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REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Sean Pickett said:
... ticket sales ....
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Sean, I don't know why you're locked into ticket sales. It's not a winning argument.

UND WIH had minimal, nominal, ticket sales. They'd give tickets away to get anyone to show up. Because I'm a Champions Club member (for other season tickets) I could get free stubs at the box office any time I'd want. And I'd have my choice of 11,000+ open seats.

The whole rink was open seating. There'd maybe be a couple hundred people showing up.

Ponder that 209 people showed up for a WWCHA first round series game (OSU@UND) last month. 209. Announced, recorded attendance. That doesn't pay the staff to have the arena open for a public event much less power on the lights and the compressors.

UND WBB and UND Volleyball outdraw UND WIH. And with smaller losses on the balance sheet.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

The Sicatoka said:
To have the same required (remember: state mandated) budget cuts as cutting just WIH ($2.13M expense, $1.91M net loss) UND would have had to cut ...

Women's soccer
Women's softball
Men's indoor track
Women's indoor track
Men's outdoor track
Women's outdoor track
Men's cross country
Women's cross country

This list totals $2.38M expense, $2.18M net loss.

Oh, because you want to know about people affected:

WIH: 25 players

Soccer: 30 players
Softball: 23 players
WITrack: 41 players
Just those three is 94.

25 or 94. Roughly four times the impacted people.

Your call.
Click to expand...
I read that the mandated budget cuts were $1.3 million, not the $1.9 million the women's hockey team lost. So, instead of cutting your 8 sports what about cutting women's volleyball? When added to the men's and women's swimming & diving it totals $2.05 million expenses, $1.75 net loss, more than the mandated cuts.
women's volleyball - $1,058,483 expenses, $892,516 loss
men's swimming & diving - $319,027 expenses, $266,781 loss
women's swimming & diving - $672,275 expenses, $589,140 loss

Oh, because you want to know about people affected:
women's volleyball: 15 players
15 or 25. Just 60% of the impacted players.

But what about the need to have extra money available for the required scholarships of the Summit League sports? Well, the school could wait and hope that the state's finances improve in the next few years and no further sports teams would need to be cut instead of over cutting now.

Sean
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

UND is moving to the Summit League and Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2018 and 2020 to save on travel expenses (again, budget).

Those leagues also mandate higher levels of spending on scholarships in various sports than the Big Sky required.

And, UND was out of balance regarding Title IX (unfair toward the men) both before and after dropping baseball.

UND dropped roughly $3.1 million of expense, $2.9 million of red ink, in dropping WIH, M/W S&D.

However, it will be reinvesting portions of that back into (a) balancing Title IX, and (b) meeting minimums required by the Summit.

The budget model as it existed was unsustainable and was not shaped for future requirements.

A rebalancing and realigning had to happen.
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Sean Pickett said:
Well, the school could wait and hope that the state's finances improve in the next few years and no further sports teams would need to be cut instead of over cutting now.
Click to expand...

You know the state's finances will be better in the future. You know that.
(You can hope in one hand and crap in the other. Tell me which is fuller at the end of the day.)

You can not operate a budget on "hope". Not in a state that requires a balanced state budget.

And hope don't pay the bills.



And regarding "overcutting". Bologna.

A year ago UND was sponsoring 21 NCAA DI sports. Dropping baseball made 20. These moves made 17. (MGolf is on life suport: 16.) Most other similarly sized schools are running 16 sports, or they are starving programs just to claim they have them. (Mo State just dropped sports and cut the remainders' budgets 7-12%. That's not a formula for success.)

UND was supporting too much and had to realign for the success of the general overall Athletics department.
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Let me tell you a story. Choose to believe it or not. (Phil Harmeson told it to me over coffee one day.)

A while back when Phil Harmeson was acting AD and the decision to move to DI was made, Phil called in all the coaches from the 21 sports. (Harmeson was then a professor in the business school, a lawyer, and then president Kupchella's chief of staff. The man knew budgets and budgeting across the campus.)

He was frank with them: He told them that budgets at UND would not sustain 21 sports and that they should look around the room because in about five years about five sports would be gone to the budget ax. He said, told them, a university of UND's size can not support 21 DI sports.

That Harmeson-led meeting was roughly ten years ago.

UND has gotten by this long because of the Bakken (oil) boom in the state and the Legislature was feeling flush with cash. State monies to UND ramped way up.

Money from the State is now returning to the mean trendline from pre-Bakken.

Harmeson's realities are here.


Anyone who's paid attention to UND Athletics for the last 20 years, not just on the field, but the budgets, saw this coming and knew it had to happen.
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

The Sicatoka said:
And, UND was out of balance regarding Title IX (unfair toward the men) both before and after dropping baseball..
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I am extremely skeptical that this was the case. There is much, much more to determining Title IX compliance than just the relative number of athletic scholarships for men and women. It's very difficult for a school that runs a Division 1 football program to be out of compliance with Title IX to the detriment of the male athletes.

It is also important to remember that, from a legal perspective, ticket sales and overall revenues for a sport entirely irrelevant to Title IX compliance. The NCAA and individual schools have repeatedly argued in federal courts that revenue generation is not a significant consideration in how they run their athletic departments. As ridiculous as that argument is on its face, multiple federal judges have accepted it. A consequence of that is that schools now cannot argue that the revenue generated by a men's sport justifies its survival.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

sean pickett said:
... What about cutting women's volleyball?
Women's volleyball - $1,058,483 expenses, $892,516 loss
Click to expand...

