College Football Is Coming - Ready To File Bankruptcy?

I didn’t see it in this article (I just quickly skimmed it) but saw in another article that much of their debt stems from an aggressive building spree over the last decade.

Are all these new shiny buildings necessary? When I went to college we didn’t even AC in the dorms or in many classrooms. Many of the buildings were constructed in the 20’s and 30’s. Gave the campus style.

It appears being champion of the Big12 provides less than being in the SEC, whether they win the SEC or not.

They did the right thing. Cash is king and no one will be making more than the SEC.

Someone will always get snubbed from the tourney, but now at least the 13th team or 17th team wouldn’t have been a realistic contender for the national championship so it lessens the impact of the snub on the actual athletic competition. BTW, that was my argument against FSU whining about being snubbed. Yes, it was unfortunate and if 6 teams got in, they should have made it based on their record. With 4 teams? No way. They lost their most important player and had no chance to win a game.

I can't find much about this in most legit news sources but I'd like more info. And what is the connection between football and bankruptcy, are we actually making a connection or just making a funny?

^ as for the connection I think there’s two of them.

1. Oklahoma jumping to the SEC has given them a bunch more revenue, but it still isn’t going to be enough to keep the university afloat.

2. Is this one of the reasons Oklahoma jumped to the SEC in the first place? They needed the money, not they “wanted” the money?

Boomer Sooner

College sports are an absolute waste of viewing time. Just lower level minor leaguers pretending to get an eduction.

^ well, pretending to get an education may be accurate but I prefer college football over NFL any day.

Just a worst product with overpaid people. My preference is the nfl because of fantasy football, but I seldom watch the games any longer. Just another gambling outlet.

"1. Oklahoma jumping to the SEC has given them a bunch more revenue, but it still isn’t going to be enough to keep the university afloat."

The university isn't closing doors no matter what. Too big to fail.

Even if they file for bankruptcy, its just a tool to be used to shed some dead weight or restructure pay and benefits to employees.

I doubt bankruptcy will adversely effect their football program. NIL monies usually come from outside sources. I wonder what the filing will do to tenured contracts though.

Although it sounds like they grew too fast, I'm willing to bet they stabilize. Oklahoma bet big on tech growth and the tech sector has been doing well there along with state GDP growth. I suspect it hasn't grown as fast amas UO projected when they approved various building projects.

An economic slowdown definitely could be rough for a University carrying so much debt.

Don’t know many major universities that face a reckoning on finances. I have a son at a B1G school and they continue to tack on fees, tuition or anything they can get their hands on. For the most part, university trustees and administrators are not held responsible for their ridiculous spending.

A few bankruptcies would be good, might teach them to cut costs and reduce overhead. Salaries are out of control, and tuition costs are ridiculous.

Some smart investor advice people have said for about fifteen years, since the real-estate bubble of the late 2000s, that the next big bubble that's going to burst is higher education. I see their point, and there have been a few popping actions, but not many. And anyway, why would it matter to investor advice people, since nobody who's reading them is also "investing" in higher-ed institutions. Generally, you can't buy stock in State U in hopes the price goes up so you can sell.

But some changes have happened, f.e., the uncovering of really morally corrupt practices at some of the for-profit schools, and the manners in which the move to forgive or reduce student-loan debt has gone more mainstream. But I don't really see a full pop coming.

My educational institution (small highly regarded liberal arts college, I graduated in the 80s) went through a rough patch when financial "insiders" convinced the trustees to invest parts of the endowment in dot-coms and similar, which did fine until that bubble burst in the 90s, but over the following two decades the endowment has been quite adequately rebuilt to the point that you can't really see a difference. I think the schools operate outside the typical economic analysis, since they're always able to recoup any shortfall with a single major donor. And that donor won't be making his or her decision on the basis of potential future business factors like whether or not the institution promises to be profitable in the future, they'll be donating on the basis of existing past factors like the fact that the donor got his or her degree from that school.

How football figures into this is a bit of a guess. I think the NCAA over-all needs radical re-organization, because it's pretty clear that many college athletes, especially in a few specific sports, are simply in pre-professional programs. The draft, bringing people from college teams to professional teams, for NBA and NFL are essentially the only path into professional play in those two leagues. Baseball and (ice) hockey are different, there actually are minor leagues which act as feeders.

I might advocate in favor of a European system, in which most athletes simply quit school at about 15 years old to play in lower-tier soccer leagues, working their way upwards to maybe make the big leagues eventually. With relegation and promotion possible -- good teams move from the minors to the majors, and vice-versa, based on league performance -- there's a constant shit of money and fewer dead-beat franchises. Imagine if the Montreal Expos were so bad they had to play the North Carolina Mud Hens next year. That system might work in North America, we have many many more people who would be roughly capable of playing professional basketball and football at a lesser level, except for the fact that the number of available positions is much too small to accommodate them because the paying leagues only exist at the single top-tier level. We would, then, change college athletes into minor-league athletes. Which is roughly what we are already doing, except we're hypocritical about it.

I can see disadvantages to this system, too. America doesn't need yet another generation of unemployables who can't open a spreadsheet, but the great desire to "make it" in pro ball would simply remove many from educational streams. Might be good for them, I dunno, can't guess how bad it would be.

Fewer high school graduates are choosing to go to college, especially men. Too many young people get the diploma, then spend decades in debt. More universities will go bankrupt and deservedly so. Trade schools and community colleges are far more practical for developing future workers.