Marquette Hockey

[GGGG]

That's how it is for most sports outside of basketball and football.

[Herman Cain]

Most of these equivalency sports are actually revenue generators for the school in the macro sense. When you take the total number of kids on the roster less the scholarships your getting a lot of net new tuition payers. One of the reason the D3 schools have so many sports is it brings in tuition paying students.

[GGGG]

Most of these equivalency sports are actually revenue generators for the school in the macro sense. When you take the total number of kids on the roster less the scholarships your getting a lot of net new tuition payers. One of the reason the D3 schools have so many sports is it brings in tuition paying students.

Exactly.  That's why people who say "BUT IT COSTS SO MUCH!!!" don't understand the foregone revenue that would result without football (and other athletics) at a lot of the smaller, liberal arts schools.

If you are running Ripon College for instance, and you have a football roster of 80 players with a total tuition and other direct costs of $50,000 each, that's $4 million in revenue.  Even if you have to discount that tuition by 50%, and even if you further assume that 50% of those students would have attended Ripon anyway without football, that's still $1 million in revenue.  And their football program doesn't cost $1 million annually. 

And I'm not even including the $$ that ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. bring in that you would forgo without football too. 

[Benny B]

Exactly.  That's why people who say "BUT IT COSTS SO MUCH!!!" don't understand the foregone revenue that would result without football (and other athletics) at a lot of the smaller, liberal arts schools.

If you are running Ripon College for instance, and you have a football roster of 80 players with a total tuition and other direct costs of $50,000 each, that's $4 million in revenue.  Even if you have to discount that tuition by 50%, and even if you further assume that 50% of those students would have attended Ripon anyway without football, that's still $1 million in revenue.  And their football program doesn't cost $1 million annually. 

And I'm not even including the $$ that ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. bring in that you would forgo without football too.

Interesting angle... and here I always figured the "non-scholarship" rule at the D-II and D-III level was to level the playing field amongst the athletes, not to protect a potential revenue/funding source.

[GGGG]

Interesting angle... and here I always figured the "non-scholarship" rule at the D-II and D-III level was to level the playing field amongst the athletes, not to protect a potential revenue/funding source.

D3 might be the least competitive of all levels in many sports.  Look at football.  Before this year, in the 11 Stagg Bowls (D3 football championship) between 2005 and 2015, there were only three participants.

Mount Union was in all 11 and went 5-6
UW-Whitewater was in 9 and went 6-3
St. Thomas was in 2 and went 0-2.

In basketball, there have been 5 D3 champions over the past ten years.  (UW-Whitewater, UW-Stevens Point, St. Thomas, Amherst and Washington (St. Louis) have each won two.)  Duke and UConn are the only ones two win multiple national championships at the D1 level over the same timeframe.  D2 has had 10 different champions.

Scholarships even out the field because you can draw players from pooling at the top programs because of scholarship limits. 

[EaglesNest]

Our club team was drawing between 300-400 per game when we had buses to the games ( https://marquettewire.org/3848249/tribune/tribune-news/club-hockey-attendance-drops-after-buses-canceled/ ). We wold also need to find a conference.

They brought the buses back in 2015 and have kept them since.  Selling beer at the Ponds of Brookfield really helps with student attendance.