Budget Problems may threaten Louisiana college footall seasons....

[FormerPokeCenter]

Louisiana's budgetary shortfall is apparently so profound that the new Governor believes many state schools will run out of money in April.

If that happens, he's going to shut them down. If they shut down, students will be given an incomplete, which means that student athletes will be ineligible for the 2016 football season.

He specifically mentioned LSU, which has a self-sustaining football program and which actually funds the rest of the athletic department as well as a portion of the general fund.

For Grambling, McNeese, Nicholls, Northwestern, Southeastern, and Southern, the news doesn't look good...

[DFW HOYA]

Text of speech, linked below. He's saying it's not a scare tactic, which, of course, is exactly what it is:

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/read_gov_john_bel_edwards_tele.html

[Laker]

People have posted about the problems in Illinois. Now Louisiana. California always seems to be in the red. I'm sure that there will be other states having the same problems. People don't start paying attention until you threaten to cut off their sports------- or their water.

[TheRevSFA]

Is this fallout from Jindal mismanaging Louisiana?

[McNeese72]

Is this fallout from Jindal mismanaging Louisiana?

More so from the bottom falling out of the price of oil! A lot of Louisiana tax revenues are dependent upon that.

Of course, a lot of this is scare tactics (almost threats) to justify raising a bunch of taxes that Edwards wants. You don't give me the taxes I want, we are going to cut the hell out of education more. None of the give away programs he wants will be cut.

Doc

[FormerPokeCenter]

This is fall out from the fact that under the current Louisiana Constitution, the only places you can cut the budget are Education and Health Care...but...primarily, the instant matter is drawn to a head because of the drop in oil prices and the taxes collected on drilling, etc., has all but dried up.

[FormerPokeCenter]

if he follows through on shutting down schools either this spring...or in the fall...then it'll affect Conference USA, the SEC, the Southland, the Slumbelch and the SWAC.

[JSUSoutherner]

if he follows through on shutting down schools either this spring...or in the fall...then it'll affect Conference USA, the SEC, the Southland, the Slumbelch and the SWAC.
If LSU is anything like Bama is here, I think they would be thrilled to death that every other school would close. More attention for them.

There's no way LSU closes up.

[NoCoDanny]

I'll believe it when I see it...

[Catatonic]

If LSU is anything like Bama is here, I think they would be thrilled to death that every other school would close. More attention for them.

There's no way LSU closes up.

My guess is that if it comes down to it, rather than ban together to fight this proposal it will be every school for themselves....LSU will win, other schools will lose but Mcneese may try to keep their doors open and football team on the field by throwing , say, Nicholls under the bus.

[FormerPokeCenter]

I don't know how McNeese can influence what happens at Nicholls....the more likely scenario is that those bastards at USL will try to find the political clout necessary to ensure THEIR survival at the expense of all of the rest of the state schools.

[Hammerhead]

This is fall out from the fact that under the current Louisiana Constitution, the only places you can cut the budget are Education and Health Care...but...primarily, the instant matter is drawn to a head because of the drop in oil prices and the taxes collected on drilling, etc., has all but dried up.

From his speech: " This is due, in part, to the drop in oil prices and a slowdown in sales and corporate tax collections. In fact, we're paying out more in credits and refunds to corporations this year than we are collecting from them in taxes. This is not sound financial policy."

[IBleedYellow]

If LSU is anything like Bama is here, I think they would be thrilled to death that every other school would close. More attention for them.

There's no way LSU closes up.

Yes, LSU would close up too.

No matter how much money boosters put into the program, the students could go to all of their classes, but they wouldn't be able to compete in sports, because they would get INCOMPLETE for their grades.

http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/lsu-football/governor-speech-halt-lsu-football/
(http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/lsu-football/governor-speech-halt-lsu-football/)

While, that probably won't happen...the Gov probably just awoke a very massive beast. Hoping to get his tax raises passed through.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Lost in this is probably the more important point: a key scholarship program for the state is set to run out of money.

http://www.nola.com/lsu/index.ssf/2016/02/cutting_tops_funding_spells_do.html


It's not often in Skip Bertman's 18 years as LSU's baseball coach followed by 7½ years as the school's athletic director that he got blindsided by the unknown on the horizon.

But he was absolutely floored Thursday night when he learned the breaking news that any in-state Louisiana college students on TOPS scholarships will have to pay for all or most their tuition bills starting next year.


Jay Dardenne, new Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' budget chief, had to play the reluctant role of the Grim Reaper Thursday afternoon. He announced the shrinking state budget leaves TOPS about $28 million short of what it takes to fully fund the program through the end of the current semester.


While no students currently receiving TOPS would lose their scholarships mid-semester, they'll have to foot the bill next year when only $65 million will be available for TOPS scholarships.


"This is going to hurt every sports program at every university in this state," Bertman said.


Why?