WIH:
Expense: $2.132M
Net Loss: $1.92M
Participants: 25

WVB:
Expense: $1.058M
Net Loss: $0.893M
Participants: 15

Loss per WIH player: $76,800.
Loss per WVB player: $59,500.

Volleyball loses less money per player and less overall.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Eeyore said:
I am extremely skeptical that this was the case. There is much, much more to determining Title IX compliance than just the relative number of athletic scholarships for men and women. It's very difficult for a school that runs a Division 1 football program to be out of compliance with Title IX to the detriment of the male athletes.

It is also important to remember that, from a legal perspective, ticket sales and overall revenues for a sport entirely irrelevant to Title IX compliance. The NCAA and individual schools have repeatedly argued in federal courts that revenue generation is not a significant consideration in how they run their athletic departments. As ridiculous as that argument is on its face, multiple federal judges have accepted it. A consequence of that is that schools now cannot argue that the revenue generated by a men's sport justifies its survival.
Click to expand...

Using the NCAA FY14, FY15, and FY16 data:

UND has never been below 53.8% male in general student body.

UND male athletes have never received above 50.2% of equivalencies (scholarships) nor have male athletes received above 50.9% of overall equivalency dollars nor have ever more than 51.8% of male athletes received an equivalency.

Additionally, males have never been above 53% of the total athlete population (duplicated or unduplicated athlete counting).

UND male athletes have been shorted by slots, scholarships, and dollars.


Title IX is not about women; Title IX is about gender equity, and male is a gender too.
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Why do you folks think Baker Donelson was hired by UND during this process?

A top Title IX firm in the US was not retained visit North Dakota in March to comment on the weather.

When I heard they'd been retained, I knew something big was going to churn.


Others? They whistled past the graveyard.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

In the Player's Tribune article Amy Menke says:

... our team had been making small budget adjustments all season. Cheaper travel, less meals, ...
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So, you knew something was up because you'd been making adjustments.
No, wait, you were completely surprised, blindsided, about budget issues.

So. Which is it.


PS - It's "fewer meals", not "less meals".
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

The Sicatoka said:
Using the NCAA FY14, FY15, and FY16 data:

UND has never been below 53.8% male in general student body.

UND male athletes have never received above 50.2% of equivalencies (scholarships) nor have male athletes received above 50.9% of overall equivalency dollars nor have ever more than 51.8% of male athletes received an equivalency.

Additionally, males have never been above 53% of the total athlete population (duplicated or unduplicated athlete counting).

UND male athletes have been shorted by slots, scholarships, and dollars.


Title IX is not about women; Title IX is about gender equity, and male is a gender too.
Click to expand...

Clearly, you know absolutely nothing about how Title IX is actually applied. Go away, and come back once you've done some homework.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

The Sicatoka said:
But my offer was real. Of course, as with any offer or contract, it was written in my favor to make the point:

UND WIH has never won any conference or national championship.
Click to expand...

I am asking this question in all seriousness, lets say the UND Whockey had the Clarkson Whockey resume: 2 National Championships, 3 Frozen 4's, 6 NC$$ Tourney appearances, 1 League Post Season Championship, 3 League Regular Season Championships however was losing (per UND stats) $1.9 Million/yr. Do you think or should all these championships have caused the program to be spared from the AX???
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Eeyore said:
Clearly, you know absolutely nothing about how Title IX is actually applied. Go away, and come back once you've done some homework.
Click to expand...

I know that Baker Donelson signed off on all of UND's moves before they did them.

Do you know more about Title IX than Baker Donelson?

And I also know that if the number I quoted are misaligned that's what Title IX lawyers call "low hanging fruit".
 
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Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

vicb said:
I am asking this question in all seriousness, lets say the UND Whockey had the Clarkson Whockey resume: 2 National Championships, 3 Frozen 4's, 6 NC$$ Tourney appearances, 1 League Post Season Championship, 3 League Regular Season Championships however was losing (per UND stats) $1.9 Million/yr. Do you think or should all these championships have caused the program to be spared from the AX???
Click to expand...

I believe that level of performance would've positively impacted UND WIH's balance sheet and how they measured in comparisons would've looked far better.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

The Sicatoka said:
I know that Baker Donelson signed off on all of UND's moves before they did them.

Do you know more about Title IX than Baker Donelson?

And I also know that if the number I quoted are misaligned that's what Title IX lawyers call "low hanging fruit".
Click to expand...

Again, you don't know the subject at all. Aside from the fact that Title IX compliance depends upon many more factors than just raw scholarship numbers, the disparity you mention is well within the range of what is considered to be in compliance.

You're also moving the goalposts. Your original claim was that UND is not in compliance because it is shortchanging male athletes. Weasely and ignorant is no way to go through life, son.
 
Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey

Eeyore said:
Again, you don't know the subject at all. Aside from the fact that Title IX compliance depends upon many more factors than just raw scholarship numbers, the disparity you mention is well within the range of what is considered to be in compliance.

You're also moving the goalposts. Your original claim was that UND is not in compliance because it is shortchanging male athletes. Weasely and ignorant is no way to go through life, son.
Click to expand...

The minute you resort to feeble attempts at condescension you've lost.

But, yes, Title IX is far more than scholarship numbers. That's why one hires BD to review everything before it's rolled out. BD makes sure what you're doing now is aligned, because you know the challenge will come.

And are you sure those numbers would be considered aligned given other factors, say, like in FY17 UND no longer sponsors baseball. UND had to do something after eliminating baseball. Participation numbers are misaligned.

And you don't know what I know.
 
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