McNeese has to be willing to pay to play
Published 11:44 am Monday, January 19, 2015
Like many other college athletic programs, McNeese is bleeding financially.
State budget cuts and rising costs continue to force school officials to search for ways to raise funds.
Earlier in the week, three Lake Area car dealers came together with a fundraising plan to help the athletic department.
Each will donate a car in a raffle to hopefully raise $300,000. Along with two booster clubs, the group is also showing support for the local school.
While it is a good idea, it’s a little like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.
More than a few stitches are needed to stop the hemorrhaging.
The real issue when it comes to the school’s athletic future remains in the hands of students and future students of the university.
It is the only group that has the real power to make long-term financial change in the athletic program.
When Broderick Fobbs left McNeese for Grambling State, more than a few eyes were opened when reports of his salary were made public.
Fobbs is making $195,000 a year for a program that could not find the way to lay down a new floor in the training room last year and even went through a players’ strike.
That is a lot more cash than his former boss, McNeese’s Matt Viator, is making.
The salary injustice became a slap in the face when Tim Rebowe was hired by Nicholls State for more money than Viator makes.
That’s Grambling and Nicholls paying more for football coaches than McNeese, which has much better facilities and larger population areas to draw from.
We will see if he gets rewarded for his nine years and 68 wins at the school in his next contract.
But more money to him, and other coaches, must be made up somehow in the budget.
A group of boosters is putting together a dinner in hopes of raising money for coaching salaries overall.
Another good idea that helps but is not an overall answer.
Putting it in car terms, this is like giving a free tank of gas to a gas-guzzling machine. While the free fuel is great, you are still left getting 15 miles to the gallon.
It’s great if the prices stay low, but when the cost of fuel goes up there is less money to go around.
This is where the students and big-money businesses will decide the long-term future.
Nicholls was able to give its coach more money after students voted for an increase in athletic fees. Last spring, McNeese students voted down such an increase.
McNeese was looking for a $20 increase in the fees per semester. The money would have been used to provide additional support for the athletics department and for increasing funding support for student engagement at athletics events.
Voting down is a polite way of saying it. They trashed the idea of a $20 increase per semester.
Only 33 percent of the students voted for an increase last May. Democrats get a higher percentage of votes in the Lake Area.
Athletic department officials hope to bring back the topic in a future vote.
“We will go about it in a different way,” said Danielle Mayeaux, assistant athletic director in charge of marketing, ticketing and game operations. “We need to show students how important athletics are to a university and make them want to be a part of it.”
That is easier said than done when it comes to asking students for more money.
Hope around McNeese is that new projects like a on-campus basketball arena will draw interest from students as it goes up.
“I don’t think students mind giving money when they know what it is for,” Mayeaux said. “When you have a visible project people will buy into it.”
This is McNeese’s biggest sale job. Only through athletic fees, an area in which McNeese ranks last in the 14-school Southland Conference, can the athletic department start to make long-term plans when it comes to future projects and coaching salary increases.
Often McNeese athletics is taken for granted, having set a pretty solid standard for smaller universities.
It will also become important for school officials to find new sources of income. The arena is one way, with the school getting all the money from concessions, possible parking fees, merchandising and most importantly, advertising.
“We are looking at (the arena) as another revenue stream,” Athletic Director Bruce Hemphill has said.
But the money McNeese really needs to tap into is from the industrial plants and casinos. They are possible cash cows, but without real ties to the area — all are owned by companies based outside the area, and some based in other countries altogether — interest in the local university’s athletic programs has been lukewarm.
“We need to find a way to keep Lake Charles money in Lake Charles,” said Jack Hebert, one of the three car dealers behind the fundraiser.
Big companies and athletic fees are the best way to do that, but the owners of those companies and the students themselves must make the athletic program a priority. In turn, McNeese has to sell them on why that is a good investment.
In tough economic times it might be asking more than those parties are willing to give up.
Which leaves McNeese right where it is today, searching for new ways to get money.
It’s a story that has been repeated over the years.
In the end, it really comes down to we get what we are willing to pay for.
If the community wants a strong athletic department at McNeese, it’s up to the community to fund it.
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Jim Gazzolo is managing sports editor. Email him at jgazzolo@americanpress.com
(MGNonline)