Because aside from football and basketball, whose expansive NCAA scholarship limits pay the complete freight for just about every player on the roster, the rest of the sports (both men's and women's) with considerably less scholarships rely heavily on TOPS to recruit in-state athletes.


The sports mostly TOPS-fueled are baseball, which has just 11.7 scholarships and women's softball, which has 12.

I don't know if TOPS schollies help fuel FCS programs like McNeese and Nicholls, but I would imagine so. Maybe someone closer to the situation like TPC can clarify.

Even if they pass a budget, it's very unclear whether TOPS will be a part of that funding.

[JSUSoutherner]

Yes, LSU would close up too.

No matter how much money boosters put into the program, the students could go to all of their classes, but they wouldn't be able to compete in sports, because they would get INCOMPLETE for their grades.

http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/lsu-football/governor-speech-halt-lsu-football/
(http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/lsu-football/governor-speech-halt-lsu-football/)

While, that probably won't happen...the Gov probably just awoke a very massive beast. Hoping to get his tax raises passed through.
Schools give out grades, not governments.

There are plenty of private universities that self-sustain without government funding. With the amount of money LSU rakes in, I would imagine LSU would be able to self sustain. The universities that couldn't would indeed close up and their students would receive an incomplete.

The DOE isn't even the one that gives a university their accreditation. Therefore allowing LSU, given the ability to self sustain, keep running despite the governor's statements.

The most the Governor can do is pull state funding (and risk a mob of crazed LSU fans burning him at the stake and never electing him for anything ever again). Whether a university closes is up to the university.

Personally, instead of raising taxes I think Lousiana should do what Gerogia is doing. Lottery revenue goes to colleges and scholarships. I could go home and go to UGA for dirt cheap right now because the HOPE scholarship we have. But if funding schools themselves were the problem just don't have the scholarship and give the money directly to the universities. Of course, I'm not familiar with Lousiana's system. I'm just tossing ideas.

[BEAR]

Lottery scholarship has worked so well in Arkansas.
Heres the timeline and how much each student has or will get:

Traditional students

5 years ago each semester students got $5,000.
Today students get $1,000 a semester.

Nontraditional Students

5 years ago they got $500.
Today they get nothing.

So instead of budgeting the scholarship money out of the general fund each year so it is there we told our kids we care so much about their education that we will scratch it off a gas station lotto card and hope enough people buy lottery tickets to fund it. How freakin stupid. Arkansas will follow Louisiana soon enough.

[JSUSoutherner]

Lottery scholarship has worked so well in Arkansas.
Heres the timeline and how much each student has or will get:

Traditional students

5 years ago each semester students got $5,000.
Today students get $1,000 a semester.

Nontraditional Students

5 years ago they got $500.
Today they get nothing.

So instead of budgeting the scholarship money out of the general fund each year so it is there we told our kids we care so much about their education that we will scratch it off a gas station lotto card and hope enough people buy lottery tickets to fund it. How freakin stupid. Arkansas will follow Louisiana soon enough.
Really? We get a percentage of anything lottery. Including the Powerball and the MegaMillions. It's based of high school GPA here as well. If you maintain a 3.0 or better you get 70% tuition if you go to an instate school. 90% if you have a 3.8 or better.

It's worked pretty well for us here. They even expanded the program recently. Used to be that you needed at 3.5 to land in the 70% scholarship tier.

[FormerPokeCenter]

Schools give out grades, not governments.

There are plenty of private universities that self-sustain without government funding. With the amount of money LSU rakes in, I would imagine LSU would be able to self sustain. The universities that couldn't would indeed close up and their students would receive an incomplete.

The DOE isn't even the one that gives a university their accreditation. Therefore allowing LSU, given the ability to self sustain, keep running despite the governor's statements.

The most the Governor can do is pull state funding (and risk a mob of crazed LSU fans burning him at the stake and never electing him for anything ever again). Whether a university closes is up to the university.

Personally, instead of raising taxes I think Lousiana should do what Gerogia is doing. Lottery revenue goes to colleges and scholarships. I could go home and go to UGA for dirt cheap right now because the HOPE scholarship we have. But if funding schools themselves were the problem just don't have the scholarship and give the money directly to the universities. Of course, I'm not familiar with Lousiana's system. I'm just tossing ideas.


LSU's football program is self-sustaining through the Tiger Athletic Fund. They actually subsidize the rest of the Athletic Department and a chunk of the general fund.

However, even with that, LSU isn't self-sustaining.

TOPS is funded with tax payer dollars. I have two daughters in college currently and though they qualify for TOPS, I've elected to fund their education without having them apply for it, so the changes aren't really going to effect me, except to the extent that they start cutting classes, professors, etc. My oldest daughter is scheduled to graduate this summer if all goes according to plan.

My youngest is a sophomore...so, there's probably more to worry about where she's concerned.

