Financial Issues Facing Schools Due To Pandemic, Loss Of Income From Football

 
Info that would be interesting to know. How many high schools make a profit from football? What is that profit? How many lose money?
 
Blue Jay Fan said:
Info that would be interesting to know. How many high schools make a profit from football? What is that profit? How many lose money?
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I think most athletic departments make money because the school pays for many things including coaches salaries, insurance, field maintenance uniforms and equipment. But if look at total cost of everything associated with football and compare to revenue from tickets and concessions my guess is more schools lose money than make it.
 
CC Track Fan said:
I think most athletic departments make money because the school pays for many things including coaches salaries, insurance, field maintenance uniforms and equipment. But if look at total cost of everything associated with football and compare to revenue from tickets and concessions my guess is more schools lose money than make it.
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My district (14 high schools) pays for coaches salaries and field maintenance (however our AD cuts the grass haha). South Carolina state law requires student-athletes to buy secondary insurance coverage which for my district the last few years has been $40.00 / kid. So the district does not cover insurance. Kid pays or doesn't play. Uniforms and equipment it is up to the individual school to raise money and finance these items.

You forgot the biggest budget killer of all. Transportation. As the assistant AD in charge of transportation at my school I can tell you we spend a TON of our revenue on simply moving kids to and from away contests. In 2019 we spent roughly $60,000 on this one item (driver pay and diesel fuel for 22 varsity teams and 9 JV teams add up). Our football team in the fall of 2019 brought in slightly over $40,000 in gate receipts. Football gate can't even cover the department's transportation budget let alone anything else.

Luckily we have a great booster club who stomps the pavement and brings in a ton of booster club revenue. The issue with this now however is, booster club revenue is predicated on businesses being willing to donate and people willing to come to games and buy hot dogs and soda. If businesses are hurting financially they are less likely to buy ads in the football program and stadium scoreboard ads.

Without football the biggest issue would be the loss of booster club revenue. At least for my school. Can't speak for the others.
 
Public schools have and will continue to suffer. Not saying Privates have not hurt either but they can make changes on the fly. Most people running public school districts are not prepared for a Covid-19 Pandemic (rightfully so). Covid will compound public school pain. Buckle up everyone.
 
wildcat71 said:
And if you read the media reports, 2nd wave is due to people going to the beaches, restaurants and even Trump rallies. Yet no mention of a surge due to the millions of protesters. They must be immune I guess..
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The real answer is all of the above are potentially dangerous activities if one considers all the data as opposed to choosing those that support a preconceived opinion and ignoring those that don't.
 
And it's not just about money, cancelling extracurricular activities will also begin to sever the connection between the school district and the community in which it resides. And it's not just sports, though athletics are an important part of it. It's also music and art and a host of other activities.

* No more Friday night football which is a constant for so many communities. And it's not just football, the marching band is also a draw. Silent, dark fields where there used to be light, energy and excitement. Think about all that goes on at a Friday Night game form the halftime & post game marching band shows to honoring all sorts of people from the school & community pre-game and during halftime.

* No more school concerts and choir shows. For a lot of districts these are big deals with the community showing up in droves.

* No more class plays and drama club presentations. No art shows or Science Fairs.

* No homecoming and the Marching Band won't be leading the homecoming parade or any parade (Memorial Day, 4th of July etc.).

I could go on but folks get the picture. People will find other things to do and other ways to socialize. The mystique will be broken which is a sad thing. A community will become less of a community. And for what?
 
queencitybuckeye said:
The real answer is all of the above are potentially dangerous activities if one considers all the data as opposed to choosing those that support a preconceived opinion and ignoring those that don't.
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You know that in a typical year more high school and college aged young people will die from the flu then will die from covid?
 
Original post focuses on the financials of football and what would happen if that went away.

From there it's basically every other post "i do wonder about the financials" or some other such on-topic statement, the other half "SOCIALISM! LIBERALS! TRUMP!"

The internet always provides.
 
Blue Jay Fan said:
Info that would be interesting to know. How many high schools make a profit from football? What is that profit? How many lose money?
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That is an interesting question and is very difficult to answer because it would depend on how they assign costs. If you look at just the coaching salaries, player equipment, and game associated fees (ie officials, security), I would assume most schools are making money. Five home games with 1000 fans at $7 per person is $35,000. That should be enough to cover everything.

The other costs and revenues muddy the water. The stadium might be a huge outlay of money or might be decades old and little maintenance costs. There are other people and sports that would have to take on many of those costs because they use the stadium too. Many schools have pay-to-play fees that more than cover their actual costs. Fundraisers, concessions, and advertisers can be a big source of revenue but might not be directly attributed to the football team.

