Official - URI to NEC in 2013

[COBBLESTONE]

The move does NOTHING for URI fiscally. It's purely about them thinking that they can't compete unless they improve their facilities, which they don't want to do. That's the only fiscal angle. Travel/scholarship costs are a wash or worse.

I guess you're not familiar with the fiscal problems in RI including at the state university. As for improving facilites, fund raising has been going on for some time now for a SADC (Student Athletic Development Center). Really, isn't time you stopped hating on URI?

[COBBLESTONE]

If anyone joins the CAA, i'd love it to be Holy Cross. It would revitalize their program beyond where it is now, their alumni would love it and they have good facilities already in place.

Once nice thing about that is it would allow them to play an FBS team like Boston College which years ago was quite a rivalry here in New England.

[Franks Tanks]

If anyone joins the CAA, i'd love it to be Holy Cross. It would revitalize their program beyond where it is now, their alumni would love it and they have good facilities already in place.

Here we go again. It won't happen for several reasons.

Holy Cross has been resistant to PL scholly talk. If they do go ahead and give scholly's, it probably wont be a full allotment. One could argue that going to the CAA would be proper motvation for them to fund 63, but they have to worry about all sports.

Holy Cross has the worst non-revenue sports in the PL. LaCrosse, Soccer, Track. Baseball, Vollyeball, Swimming etc. They are all terrible. Many other PL schools funds scholarships in these sports, but Holy Cross does not. The PL would not let Cross leave for football and keep the rest of their sports in the league. They would therefore have to be an all-sports member of the CAA. Holy Cross would need to significantly increase athletic funding to compete in the CAA across all sports. I just don't see them doing all this so they can play Towson instead of Bucknell.

[danefan]

Where is that $1.4 million going to come from?? 19 URI scholarships aren't worth $1.4 million, not in real world money. If you replace 19 URI football players with 19 students paying full tuition, most of them are going to pay the in-state rate of $9014, and half the remainder are going to pay the reduced New England Regional rate of $15,776 rather than the out-of-state rate of $25,720. Add $6000 each for room and board, and that's about $385,900. The typical guarantee paid by a FBS opponent for a CAA team is $400,000, but URI won't be able to get those guarantees anymore when they drop below 56.7 scholarships because they'll no longer qualify as a win towards bowl eligibility for the FBS team. So at this point in the analysis they're actually behind.

What URI is going to have to do to get any money out of this is chase out CAA Coach of the Year Joe Trainer and replace him with a cheaper staff that's forced to do all their recruiting via chat roulette. Then they need to cut women's sports and pray they survive the Title IX rectal exam without generating too large a legal bill. Keeping football at any level while cutting a women's sport is guaranteed to bring the knives out. Meanwhile ticket revenue, donations and advertising revenue can all be expected to go down, so they need to find cuts that overcome that loss as well just to get back where they started.

It all really comes down to cutting women's sports. If they can't do that, they'll get nothing out of this financially.

Easy - recruiting expenses, travel expenses, scholarships, coaching salaries (you better believe Trainer knows he's going to lose some full-time staff) and the big one - Title IX cover. All of that will easily equal $1.5 million a year.

[BDKJMU]

Its 90% of the maximum over the two preceding years. So its an average of 57.5.

Then it wouldn't make any sense to stop at 50 schollies. Just go from 50 to 58, and then could schedule a BCS payday game every year for 300-500k, while would more than pay for 8 more schollies.

Course then the arguement would be why stop at 58, just make it 63 to be fully competitive with the other full scholly conferences.

Actually, .90% of 63= 56.7. So it would be 57. Same point.

[mainejeff]

It's refreshing to see a New England school have the balls to make a decision like this. URI knows who they are and where they want to be........they are not pretending to be a Big East wannabe (*cough* UMass *cough*). I look at an athletic program like UMass......great women's non-revenue sports.....but with basketball programs sort of dangling in the wind, and an FCS football program that is losing millions and spinning its wheels. UMass will never be UConn no matter how hard it tries. I hope that Maine does the same thing that URI did because it will save the rest of the athletic programs from having their budgets cut.....and they will still be able to keep their football program.

[andy7171]

Shit! Who are we going to schedule for Homecoming every other year now!

