BG's Athletics Strategic Plan

OK people....first post of April...always kind of slow when the seasons end.  Open loops?  Well, a new men's assistant basketball coach...and the signing period opens in a week.  BG has two signees and if there's other news, I haven't heard it.

Just had a chance to look through BG's new athletic strategic plan.  I would certainly recommend that Falcon fans take a look at it.  I think it's well done as these things go...all the goals link up to University goals, which they should.  I think the priorities are right on...it represents a nice balance between competition and academics.  There are strong but achievable goals in both areas.  Clearly, we want to win and we want to graduate good students.

A few random thoughts....

• They are looking at getting turf onto all the grass facilities.  If you are going to keep baseball and softball in the MAC, you can't justify not having turf.
• There is going to be a full renovation plan for the Doyt, which I think we would all be interested in seeing.  I was there Saturday and there is a lot going on right now.
• I'd be interested in knowing what is entailed in "Develop scheduling strategies to position teams for post-season play." Does that mean wins or tough scheduling?

Finally, the revenue goals are interesting:

• A 7% annual increase in gross ticket revenue.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out.  In some cases, there is easy room for 7% growth (men's basketball, for example).  I think fans can expect some additional cost increases as well, though I think basketball is already too high.
• There's also a 7% annual increase in merchandising. I think there might be an opportunity here.  If you heard the chatter about the SBX closing, you head the general consensus (which I agree with) that SBX had a much better selection and quality than the University does currently.  This might be an opportunity for BG to up its game.
• Increase the unrestricted fund by 20% annually.  That's going to be tough.  There is a tactic that says they are going to get a timetable for changing Falcon club rules...it will be interesting to see what that ends up being.

Even though these types of things are likely to cost me money, I think fans need to keep the big picture in mind.  BG gets 63% of its athletic revenue from subsidies, most of which comes from student fees paid by BG undergrads.  It is a number that is common in the MAC, but probably already too high.  I don't know how likely it is to go down but you'd like to see it at least not get worse.  So, you need to get a higher portion of your revenue from the people in the stands...it's just right.