Overall, I think football generates a positive cash flow for most schools in Ohio. Not having football will hurt those schools.
 
Yappi said:
That is an interesting question and is very difficult to answer because it would depend on how they assign costs. If you look at just the coaching salaries, player equipment, and game associated fees (ie officials, security), I would assume most schools are making money. Five home games with 1000 fans at $7 per person is $35,000. That should be enough to cover everything.

The other costs and revenues muddy the water. The stadium might be a huge outlay of money or might be decades old and little maintenance costs. There are other people and sports that would have to take on many of those costs because they use the stadium too. Many schools have pay-to-play fees that more than cover their actual costs. Fundraisers, concessions, and advertisers can be a big source of revenue but might not be directly attributed to the football team.

Overall, I think football generates a positive cash flow for most schools in Ohio. Not having football will hurt those schools.
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One slight correction. A GOOD football program generates positive cash flow. haha. I've lived / worked through what an athletic department looks like financially when the football team is bad. Especially at a large school where there are a lot of irons in the fire.
 
queencitybuckeye said:
So unless someone dies, all is well?
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So how would you define what makes a virus dangerous? Simply catching it like the common cold?

During flu season a lot of kids and coaches get the flu and are bedridden. A small number get so sick from the flu they require hospitalization. And tragically a very small number die from the flu. So yea, when deciding how best to deal with covid19 and extracurricular activities I look to what we do with the flu.

And why do I look to the flu? Because the fatality rate between the two virus is similar. So deaths are the key metric.
 
Yappi said:
That is an interesting question and is very difficult to answer because it would depend on how they assign costs. If you look at just the coaching salaries, player equipment, and game associated fees (ie officials, security), I would assume most schools are making money. Five home games with 1000 fans at $7 per person is $35,000. That should be enough to cover everything.

The other costs and revenues muddy the water. The stadium might be a huge outlay of money or might be decades old and little maintenance costs. There are other people and sports that would have to take on many of those costs because they use the stadium too. Many schools have pay-to-play fees that more than cover their actual costs. Fundraisers, concessions, and advertisers can be a big source of revenue but might not be directly attributed to the football team.

Overall, I think football generates a positive cash flow for most schools in Ohio. Not having football will hurt those schools.
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Are you looking at only varsity or all levels, varsity to junior high? Are you including transportation costs for all levels? I could probably start looking through all the regions and name schools that likely don't have 1,000 fans at each home game. I'm not so sure it's a money make for most schools.
 
lotr10 said:
So how would you define what makes a virus dangerous? Simply catching it like the common cold?

During flu season a lot of kids and coaches get the flu and are bedridden. A small number get so sick from the flu they require hospitalization. And tragically a very small number die from the flu. So yea, when deciding how best to deal with covid19 and extracurricular activities I look to what we do with the flu.

And why do I look to the flu? Because the fatality rate between the two virus is similar. So deaths are the key metric.
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The flu rarely if ever causes permanent damage to various systems in the body. Covid does.
 
Caleb said:
Pretty much. Imagine what will happen if a quarterback in a major program everybody is familiar with becomes extremely ill or worse will people just say next man up?
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So it's OK if QB's in minor programs that few people are familiar with get sick and die?
 
queencitybuckeye said:
The flu rarely if ever causes permanent damage to various systems in the body. Covid does.
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This has not been proven yet. The fact that covid19 overwhelmingly targets the very old and those with multiple, severe underlining health issues makes it very hard to isolate out that this virus is causing more "permanent damage" then the flu. We won't know whether this is true for at least another year or two.

As for "permanent damage" what do you call death?

According to the CDC since the 2010 flu season the 95% confidence range of yearly deaths has been from 11,000 to 95,000. And this is using counting methods far more restrictive then those used to assign covid19 deaths. Some epidemiologists are speculating that you would increase previous flu deaths by 25% - 50% if you used the same counting methods as being used for covid19.

And lets look at the CDC estimates for flu hospitalizations over this time period. They range from as few as 130,000 one year to as many as 1,400,000 in the 2017/18 flu season.

The flu is and always has been serious business. But we have learned to live with it by augmenting a weak vaccine with common sense hygiene & social distancing practices. We have never shut the country down or significantly altered our society in response to the flu in the modern era. And given what we know about covid19 today, it makes more sense to treat it like the flu then to take an entirely different, and potentially more damaging approach, to dealing with it.

The continued refusal by the powers that be to fully factor in the cumulative damage being down by the shutdown is frustrating. It may reduce the negative outcomes of the covid but the NET impact is worse then if we didn't shut down. Ten years from now this position will be viewed as conventional knowledge and you can bank on that.
 
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