Fear Not Fans, JMU is “Monitoring” Cost of Attendance
As we mentioned last week, JMU’s CAA league mates, College of Charleston and Towson, announced that they’ll begin providing scholarship athletes with cost of attendance (COA) stipends. The DNR’s Matt Jones reached out to JMU Athletic Director Jeff Bourne yesterday to get his thoughts and some insight into how JMU will handle the situation. Bourne said that “at this point we’re better off monitoring and watching what happens at a national level with cost of attendance through this fall.” Yes, he said “monitoring.” I can’t decide if he just talks that way or if he’s openly trolling message board folks now.
COA is a sticky issue. It’s one thing when P5 programs generate multi-million dollar surpluses from athletics and decide to spread the wealth. It’s another thing with schools that have athletic programs not operating in the red and generating the overwhelming majority of their athletic revenues directly from student fees. In that situation, paying COA is essentially like having students write checks to their classmates.
Bourne notes that many conferences haven’t decided what to do about COA and that justifies JMU taking its time. He’s not completely wrong. However, with Towson and CofC biting the bullet, and UNCW seeminly poised to join them, it looks like paying COA is inevitable. JMU can probably only kick the can down the road for so long. Eventually, the price of doing business is just going to go up and they’ll have to get on board. Failing to do so while other CAA teams up the ante, will put JMU at a competitive disadvantage.
JMU estimates that COA stipends will amount to about $4,180 per athlete. That’s a grand total of about $900K/year. That doesn’t seem like too much compared to the millions JMU has spent, and wants to continue to spend, on facilities. The Dukes already spend $37 million a year on athletics, the most of any FCS program. That’s both staggering and sort of depressing.
At a certain point, this spending just becomes unreasonable for an athletic program of JMU’s stature. The school needs to find a way to seriously boost revenue or start being a little more judicious with the spending. Obviously, a lot of fans will immediately pull the “Go FBS” card. That might be a solution. There needs to be a back-up plan though. JMU simply can’t afford (literally) to spend like this while patiently waiting for an FBS opportunity to present itself. Adding more costs to an already swelled budget, without creating new revenue streams is just unwise. JMU is probably going to have pay COA eventually. Ducking the issue in the press with political speak is fine, provided of course, that there is a real plan to fund things being developed in the background. This is one issue the school can’t just monitor.
Just so you know there are only about 10-15 very large universities that have athletic departments that DO NOT operate in the RED.
most every P5 athletic department operates in the RED. Yeah their football and/or basketball programs may make money but they lose overall as those cannot cover the losses by the non-revenue generating sports.
I personally don’t care for the concept of COA —- but the reality is it is here and most likely here to stay. So it is now just a cost of doing business (kind of like Obama-care). JMU has a large athletic budget (approx. $37M) and has spent to upgrade facilities across the board (with new bball arena now in the works). After making these huge investments in facilities it seems counter-productive to go on ‘the cheap’ with regards to COA.
Athletics is the front-porch to the university with regards to marketing and maintaining engagement with alumni and generating donations. And shiny facilities only go so far. Less than a $1M for COA seems like a small price to pay to not put every athletic team at a disadvantage compared to a college offering COA in their package when recruiting.
@Shady_P thanks for pointing out the typo. I rushed this at 6:00 this morning before work. I’m well aware that only a few universities generate a surplus or profit on athletics. My point is that JMU isn’t one of them, which means they’re going to need to scramble for the cash to pay COA (and yes, NEED, they can’t be competitive not paying if the rest of the CAA eventually does).
Less than $1M more for COA does seem like chump change compared to the money being spent on facilities. It’s still $1M more JMU would have to come up with though. The Duke Club hasn’t even cracked $2M a year in donations yet, so it’s not likely that will be the source of the funding. JMU needs to create additional revenue streams, just pass the costs to the students, or start cutting elsewhere. At a certain point if they don’t address spending or start getting way more bang for the buck, it’s just throwing good money after bad. The “front porch” theory is great, but I can’t think of anyone I know who applied to JMU or was even enticed to apply because they first noticed any of JMU’s sports teams.
@Shady_P to be clear, I think you and I are in complete agreement that this is new cost of doing business and JMU is going to have to pay. The administration’s wavering over FBS hasn’t bothered me as much as it has others. For some reason though, this COA issue concerns me way more and I really want to see some real pro-active leadership from Bourne, Alger, and everyone else. I apologize if that’s caused me to ramble incoherently.
I agree with Shady P and Rob. looks like COA is here no matter what our thoughts are. I think the more disturbing thing is that JMU stands for Just Monitoring University. I wish someone could make decisions or we find someone who can.
@Rob — I agree 100%. I am in the pro-FBS camp, but the COA is relevant whether FBS or FCS. We still compete at the same level in all sports except football today. It just frustrates me that the Admin & Athletic Department are so damn reactive in nature. They monitor adnaseum and just choose to repeatedely not make decisions or be acted upon.
I would just like Alger & Bourne to follow their own motto — ‘Be the Change’
Real leaders have to act, be proactive, and decisive in their actions.
I might not agree with the stance and decisons but I would at least know what the stance is.
http://hamptonroads.com/2015/05/odu-will-pay-stipends-athletes-how-much-0
This article came out in May. According to the article, as of May, East Carolina, VCU and ODU, have all decided to pay athletes a COA stipend. The only question is how much? Of course there are several other schools that are also paying athletes. So, this issue should be front and center for all athletic departments across the country. But, I also mention these 3 schools in particular because they are all schools that had the foresight and leadership to jump off the CAA ship when it first started to take on water. They didn’t just monitor their situations until something may or may not have happened. These schools created visions for their athletic programs, and then put a plan in action to achieve those visions. Now they have left JMU in the dust athletically, they can no longer be considered true rivals, and are apparently widening the gap by acting on the COA issue.
Please send someone to Harrisonburg to wake Mr. Bourne and Mr. Alger up!!!
Head has not exploded, but there is a comical level of “monitoring” going on. He has to be trolling.
At some point, real leadership requires meaningful introspection, independent critical thought, and decisiveness. Although it is self evident across most disciplines that you can just follow the masses, regurgitate other people’s ideas, and climb the ladder to a top position in any bureaucracy.
How long until we can monitor the action against Morehead State?
I hate the fact that universities are having to pay student (?) / athletes a stipend, I thought a free education was payment enough, but I understand the reality of the situation. What I hate more is that, living in Tidewater, I have seen a school that DID NOT EVEN HAVE FOOTBALL eight years ago blow past JMU, the CAA and FCS in a scant 5 years. They sure as hell did not “monitor” the situation too long. According to the Virginian Pilot their donations have increased, and their Big Blue Club donations have significantly increased by being in FBS. More importantly their applications have increased to the point where they are more selective about the students they admit. They are planning to build a new Stadium in the next two or three years. As far as JMU/FBS goes I believe that ship has sailed and won’t be returning for a few years. Everything you hear from the MAC, CUSA, Sun Belt, etc., is that they are not planning on expanding anytime soon, and maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the ACC, Big 10, or the SEC getting cozy with JMU. Nope, I think Bourne just blew our chance for a few years. By that time the attendance at games will probably be down in the low teens. Way to go Jeff, keep “monitoring” and don’t do anything rash, like make a decision.
OK rant over, everyone have a great rest of the summer, and we will see you September 5th.