To be competitive on the FCS level you have to offer schollies in the same numbers the other FCS schools. That means 88 scholarships. And it means matching those schollies with 88 scholarships for women athletes. That's a very large chunk of change.
i was surprised when i poked around the NCAA website and finally located the maximum numbers of scholarships allowed for various sports: in many sports, the number of scholarships is significantly less than the number of players required to make up a full team roster, so that some players on scholarship are getting less than a full ride.All right, so here's a breakdown of the scholarship situation, in case anyone is interested:
CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP SITUATION
Men - 55.2 (Baseball, Track/CC, Basketball, Soccer, Swim and Dive)
Women - 79 (Track/CC, Basketball, Soccer, Tennis, Swim and Dive, Volleyball)
Milwaukee has 23.8 more scholarships for women then men. This is beyond equitable by a considerable margin.
Should Milwaukee add FCS football, the number of men's scholarships would jump to 118.2, meaning there would be 39.2 more men's scholarships than women's scholarships.
You do not need as many women's scholarships as you do men's scholarships. You need to be, percentage-wise, within 5% of your university's overall percentage. Since the percentage is 51% female and 49% male, we could have 54% of our scholarships going to male athletes. Dividing 118.2 by 0.54 gives us 218.9, so we'll just say 219 overall scholarships.
That means you need to have 100 women's scholarships, and the number you need for FCS football becomes
21.
Now, there is no women's sport that covers 21 scholarships. The biggest sports scholarship-wise are track and field, which we have, and women's ice hockey (sweet). Both have 18 scholarships. Judging by the high cost of ice hockey, we can shelve that notion and move to sports that we could afford. Here is a list of women's sports that we can begin where we have facilities they can move into immediately:
Softball - 12
Bowling - 6
Golf - 6
CC Skiing - 7
Field Hockey - 12
Fencing - 5
Water Polo - 8
Lacrosse - 12
Now, sport-by-sport. Softball can, like baseball, play in a nearby softball stadium. The good part is that there are many softball fields closer than the Hank. Bowling can be played in the Rec Center of the Student Union, but would need small alterations to the waiting area. Golf obviously plays from any course. Cross Country Skiing just needs a park and Green Bay already has it. Field Hockey and Lacrosse would be perfect, as FH is fall and Lacrosse is spring and both can be played on Engelmann Field. Fencing I would steer away from because of geography - only a handful of schools, such as Northwestern and Notre Dame, have it in our area. Go a little further, though, and Cleveland State and Detroit both field programs. Water Polo is concentrated on the west coast, and travel would be worse than baseball.
So, adding up to 21 scholarships, let's say we go over and add softball and lacrosse. Neither needs to build a stadium, both are relatively cheap, and both fix our dire need for more spring sports. Softball, obviously, helps us big time in our pursuit of the McCafferty Trophy.
Now, the cost. Operating costs could get by on about $100k for softball, $150k for lacrosse to cover travel, recruiting and coaches salaries (extra 50k for lacrosse' equipment expenses). $250k is the budget cost for those two sports.
The more important cost, of course, is the addition of scholarships. We currently spend around $2.5 million on scholarships annually. That's for our 134.2 scholarships. For 219, our scholarship cost would jump to $4.63 million, or $2.13 million per year. Add $250k in operating costs to that, and you're adding $2.38 million in addition to football's budget.
Put our football budget at $5 million. That would make us one of the highest spenders in I-AA FCS and would make us a national power quickly. Add in $100k per year to cover costs of the marching band (a must), and we have an overall budget addition of
$7.48 million.
If we add that to last year's budget of $10.5 million, we bump up to about $18 million annual budget.
A football stadium, I-AA FCS level that could be expanded in the future should we make the jump to FBS, would cost us anywhere from $12 million to $40 million.
In case you're going "What the hell? 12 million?" the answer is Norfolk State, who built their
30,000-seat Price Stadium in 1997 for $12 million.Where to put it is a more pressing question to me. On campus, we should be looking to the area between the river, Oakland, North and Locust. North of the Cambridge Commons, the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation has been rumored to move out to the west side for the past couple years due to high taxes where they are and accessibility. Norfolk's stadium would fit, along with the adjacent area north for parking.
If that's too snug for you (as if Camp Randall has parking), almost half of I-A FBS and I-AA FCS teams play more than 2 miles off campus. Teams like South Florida, UConn, Miami, Hawaii, etc. all play away from campus.
I really wish I didn't have to go to work. I'll be bringing my laptop along to read your responses on my lunch break.
