RIP University of Louisiana Monroe in Division I?

This week I’m going to dive deep into a news topic from this week’s headlines. I usually am not looking at the latest happenings in college sports here at NILnomics, but University of Louisiana Monroe was too interesting to not research. You’re going to see my thought process and analytical approach almost in real time as I dive deeper and deeper into the topic. So today will be:

• ULM War Hawks - why the headlines and concerns…. are legitimate?

• College hockey - looking to see who grew revenue the most from FY2017 - 2024

Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.

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Warhawks AD, Head FB Coach, and New AD

Let’s start the story with what we know. Last Monday, University of Louisiana Monroe’s Athletic Director John Hartwell resigned as was widely reported. The strangely worded statement from ULM said, “There is a plan in place, and we will be making that plan known as soon as the logistics are finalized.” The next day, the university announced that head FB coach Bryan Vincent would be given the interim-AD designation, with no additional changes to his current contract (ie no new compensation).

Why would an AD resign two years into his tenure? Reported rumors and internet speculation suggests that ULM could drop down to FCS and head to Southland, their budget is already too constrained, and the new President is looking to slash the Athletics budget.

What could be the issue? First, let’s look at where ULM’s pool revenue stands in comparison to its other FBS peers.

Quick Takeaways:

• Clearly ULM is at the very bottom of the FBS when it comes to pool revenue and has been for a very long time.

• ULM joined the FBS technically in 1994 as a DI independent before joining the Sun Belt Conference in 2001. They had previously been in the Southland Conference (FCS).

• There is clearly a clustering at the bottom of the pool revenue, but I assure you ULM is at the bottom. In fact, let’s dig into that some more in the next chart.

Analyst’s Desk

Remember, pool revenue is the data point used in the post-House settlement world to determine how much schools can pay players. It’s not reflective of the entire athletics budget, but I like to use it as a good assessment of an athletic department’s finances.

Data comes from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database. I added up 5 of their categories (1. Corporate sponsorships, advertising, and licensing 2. Contributions (divided in half) 3. Competition guarantees (revenues) 4. Conference/NCAA distributions, media rights, and post-season football 5. Ticket sales. I had to use FY2023 as I couldn’t get FY2024 to download and did not inflation adjust.

Quick Takeaways:

• It does get laughable when you think about how the average SEC school has 15x more pool revenue than an average Sun Belt institution.

• I was surprised to see the MAC not in last place. For all the ribbing #MACtion and their Tuesday night football gets, they can’t claim last place here.

Analyst’s Desk

No changes to this analysis from the prior, other than aggregating at the conference level.

Quick Takeaways:

• In a plot twist, ULM doesn’t have the lowest pool revenue in FBS. That distinction belongs to South Alabama.

• It’s interesting what conferences you see represented here: Sun Belt, MAC, and Conference USA.

• Notably, none of these institutions have even half the $20.5 million salary cap for House payments for their athletes.

Analyst’s Desk

Same dataset as before, just filtered to all institutions with pool revenue < $9.8 million.

Quick Takeaways:

• Notice ULM on an island on the left hand side - with pool revenue like many other schools but noticeably lower institutional funding.

• ULM is only receiving $17.4 million in institutional support. The next closest school is Louisiana Lafayette at $37.7 million. And rumors say the school may want deeper cuts!

• As a Massachusetts resident, I have to say how disgusted I am that the Commonwealth is funding the Minutemen. They are an awful team and have been a sinkhole of taxpayer funds since they made the jump to Division I. No one goes to these games, no one watches, no one cares. We have other football to pay attention to.

• ULM football hasn’t been above 500 since 2012. They are at the bottom in revenue and in the poorest conference. Also - they get the least amount of financial support of anyone at their level by a wide margin. Sounds like a difficult place to be if you want to be competitive on the field. I’m not knowledgeable enough to say ULM should drop back to FCS and return to the Southland Conference, but the economics need a turnaround. Not sure having an AD quit and your FB coach running the shop are signs of change the ULM fans want or need.

Analyst’s Desk

For this analysis, I switched from Knight-Newhouse data to my own data (that you’re free to use!) that I’ve scraped from NCAA MFRS annual financial reports. The usual caveats - I can’t get reports from many southern schools or ones that charge high prices.

Quick Takeaways:

• Interestingly, Michigan State and BC jump ahead of North Dakota whereas ND leads in revenue.

• Sadly, the same three schools at the bottom of spending here (Saint A’s, Southern NH, and Franklin Pierce) were in the same (bad) order in revenue last week.

• To my eye, this chart doesn’t have as much clustering at the conference level as the revenue side. This may demonstrate that while conference distributions may equal across many institutions, but they are not all spending equally.

Analyst’s Desk

Reminder that this data comes straight from the NCAA EADA dataset. I have put together all of it in one nice file on my Kaggle (which you can access for free).

🔉 What I’m Listening To 🔉 

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

• NIL Clubhouse - the newest episode dives into Trump’s executive order and had some interesting guests around DIII NIL opportunities and financial literacy for student athletes

• Trustees and Presidents - a great podcast that goes into the university president’s perspective on the athletics space and higher education.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue.

I really enjoyed diving a bit deeper into one topic this week. Especially something that’s a bit more timely than most week’s analysis. If you enjoyed this week’s issue, let me know by email. Thanks again for your time. Now finish your beverage 😀 

Until next time,

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

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