The corporate tax thing is a red herring. That's just the Governor's saber rattling to garner support for massive tax increases.

He's proposed the largest tax increase in the history of Louisiana. It's not going to end well...

[Catatonic]

LSU's football program is self-sustaining through the Tiger Athletic Fund. They actually subsidize the rest of the Athletic Department and a chunk of the general fund.

However, even with that, LSU isn't self-sustaining.

TOPS is funded with tax payer dollars. I have two daughters in college currently and though they qualify for TOPS, I've elected to fund their education without having them apply for it, so the changes aren't really going to effect me, except to the extent that they start cutting classes, professors, etc. My oldest daughter is scheduled to graduate this summer if all goes according to plan.

My youngest is a sophomore...so, there's probably more to worry about where she's concerned.

The corporate tax thing is a red herring. That's just the Governor's saber rattling to garner support for massive tax increases.

He's proposed the largest tax increase in the history of Louisiana. It's not going to end well...


Well said.

Virtually no P5 university is self sustaining. They all rely on multiple revenue streams, including government aid. Money from government--state as well as federal. Most public schools receive tuition subsidy from the legislature/governor, and while that's the largest single source of state aid, there are other, more indirect, forms of aid as well.

Some states receive more tuition subsidy than others but most states share a common problem--money received from the state's general fund is going down, not up. As state subsidies decrease, universities have looked to other revenue streams to make up the difference. That's one reason for the rapid increase in tuition and for the pressure for faculty to generate money via research grants.

I don't know the situation in Louisiana, but I know enough to know that however much or little LSU currently receives from state tax revenues it would be impossible to keep the doors open without it, at least in the short term, as administrators search for ways to increase other revenue streams to make up the difference.

[Catatonic]

Really? We get a percentage of anything lottery. Including the Powerball and the MegaMillions. It's based of high school GPA here as well. If you maintain a 3.0 or better you get 70% tuition if you go to an instate school. 90% if you have a 3.8 or better.

It's worked pretty well for us here. They even expanded the program recently. Used to be that you needed at 3.5 to land in the 70% scholarship tier.


Georgia's HOPE program has been THE national model for lottery funded scholarships. Back in the good old days a 3.0 GPA got you 100% tuition, but that was when Zell Miller first launched the HOPE program. The HOPE is a major reason why UGA has shot up in academic rankings over the past twenty years or so. Georgia's brightest and best students started staying at home and going through UGA's Honors Program rather than going to private universities out of state. I was in Athens from 1976-2006, and the transformation of the university was something to behold.

Funding issues as well as other problems have necessitated tinkering with requirements over the years. One such problem: The scholarship was easy to get, hard to keep. A 3.0 high school GPA is much easier to achieve than maintaining a 3.0 in college. Too many kids went to college in the fall and had to drop out in the spring after losing the scholarship based on first semester grades.

HOPE is still a good deal, but not the 100% deal it used to be back when.

[Go Green]

Because aside from football and basketball, whose expansive NCAA scholarship limits pay the complete freight for just about every player on the roster, the rest of the sports (both men's and women's) with considerably less scholarships rely heavily on TOPS to recruit in-state athletes..

I don't think that "football and men's basketball are self-funding" is going to satisfy Title IX advocates.

[DFW HOYA]

Virtually no P5 university is self sustaining. They all rely on multiple revenue streams, including government aid. Money from government--state as well as federal. Most public schools receive tuition subsidy from the legislature/governor, and while that's the largest single source of state aid, there are other, more indirect, forms of aid as well.

Some states receive more tuition subsidy than others but most states share a common problem--money received from the state's general fund is going down, not up. As state subsidies decrease, universities have looked to other revenue streams to make up the difference. That's one reason for the rapid increase in tuition and for the pressure for faculty to generate money via research grants.


P5 private schools (Baylor, BC, Duke, Miami, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Stanford, Syracuse, TCU, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest) do not receive tuition subsidies from their respective states.

There are 44 I-AA schools which do not receive subsidies, not counting Cornell.

[Catatonic]

P5 private schools (Baylor, BC, Duke, Miami, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Stanford, Syracuse, TCU, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest) do not receive tuition subsidies from their respective states.

There are 44 I-AA schools which do not receive subsidies, not counting Cornell.

I didn't say they received direct state subsidy money. That does not mean they don't receive state and federal money in other forms.

They receive state and federal funding in the form of grants-contracts. Contracts are often to provide training for state employees or to perform some sort of service. In some states, students from private schools are also eligible for state funded "tuition equalization" grants, where students who are residents of a state who attend private universities in their state receive all or a portion of the amount of per student subsidy the state would otherwise provide state universities in the form of a scholarship. In others, state lottery scholarships are available to students who attend in state private universities as well as public universities. These are examples of money that winds up in the coffers of private universities, including many if not all of those you listed.

