Financial Support For Football

[DFW HOYA]

Putting aside ticket revenues, how well is your school's program supported by gifts outside the university and/or state subsidy?

Following this, what is a suitable depth and breadth of fan suupport required to make the case to be a program at this level beyond what it takes to field the team?

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Putting aside ticket revenues, how well is your school's program supported by gifts outside the university and/or state subsidy?

Following this, what is a suitable depth and breadth of fan suupport required to make the case to be a program at this level beyond what it takes to field the team?

A fantastic question, and one with no real good answer.

Lehigh of course has not true state subsidy, since we're private, but we are reasonably well supported through alumni organizations such as the South Side Boosters and other wealthy alumni, notably the Goodman family who not only helped build Lehigh's football stadium but (I believe) also endowed the athletic director position as well. Lehigh also has other fundraising efforts through football alumni that have been, by all appearances, been successful as well.

[MplsBison]

As far as I know, there are three streams where money can appropriately come into the NDSU athletic department, in the name of football.

1) there is a private football booster club, called "Team Makers". Fans donate money to this club and the club then turns around and cuts NDSU's athletic department a check. I don't know how often, but I would guess at least once per fiscal year.

2) fans can basically be the direct bankroll for a football scholarship or a fraction of one. They have different financial commitment levels, which garner different levels of recognition. There can also be stipulations added to these. Like for example, I could start the "Mplsbison excellence fund for NDSU football" with the stipulation that the scholarship in my name must be award to a football or basketball player who is enrolled in a math, science or engineering field with a gpa at least 2.85. Something like that. They'll try to follow it.

I'm not certain if this is actually any different than 1. It might all go through Team Makers.

3) Periodically new facilities are needed and big boosters can directly fund them. For example, when the coaches' offices were built in the Fargodome - some guy gave a lot of money for that and I believe they named the whole office complex after him. This isn't nearly as consistent as 1 and 2.


As far as the amount, I think Team Makers contributes maybe a couple million per year.

[Bill]

Hoya

I know we've touched on this before, so I apologize if I'm repeating myself.

Attached as .pdf's are two pages from the last NCAA DI revenue report - ending in 2009. The two pages deal with FCS football. - scratch the upload - AGS won't let me put it there...too big?

Here is the section you're asking:

Ticket sales (17 percent) and contributions from alumni and others
(27 percent), in addition to NCAA and conference distributions
(14 percent) continue to carry the load as a percentage of generated
revenues. (4.14)

If you're really interested, I could sent it to you....