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I didn't want to post this in the recruiting thread.

There was a discussion about Power 5 vs Big East vs other leagues. 

One way to see and show how it works is taking a look at non-revenue sports. Let's take women's basketball for example. 

Nancy Fahey coached women's hoops at D-3 Wash U. for 31 years before becoming the head coach at Illinois. (Power 5) Her deal is six years, $3.3 million not including other perks. She recently received a two year extension this Spring. 

Let's take that a step further. Fahey recently hired two new assistant coaches to shake up her slow start at Illinois. Both assistants came from Marquette U, (not Power 5) Scott Merritt and Vernette Skeete, both six year assistants at Marquette under both Carolyn Kieger and Megan Duffy. They had a lot of success in the Big East and NCAA's. 

Speaking of Carolyn Kieger, she was one of the all time great Marquette players who was a young rising coaching star. After being an assistant at U of Miami, she landed her deam job, her alma mater. After having success for a number of years, Penn St. (Power 5) came calling and offered her their head coaching position. The previous Penn St. coach Coquese Washington was making $1 million (including perks) at Penn St. Kieger had replaced a long time higher salaried coach at Marquette. Her salary at best was no more than $300k at Marquette. Assistant coaches at previously mentioned Illinois were making more money than that.  It wasn't even a second thought, Kieger left for Penn St. and she had everyone's blessing. 

Coquese Washington landed at Oklahoma (Power 5) as an assistant and now her alma mater Notre Dame as an assistant under St. Louisan (Power 5) Niele Ivey. 

When Shimmy Gray left SLU she made $165k as an assistant at Nebraska before moving on to Florida, Texas Tech, and Clemson. 

The BIg East is doing well and it has more money than many other leagues, but it still doesn't have Power 5 money. However, it is more competitive in men's basketball with Power 5 schools with regards to budgets and salaries compared to many other leagues. And of course, it has had high level on court success with a variety of teams. You will find a Chris Mack leaving for Louisville (his wife is from there) or Chris Holtmann leaving for Ohio St. once in a while)  It's never going to have football money. For a school like SLU, it is the best attainable conference in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons including money. 

 

 

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37 minutes ago, courtside said:

I didn't want to post this in the recruiting thread.

There was a discussion about Power 5 vs Big East vs other leagues. 

One way to see and show how it works is taking a look at non-revenue sports. Let's take women's basketball for example. 

Nancy Fahey coached women's hoops at D-3 Wash U. for 31 years before becoming the head coach at Illinois. (Power 5) Her deal is six years, $3.3 million not including other perks. She recently received a two year extension this Spring. 

Let's take that a step further. Fahey recently hired two new assistant coaches to shake up her slow start at Illinois. Both assistants came from Marquette U, (not Power 5) Scott Merritt and Vernette Skeete, both six year assistants at Marquette under both Carolyn Kieger and Megan Duffy. They had a lot of success in the Big East and NCAA's. 

Speaking of Carolyn Kieger, she was one of the all time great Marquette players who was a young rising coaching star. After being an assistant at U of Miami, she landed her deam job, her alma mater. After having success for a number of years, Penn St. (Power 5) came calling and offered her their head coaching position. The previous Penn St. coach Coquese Washington was making $1 million (including perks) at Penn St. Kieger had replaced a long time higher salaried coach at Marquette. Her salary at best was no more than $300k at Marquette. Assistant coaches at previously mentioned Illinois were making more money than that.  It wasn't even a second thought, Kieger left for Penn St. and she had everyone's blessing. 

Coquese Washington landed at Oklahoma (Power 5) as an assistant and now her alma mater Notre Dame as an assistant under St. Louisan (Power 5) Niele Ivey. 

When Shimmy Gray left SLU she made $165k as an assistant at Nebraska before moving on to Florida, Texas Tech, and Clemson. 

The BIg East is doing well and it has more money than many other leagues, but it still doesn't have Power 5 money. However, it is more competitive in men's basketball with Power 5 schools with regards to budgets and salaries compared to many other leagues. And of course, it has had high level on court success with a variety of teams. You will find a Chris Mack leaving for Louisville (his wife is from there) or Chris Holtmann leaving for Ohio St. once in a while)  It's never going to have football money. For a school like SLU, it is the best attainable conference in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons including money. 

I'm not knocking it, but I'd imagine Title IX has a lot to do with this, correct?

My understanding of Title IX is that schools have to spend just as much money on women's sports as they do on men's sports (and have the same number of sports programs for men and women).  Power 5 football generates a ton of revenue, but there is also a ton of expenses that go into fielding a Power 5 football team.  These schools have to match those expenses somewhere on the women's side and the women's sports are all way less expensive than football.  Therefore, most Power 5 women's sports programs are going to be elite and have gigantic budgets compared to their non Power 5 / no football counterparts.

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44 minutes ago, RUBillsFan said:

I'm not knocking it, but I'd imagine Title IX has a lot to do with this, correct?

My understanding of Title IX is that schools have to spend just as much money on women's sports as they do on men's sports (and have the same number of sports programs for men and women).  Power 5 football generates a ton of revenue, but there is also a ton of expenses that go into fielding a Power 5 football team.  These schools have to match those expenses somewhere on the women's side and the women's sports are all way less expensive than football.  Therefore, most Power 5 women's sports programs are going to be elite and have gigantic budgets compared to their non Power 5 / no football counterparts.

