCAA wins, and no other real post season success - don't give me this CIT champion crap either.
Add $345,000 to UNI's budget and they have the largest in the conference, when including the tuition difference between Bradley and UNI.
Raw budget numbers are neat to talk about, but getting down to what is truely basketball spending is what makes it fun/worth while to talk about. Yes, there are apple/oranges in some cases for numbers - facility rental being one.
