Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="orangehipfan, post: 474692, member: 406"] a couple of quick guesses/comments. SU is a relatively small private school. NCAA football is basically dominated (except for Note Dame) by large state schools with much deeper pockets than SU. The small private schools (see Vanderbilt this year) can have "good" years but the long term, big time programs represent mostly large, state institutions. The university has "invested" in a lot of real estate in the city of Syracuse over the past 8 - 10 years. Right or wrong this uses liquid assets and also adds overheads that may or may not be recovered. My guess is much of this is off the balance sheet of the university. I use "investments" very loosely here. The balance sheet for public disclosure does not show the full financial portrait of the university. This is not to deceive but rather that the off balance sheet activity has grown significantly and would have an adverse affect on the actual financial performance of the school. Like many businesses, expenses have been increasing at a more rapid pace than revenues over the past 3 - 4 years. The school expected attendance to pick up more quickly for football and it has not. Nobody realized just how bad a hiring Greg Robinson really was. This has left football revenue lagging. The expense of new facilities/upgrades is not cheap and the university has limited unrestricted liquid assets to contribute at this time. They are trying to hold off expenditures until they see the cash from the ACC move rather than borrow now in the capital markets. Bottom line, the university is currently not in a financial position to commit a large amount of money to athletics, especially football which requires a large commitment. That being said, coach Marrone thought things would be different by now when he signed on to the job and knows there is not a quick fix without the commitment from the school and fanbase/contributors. No blame to the board of trustees or the athletic department, just plain simple math (or finance). My guess, we are much closer to a league of BC, Uconn, army, navy (complete guesses on the schools but you get the idea) etc for football than we are to a league playing for the BCS on an annual basis. Hoops would be fine but football is a complete different monster to handle. Again, no inside info just my thoughts. Many people think SU has unlimited funds but it does not. Compared to many other schools, its endowment (not even one of the largest in New York State, think Cornell, U of Rochester) is much smaller than most. Like any business they need to allocate capital where necessary to support their core mission. Things were much different in 2007 - 2008 before the financial crisis. The impact is felt in areas beyond what many people think. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?