Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Committee to evaluate finances of football program next week

Maria Uminski/Collegian

A committee formed to assess the costs associated with the football program’s move to the Football Bowl Subdivision will present a report to the University’s Faculty Senate next week evaluating the program’s budget from its inaugural season in the league.

The committee — which is composed of 19 members representing the faculty, administration and student body — was established by the Faculty Senate in December of last year with the aim of regularly reviewing the program’s finances. The report presented at next week’s meeting will be the first one issued by the committee since its formation.

Preliminary figures compiled by the athletic department from this past season – which was the program’s first in the league – show that expenses associated with the program totaled $7,160,339 while revenue streams, which include funding from the state and University, came in at $6,445,271. That means that the program is currently carrying a $715,068 deficit – a figure that Athletic Director John McCutcheon has largely attributed to a lag in ticket sales at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, the team’s home field.

The football program’s decision to jump to the FBS in the Mid-American Conference has drawn fire from some faculty members — who have contended that it’s a move that will require more University funding for the program — since it was announced in April of 2011. The program, which had a 1-11 record this past season, was previously a member of the Football Championship Subdivision in the Colonial Athletic Association.

The full report by the committee will be presented to the Faculty Senate Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. in Herter 227.

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  • J

    JKDec 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm

    “Revenue” from the university and from the state is not real revenue. It’s a subsidy.

    To understand how much football is actually costing, “revenue” cannot include funding from the state and from UMass.

    Can the Collegian find out how much the football program actually took in from real revenue, like from ticket sales, NOT INCLUDING the handouts from UMass and from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

    Reply
  • D

    Dr. Ed CuttingDec 8, 2012 at 12:02 pm

    No. Expenses from the football program actually totaled $14,320,678 — not $7,160,339 because Title IX requires that for every dollar you spend on men’s athletics, you must also spend a dollar on female athletics.

    Even if the football program was self-supporting and it raised the entire $7M itself (and actually did so, without cost-shifting to make it just look that way), there still would be the need to come up with the other $7M for the girls.

    THAT is the money that is going to cause the problem, and everyone involved — the football people, the women’s sports people — everyone would like to have us overlook this.

    Reply