Lord Elrond

Another A10 university who may have financial problems is St Bonaventure. The Bonnie’s have only a 92.3 Mil endowment fund, and only 2381 total students, so much less operating revenue coming in, harder to keep funding D1 sports. LaSalle, with 5191 students, gets a lot more revenue coming in on a yearly basis. No one else seems in immediate financial danger, next lowest endowments are URI and GMU at 203 Mil and 222 Mil respectively, but not only do they have 16k and 35k enrollments, they are both public schools, so as long as they get money from their state governments, they are good. Beyond that is St Joe’s, 7568 enrollment and 378 Mil endowment fund, doesn’t really seem to be in immediate trouble. While Davidson only has an enrollment of about 1843, they are sitting on a 1.3 Billion endowment fund. As a wildcard, any university may decide to kill sports or go down to D3 because it makes financial sense to them at any time. Not sure I see that in the immediate future, but if there’s no way to control costs, they may decide they have to.

Latest figures I could find were from 2023, but here’s the comparison: SLU Endowment fund size - $1.731 Billion LaSalle University Endowment fund size - $71.7 Million Yeah, they might be in some trouble…

More evidence of the major issue facing universities across the US, shrinking enrollment.

The major real cost to the University going forward, in terms of real money SLU must pay out, is going to be the revenue sharing part of the equation. While it appears we are roughly competitive this year in spending for Men’s basketball alone (who really knows after all, it’s just guessing since there’s no real numbers being given out), just how much will it rise next year? If this goes up at the same trajectory as the growth in NIL spending went in the past few years, this could get scary really quickly. And it’s not like SLU is driving the cost increases, they will have to respond to what the big schools are doing, just like NIL over the past few years.

Depends on how you do the accounting for the student athletes. For just scholarships, the cost is minimal. If you are kicking out a student paying full price to accommodate a student-athlete, then yes, it actually did cost SLU $50,000 in real money. Were there any paying students refused entry to SLU last year because of athletic scholarships? No. Did not happen. The other way to look at it is to say how much does it actually cost SLU in real dollar terms. Looking at the dashboard from SLU https://www.slu.edu/provost/office-of-institutional-research/institutional-data/student-enrollment.php. Last fall there were 15,334 total students, 8669 undergrad and 6665 graduate students. If enrollment increased by 219.4 students, then how much does it really cost SLU? Maybe a professor or 2, maybe a handful of TA’s. This does not cost the university $11 million. Most classes have room for an additional student or two after all. Maybe some other increased incidental expenses. But it does not cost the university $11 million additional dollars to educate 220 more students. Another proof of this is that enrollment was up 130 students from the year before last. Did SLU go on a multi-million dollar hiring spree (they would have needed to spend $5 million more to cover the 130 additional students after all!)? No, there were layoffs, and the education of students went on. The real issue this year is how much SLU will have to spend to pay for athletes. Using the example you gave above for IU, $20.5 mil cap, -75% for football, (which SLU does not have) leaves $5.125 Mil to match IU in spending total for athletes not on the football team. To keep the same proportions of IU’s spending across all other sports, we get $4.1 million for men’s basketball, and $1.025 million spread out among all other student athletes. Spend that much and we match IU dollar for dollar among non-football student athletes.

I have not heard that information, I would love to know it, but I don’t think the AD will release that info

That’s entertainment!

WBB open practice July 9th, 6:30pm at Chaifetz. Unfortunately I can’t make it that evening, hope someone can report on it.

If he can get a job at Auburn, that’s fine by me.

Only Mild?

Thanks. Hopefully things will all work out.

Does anyone know if Jahda Denis ever made it to campus? I’m assuming that she is having trouble getting her student visa because of all the stuff going on with immigration. While that impacts only our WBB team slightly, if there are now a lot of issues getting student visas in general, that will impact fall enrollment numbers a lot.

You and @Podcast Bot might have to unionize….

You’re not that far from Kentucky yourself living in Cincinnati, fine Kentucky Moonshine was a reasonable guess.

I have found the job listing on line, shows it’s been up for 23 days. They do need to find a coach soon

Is @Podcast Bot related to @GDT Bot?

Having an MLS team with a Youth Academy located 1.5 miles from campus is proving to be a huge benefit to SLU in recruiting.

Thinking about it, it does make perfect sense.

Look at the bright side, next time we face Duquesne, we won’t have to worry about Megan McConnell. The A10 defensive player of the year, who took us for 22 points and 11 assists last year, is now with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

I think there is talent in our roster, but not much returning experience. It will all depend on how quickly the freshmen develop and how quickly the transfers adapt to the team. I’m sure other teams have their issues, but we may have more than any of them. 14th in the A10 preseason coaches poll would not be a shock. 12-13th is the highest we can reasonably hope for.

Very true. Play whatever schedule helps us win the A10 tournament

We were 7th in the preseason poll last year, coming off a WNIT Championship season. We ended up 10th. This season, after losing a lot of players, I doubt we make it much higher than 12-13th in the 14 team preseason polling for the A10. Just a guess on my part.

Who says Billiken fans aren’t forward looking?

Hope springs eternally in the hearts of true Billiken fans…

Looks like Jahda Denis still isn’t in St Louis. I’m guessing the issue is getting her student visa. While it’s not a big deal when she gets in here for summer practice, I wonder if the issues she’s having getting a student visa don’t point to a bigger problem SLU will have with enrollment in the fall. There has been a lot said by Sec of State Marco Rubio about how they shut it down the application process for awhile, and I hadn’t heard it was back and running (you have to apply in person at a US embassy or Counsel office in the country you are a citizen of to get a student visa, and that all runs through the Sec of States office). As I say, from the point of view of the SLU WBB team, this is a very minor issue, hardly worth mentioning. If this is pointing to a reduction in foreign students attending SLU next year, this is a very big deal for the university as a whole. All we can do is wait and see.