dennisdent wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 12:08 pm
Jacksonville University drops football:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/n ... 595578001/
UMass football still has its supporters but they are diminishing every year. I do feel that dropping football (can't believe I wrote that) could be a possibility if things keep going like they are with the embarrassing losing, players quitting/transferring in large numbers (yes I know that this is college football right now but to many others it just looks bad).
We can argue whether institutional size and status matter to supporting football, but for context, UMass is more than 8 times the size of Jacksonville Univerisity in terms of enrollment, endowment, budget, etc. UMass is more stable from a long-term institutional and financial perspective.
I'd argue this is important because it's been a common denominator in programs who have dropped football. When a school is tight on cash, expensive athletic programs could get put on the chopping block. Again, for context, the median endowment per undergrad for private schools was ~36k (mean ~$94k) in 2015 while JU has and endowment per undergrad of ~$15k in 2018. While JU hasn't been in the news or anything, Massachusetts residents should be very familiar with the pressures small, not particularly wealthy, private colleges are facing.
Jacksonville University is a small, not particularly wealthy, private college trying to operate Division I athletics...
Candidly, in my opinion, if JU was in Massachusetts and not Florida I'd bet they'd be playing DIII.
https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/7 ... wments.pdf