Reality

[OrediggerPoke]

It seems like we have quite the relationship with the city of Buffalo NY. The mafia is very generous with their money when they see a worthwhile cause. Wishful thinking here, but could our university try to market NIL opportunities to the mafia? They could maybe sell it as "UW is your university too." type of thing. Imagine if JA was on board with something like this?

That would be very embarrassing to their own local FBS team…the Buffalo Bulls (who have been much better than Wyoming over the past 2 years). Given that, can’t imagine it would catch on (but you never know I guess).

 

[rich22]

I'm more for do better or drop completely. The athletic dept recieves $23-24 mill annually from taxpayers and students. When facility costs are included, I'm sure that number is MUCH higher. However, just take the direct contributions and reroute to in-state scholarships. You'd save the average grad $12k or so. Put it in an endowment for 5 years and would start paying out 4-5 mill/year. Keep the contribution going and imagine where it would be in 20 years? The endowment would be paying out somewhere around 50 mill annually in 20 years with the principle intact. That's very rough and simplistic. Reality is that it would probably grow more.

Justify to average WYO taxpayer why funding one of the worst athletic programs in the conference is of more benefit than investing more in WYO undergrads? It'd be a tough conversation.

I'm for athletics but they need to succeed and bring positive press, exposure, and help connect the state to the University. Year after year failure in almost every category does the opposite.

I understand your argument, but I also think that would be detrimental to the entire university. There is a possibility if you take the athletics dept away, the university starts to disappear. There was 13,000 students when I was there in the early 2000's. Now there is 10,000. I would imagine that about 5,000 students show up to every football game. It is an event that a lot of students love. They come to Wyoming for the full college experience. If you took that large part away, I wonder what the number of enrolled students would be. I think there is a university in every corner of the state, that is out of state, that offers the full college experience. Montana, Montana state, Colorado, Colorado state, Utah, BYU and Utah state. There is something wrong with dropping the entire athletic department or more institutions would do it.

I don't get how every one of our peers are growing and expanding and we are talking about dropping down or cutting the programs. What is the secret to recruiting not only good teams/players but also general students? We need better leadership across the entire university.