Coyle says changes could be coming to Gopher sports department

[GopherTheJugular]

I just posted something in a thread about the House anti-trust case. the P4 conferences are reportedly setting new roster and scholarship limits, with some fairly significant changes from current practice. the kicker is that individual schools have the option to decide how many scholarships to give out for each sport, but they cannot exceed the roster limit.

I was thinking an easy way around title 9 would be to not offer scholarships to men's football players. Instead, just tell them they'll get $50k more in direct payments and they can use that to cover tuition. Then cut 85 female athletic scholarships and use that money to boost payments to the football players.

I'm sure some on here will call me harsh, but don't tell me SEC schools won't be pulling stuff like this to pump up extra money for football players.

Play the game, or get out of the arena.

 

[Some guy]

I just posted something in a thread about the House anti-trust case. the P4 conferences are reportedly setting new roster and scholarship limits, with some fairly significant changes from current practice. the kicker is that individual schools have the option to decide how many scholarships to give out for each sport, but they cannot exceed the roster limit.

So a school like MN - if it chooses - could decide to hand out fewer scholarships for certain sports if it is trying to set aside money for the new revenue-sharing agreement. but of course, if MN is not funding all of its scholarships for certain sports, that could lead to a recruiting or competitive disadvantage if other schools in the conference are funding sports to the full roster limit.

some big decisions facing Coyle & company in the new landscape of power-conference athletics.

Would guess that the conference will set minimums in certain sports but not all sports

 

[FredCoxRocks]

Nice post.

Maybe another angle, and this isn't meant to come off as rude, would be to have them play more locally. I don't really care how most of these teams (men and women's) compete against other big ten schools, but I'd be interested in how they compete against local schools. Like, I'll never go to a gopher baseball game against big ten teams, but if they competed against St. Thomas and such yearly, I'd at least have some interest. Almost like glorified high school sports, where the rivalries are cool.

If you like the local angle, the Gopher VB team plays St. Thomas on Sept. 10. You should go, it shouldn't take long.

 

[FredCoxRocks]

Agreed. And they should be able to generate more revenue from those two sports, plus softball. It's been a few years now since I have spoken to anyone about this, but at that time there was a reluctance to increase ticket and donation levels for volleyball and softball because they were viewed as "family friendly" options and people were concerned that women and girls were less likely to make increased financial commitments. So they were selling almost all the ticket inventory at prices that were lower what it appeared that the market could support. If we are moving toward a framework where football and men's basketball are going to be able to keep more of the revenue they produce, it might be time to re-visit those notions.

We paid roughly $15 per seat for Womens' VB season tickets the last few years. I bought nice tickets for one Gopher football game before that totaled more than our VB season ticket bill.
IMHO, the season ticket crowd for Gopher VB has the money. I would like to think that the U could raise ticket prices a few dollars per seat without much complaint. But you never know.