Title IX requires gender equality in scholarships but not spending and budgets. For example, at some schools, football has become more than 60% of total athletic budget. Football coach pay can take up 75% of a school's total athletics coaching budget.

There has been a growing trend the past ten years of many Power 5 schools using some of that big donor money,  tv money etc...to increase coach pay and budgets for some of its non-revenue sports teams. 

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5 minutes ago, slufanskip said:

Where does a school with 85 football scholarships balance that out with women's sports. I know some have ladies soccer and no mens. I know men's soccer has 9.9 to give out and I think the women have 14? 

I don’t believe it has to be or is a people numbers thing just the number of sports offered. If this is correct women’s volleyball would offset football. 

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8 minutes ago, slufanskip said:

Where does a school with 85 football scholarships balance that out with women's sports. I know some have ladies soccer and no mens. I know men's soccer has 9.9 to give out and I think the women have 14? 

Lots of non revenue sports like swimming, etc I think 

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54 minutes ago, slufanskip said:

Where does a school with 85 football scholarships balance that out with women's sports. I know some have ladies soccer and no mens. I know men's soccer has 9.9 to give out and I think the women have 14? 

Yep. That's correct 9.9 and 14. The entire SEC is women's only soccer with the exceptions of Kentucky and South Carolina.  Pac 12 has far more women's soccer teams than men.

Budgets? Baseball has 11.7 scholarships per team. For many years coaches have lobbied for a 3rd paid full time assistant but it keeps getting rejected. The latest version included an additional softball assistant, but it didn't pass. 

Many schools have several more women's only sports to offset football scholarship numbers. With non-football schools, budgets are spread around more evenly.

 

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6 hours ago, Cowboy said:

-I can't believe Title IX has a money spent men versus ladies aspect to it as football is so, so, so much bigger than anything else, I thought it was equal number of schollies and some other items

They don't have a money spent requirement. It is equal number of scholarships and some other items, like you originally thought.

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1 hour ago, slufanskip said:

Where does a school with 85 football scholarships balance that out with women's sports. I know some have ladies soccer and no mens. I know men's soccer has 9.9 to give out and I think the women have 14? 

I went to college at an SEC school with 6 male sports: Football, Baseball, Basketball, Tennis, Cross Country and Golf.

Of those 6, there were female teams for 4 of them: Basketball, Tennis, Cross Country and Golf. So they had to make up for 90-100 scholarships between football and baseball. These came from the following female sports: soccer, lacrosse, swimming, track and field and bowling.

I have no point to make with any of that, just wanted to give context.

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Title IX just means equality in opportunity, facilities, practice time, room/board, travel, etc. It is somewhat open to interpretation with some things - travel, facilities, etc. I doubt any program will get called out because the mens locker room has 17 TVs and the womens only has 13. But if the women were forced to share a locker room with the general student body at the rec center and the men had their own locker room, that would be problematic. 

The dollars don't necessarily matter. It is about the opportunity. Football and hockey are expensive sports to put on from an equipment standpoint. Cross country and soccer aren't. So if the football team is rocking brand new fancy helmets, pads, and the best Nike cleats money can buy while the womens cross country team was wearing used shoes to run in, that would be problematic. At SLU the men and women's basketball teams practice in similar environments, play in the exact same arena, wear the same brand jerseys, shoes, etc. They both get nickeldicked on charter flights. They both take buses to places. They live in the same dorms. Etc. Same thing goes with mens/womens soccer. 

It isn't necessarily full scholarships that have to be equal either. It is the opportunity. Schools with football can't possibly have equal numbers of scholarship athletes because there are 80+ on that side and no women's sport could come close. Cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track programs are popular because you can double count them for the D1 requirements while using a lot of the same athletes and scholarship dollars. The volume of participants on those teams versus the scholarship limit (I want to say in the 10 range per squad) make it a good investment from an "opportunity" standpoint even though it will always lose money overall (minus a team that has a benefactor.) 

 

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50 minutes ago, NH said:

They don't have a money spent requirement. It is equal number of scholarships and some other items, like you originally thought.

The missing piece is that it does NOT have to be equal. Equal is an aspirational goal. It just cannot get worse, but if football already existed and tilted things towards the men, you just have to maintain or lessen that tilt. There is no rule that it must be even to be in compliance. 
 

It gets a bit abstract and is a wonderful ruling that has done wonderful things. That said, in a more perfect world it would be updated to recognize progress already made and the changing landscape of college athletics (but good luck to anyone going into those political waters). 

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8 hours ago, courtside said:

Title IX requires gender equality in scholarships but not spending and budgets. For example, at some schools, football has become more than 60% of total athletic budget. Football coach pay can take up 75% of a school's total athletics coaching budget.

There has been a growing trend the past ten years of many Power 5 schools using some of that big donor money,  tv money etc...to increase coach pay and budgets for some of its non-revenue sports teams. 

Got it.  In retrospect, I'm not sure how a could have assumed that spending had to be equal because it would be near impossible for women's sports to match football spending.  I'm a true MBM.  Title IX is a lot less progressive than I thought.

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