Post by Bona84 on May 29, 2014 10:11:23 GMT -5
So, you're saying that on average those students would only pay $10,000 out of the approximate $40,000 cost of attendance?
Listen, I'm not really advocating for lacrosse to be added. I'm just saying that it shouldn't automatically be dismissed due to the assumption that it will be a financial drain, or because the school won't make money on ticket sales, or because somebody doesn't like or care about the sport. There are people that care about the non-revenue sports, otherwise the money wouldn't have been raised to build the turf fields, and students wouldn't be coming to Bona's to play and compete in such sports.
I am a HUGE advocate of non-revenue sports so don't misunderstand me. I would love to be able to offer an athletics offering like new A10 member Davidson who is also a small school but there is a HUGE difference between their $560M endowment and SBU's $55M endowment. When you have ten times the financial reserves, you have a lot more flexibility in your program offerings.
Rather than adding more sports, we should be striving to improve the current athletic offerings. There is no reason to think SBU can compete in MLax when WLax, Softball, Baseball, and Mens/Women's Soccer regularly sit with losing records and in the bottom half of the A10.
The efforts to expand the number of athletic donors is great. It is crazy how limited the donor pool has been. If any of you are interested in taking a look: gobonnies.sbu.edu/fan_zone/Donors_list One of the most interesting things, to me, is that people would like more scholarship sports added when there are so many more scholarships that can be added to the current teams. Take a look at the number of people that are listed under 'Athletics Scholarship Donors'.
Ok, you are right. How silly of me to suggest that Bona's might explore adding a new sport that might use its new athletic facility.