[DFW HOYA]

As for two the I-AA schools that are not in any state (Georgetown and Howard), state subsidies aren't an issue. Federal, that's another story.

The DC government offers a $2,500 scholarship ("DCTAG") to students attending any public or HBCU nationally, or any private school in the District. Neither Georgetown nor Howard are even on the top 30 schools in their lists--Howard has 116 students with DC TAG grants, Georgetown somewhere between 10-20.

On the federal side, Howard University is the beneficiary of over $240 million in annual subsidy thanks to an act of Congress well over a century old. That's seven times what the publicly funded university in the District, University of the District of Columbia, gets from the city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/education/edlife/a-historically-black-college-is-rocked-by-the-economy-infighting-and-a-changing-demographic.html?_r=0

[BEAR]

So can we look ahead at 2016 now and see who will win the SLC without the Louisiana schools in the picture? xlolx I'm sure next year Sam will wrap it up without the Arkansas school the next year. xthumbsupx

[Thumper 76]

So can we look ahead at 2016 now and see who will win the SLC without the Louisiana schools in the picture? xlolx I'm sure next year Sam will wrap it up without the Arkansas school the next year. xthumbsupx

Does that mean SLC teams would be able to schedule more than one OOC game?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ccd494]

I don't think that "football and men's basketball are self-funding" is going to satisfy Title IX advocates.

You misunderstand. The athletics scholarships that a school gives out all come from a single pool (yes, largely funded by football and basketball at big schools).

For football and basketball, the number of scholarships the NCAA allows you to award are equal to (or close to equal to) the number of players you need on your roster to compete.

For baseball and most other sports, the number of scholarships the NCAA allows you to award is insufficient to roster a full team. The 11.7 scholarships for an NCAA baseball team isn't enough to field a full team. So even though the baseball scholarships and football scholarships come from the same pile of money, baseball players need to pay some of their own way (either as individuals or through other scholarships/aid like TOPS) in order to get ~20 players on the roster, while football and basketball don't.

[FormerPokeCenter]

Does that mean SLC teams would be able to schedule more than one OOC game?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


The SLC has had the mandated 9 game conference schedule for exactly one year...that leaves room for two OOC games.....McNeese was the only SLC team to play an abbreviated schedule because of a lightning cancellation...

However, the non-Louisiana SLC teams might have to schedule a BUNCH of OOC games next year...

[BisonFan02]

The SLC has had the mandated 9 game conference schedule for exactly one year...that leaves room for two OOC games.....McNeese was the only SLC team to play an abbreviated schedule because of a lightning cancellation...

However, the non-Louisiana SLC teams might have to schedule a BUNCH of OOC games next year...

That 9 game conference schedule doesn't leave alot when you toss in a FBS matchup (or two) and a DII school...across the entire conference.

[McNeese72]

That 9 game conference schedule doesn't leave alot when you toss in a FBS matchup (or two) and a DII school...across the entire conference.

Nope. We really don't like it.

Doc

[BEAR]

That 9 game conference schedule doesn't leave alot when you toss in a FBS matchup (or two) and a DII school...across the entire conference.

Which is why UCA scheduled two OOC games including Samford and Arkansas State next year. Both which could easily be losses after looking at last years results. xlolx There's just no room for DII teams hardly anymore with 9 conference games.

[BisonFan02]

Which is why UCA scheduled two OOC games including Samford and Arkansas State next year. Both which could easily be losses after looking at last years results. xlolx There's just no room for OOC FCS home/homes hardly anymore with 9 conference games.

FIFY....which hurts us MVFC members looking for dance partners outside of the Big Sky every year.

[clenz]

FIFY....which hurts us MVFC members looking for dance partners outside of the Big Sky every year.

Yup. UNI has played many SLC games. Always been fun and reliable as they don't tend to back out last minute like MEAC schools

[walliver]

This is just Louisiana politics. When I lived there many moons ago, Edwin Edwards cancelled all state funding for dialysis care. A few weeks later he loudly led a popular uprising to restore dialysis funding that the evil legislature supposedly had cut.

LSU will play football in the SEC in 2016. They would eliminate the English and Education departments before cutting football.

[Nickels]

Even in best case, Nicholls may close temporarily
http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/2016/02/15/even-best-case-nicholls-close-temporarily/80403372/



They would eliminate the English...departments before cutting football.
No big loss. Clearly the money wasn't well spent...

[Lehigh Football Nation]

"I told them in no uncertain terms this is unacceptable," said Chabert, a member of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee that will help determine the scope of the midyear cuts. "It's financially impossible for Nicholls to be in a worse financially position that Grambling (State University).
"I know for a fact that others in the system are in worse shape, and to say we're the only one that has to close is either a gross misunderstanding or a scare tactic used by those trying to further a political agenda."


U.G.L.Y. You ain't got no alibi