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BoogerJ

Reality Check

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Pat Skerry's contract goes through 2022-23, meaning four more years after this one, unless someone is going to pony up his buyout.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/college/basketball/mens/bs-sp-towson-skerry-extension-1220-story.html

He is going no where, just like Rob Ambrose is going no where.

 

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Why are we giving these coaches really long extensions ?  2-3 years at a time should be the norm unless a low buy out or high number for other schools to pay if they poach.  

What is the buy out?  Really upset If Maryland ditches their coaches and we are stuck 

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Why are some assuming there is no buyout option that the school can exercise? Wouldn’t that be a fairly standard clause? I mean I don’t know for a fact there is such a clause, but it’s just interesting to me that some on here are adamant that there isn’t 

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Sure, with all of the excess money from the donors and ticket sales the Athletic Director is going to fork out contract buyouts and then pay more for the next staff to come in.  

Not going to happen.

Skerry got his latest extension 355 days ago, which pushed his deal back to a 5 year term.  https://towsontigers.com/news/2017/12/19/mens-basketball-skerry-signs-contract-extension.aspx?path=mbball No one is buying out 4 years of a coaching contract at Towson.  

Dream on.

No different than when Ambrose got his extension in January 2014 through 2020 and no buyout was done on him when Towson failed to make the playoffs in 2014-2015-2016-2017.

Towson does not buyout contracts.

Why?

Towson does not have donors who write big checks and even more depressing, Towson does not have alumni who buy tickets and support the program. 70% of the football attendance is made up of comp tickets to students and player families, bands.  Take out the comps and you get about 2,000 people a game who care paying about $25 bucks a piece. That's $50,000 gate per game x 5 home games = $250,000 a year in revenues.  That does not even cover 75% of Rob Ambrose's base salary. Football is a MAJOR financial drain on Towson University. There is no factual financial argument that can state otherwise.

Basketball attendance is worse, so where is this magic money coming from?

Skerry is at Towson through March 2023 - 4 more seasons.

Ambrose just got a rollover year so he is in place through at least December 2021 - 3 more seasons.

These are the facts and they are indisputable.

 

Edited by BoogerJ

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The reality is Towson is trying to build an indoor practice facility for winter sports (mainly football) and eventually expand the field house with a weight room (they don't have one there) and stadium expansion. Some might think it's a waste but you aren't buying out coaches for 3-4 years when you need $$$ to improve your resources.

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Wow, an 8 year extension for a coach that has never been to the finals of the CAA Tournament?

Indoor facility and a weight room are smart ideas.  Stadium Expansion?  What kind of ridiculous mindset is that?  Towson has not had a crowd approaching 75% of the capacity in a long time, and cannot sell more than 2,000 football season tickets even the year after playing for a national title. But someone, somewhere, thinks that expanding the stadium is a smart move?  

Unitas Stadium seats 11,198 and if you are saying that people on campus want to move to D1, it's a nice dream, but it makes no sense. While there is no minimum stadium size, to maintain FBS status, a school must average 15,000 in paid or actual attendance a game at least once every two seasons. Towson has only drawn over 10,000 maybe a handful of times.  Just to make the move TU would have to add in another 5,000 seats minimum and would be a lot of dough.  The NCAA used to require Division I-A schools to have a stadium with a minimum capacity of 30,000, but that rule was scrapped in 2004. FCS has no attendance requirements. https://www.sportsrec.com/division-1-college-football-requirements-6660709.html

There is no demand, on any level, for Towson to be FBS Football.  That is a remarkably poor idea and use of state money.

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2 hours ago, BoogerJ said:

Wow, an 8 year extension for a coach that has never been to the finals of the CAA Tournament?

Indoor facility and a weight room are smart ideas.  Stadium Expansion?  What kind of ridiculous mindset is that?  Towson has not had a crowd approaching 75% of the capacity in a long time, and cannot sell more than 2,000 football season tickets even the year after playing for a national title. But someone, somewhere, thinks that expanding the stadium is a smart move?  

Unitas Stadium seats 11,198 and if you are saying that people on campus want to move to D1, it's a nice dream, but it makes no sense. While there is no minimum stadium size, to maintain FBS status, a school must average 15,000 in paid or actual attendance a game at least once every two seasons. Towson has only drawn over 10,000 maybe a handful of times.  Just to make the move TU would have to add in another 5,000 seats minimum and would be a lot of dough.  The NCAA used to require Division I-A schools to have a stadium with a minimum capacity of 30,000, but that rule was scrapped in 2004. FCS has no attendance requirements. https://www.sportsrec.com/division-1-college-football-requirements-6660709.html

There is no demand, on any level, for Towson to be FBS Football.  That is a remarkably poor idea and use of state money.

I think if you build it they will come 

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Not getting into the stadium expansion on the basketball topic board. That might be a pipedream for now but if you think we're never going to fill in part of the stadium where there's dirt and mulch, then we should just give up on football because FCS has no future for a school that will have close to 30,000 people and 8,000 on campus in 10 years.

Now as far as the basketball program goes, filling that arena when the team is good should be a pre-requisite. That ain't happening this season but when the team becomes good again (hopefully next season), there's no reason why we can't get 3,000+ people a night including students. I'll be going to the UMBC game Tuesday and it will be interesting to see how they capitalize on their NCAA win.

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Interesting, I just checked out UMBC’s home attendance so far this season. They’ve played 3 home games (Shenandoah, Manhattan & American). Largest single game attendance thus far...slightly over 1,100

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