[LastMinuteman]

The move does NOTHING for URI fiscally. It's purely about them thinking that they can't compete unless they improve their facilities, which they don't want to do. That's the only fiscal angle. Travel/scholarship costs are a wash or worse.

I guess you're not familiar with the fiscal problems in RI including at the state university.

This is the point I keep making, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. This CAA to NEC move does not have a significant impact on URI's fiscal problems when you factor in lost revenue. Unless URI has a plan to cut women's sports (not just scholarships) and can get away with it under Title IX, financially you're going to end up right back where you started, only with a worse football program. URI football fans are being sold a falsehood. I can think of only two explanations for this:

1. This is intentional sabotage to the football program with the eventual intent of cutting it entirely; or

2. The URI administration ordered the athletic department to make major cuts to football or it was going to get dropped, and the URI AD is hoping that the URI administration isn't smart enough to figure out that the NEC move doesn't actually save money. Most people would instinctively think it does, and hopefully they won't dig deeper.

If the latter is the case, then I am sympathetic to URI fans and hope they get away with their ruse, but with the stupidity starting to seep into Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts it needs to be exposed for the nonsense it is.

[RamBall]

****! Who are we going to schedule for Homecoming every other year now!

Rhody Downs Defending National Champion Villanova, 17-14

[COBBLESTONE]

I guess you're not familiar with the fiscal problems in RI including at the state university.

This is the point I keep making, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. This CAA to NEC move does not have a significant impact on URI's fiscal problems when you factor in lost revenue. Unless URI has a plan to cut women's sports (not just scholarships) and can get away with it under Title IX, financially you're going to end up right back where you started, only with a worse football program. URI football fans are being sold a falsehood. I can think of only two explanations for this:

1. This is intentional sabotage to the football program with the eventual intent of cutting it entirely; or

2. The URI administration ordered the athletic department to make major cuts to football or it was going to get dropped, and the URI AD is hoping that the URI administration isn't smart enough to figure out that the NEC move doesn't actually save money. Most people would instinctively think it does, and hopefully they won't dig deeper.

If the latter is the case, then I am sympathetic to URI fans and hope they get away with their ruse, but with the stupidity starting to seep into Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts it needs to be exposed for the nonsense it is.

Look, we can bat this around all off-season but I'm a bit limited on time right now. You've obvioulsy got some fear that our move to the NEC is going to somehow effect your program in a negative way or perhaps tear apart the CAA. This is all about saving our program and playing in a conference where we have a good chance to be competetive and get to the playoffs. Here again, URI hasn't been to the playoffs since entering the CAA and I can almost promise you that it would not happen in our lifetime if we stayed in that powerful conference.

Time will tell which one of us is right on this. But I'll bet that some Hofstra fans and Northeastern fans are wishing that their respective administrations had explored this path that URI has gone down. Thorr and President Dooley both care about the program and want it to survive. They see this as the best approach and I support them on it.

Don't worry, your program is going to be fine.

[mainejeff]

Don't worry, your program is going to be fine.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I think that's it's FBS or bust for UMass (hopefully, not the latter).

URI did what it had to do to survive. I admire them for that. There are WAY to many schools out there pretending to be something that they aren't.

[BlackFalkin]

Uh oh! I keep forgetting why the caa is a strong conf. Oh yea, its not.

[BlackFalkin]

Don't worry, your program is going to be fine.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I think that's it's FBS or bust for UMass (hopefully, not the latter).

URI did what it had to do to survive. I admire them for that. There are WAY to many schools out there pretending to be something that they aren't.

Jokes aside, its a great move for the program, they'll be much more competitive i the NEC. When URI decides what its going to do facility wise.. maybe down the line they move back to the caa a stronger program.

[jmufan]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I think that's it's FBS or bust for UMass (hopefully, not the latter).

URI did what it had to do to survive. I admire them for that. There are WAY to many schools out there pretending to be something that they aren't.

Jokes aside, its a great move for the program, they'll be much more competitive i the NEC. When URI decides what its going to do facility wise.. maybe down the line they move back to the caa a stronger program.

I don't see URI ever coming back to the CAA. I don't think it would ever be allowed by the other schools.