Where we stand

Y'know... it's really hard to argue with the work that Dan Hinxman is doing as of late. It really is. He posted a nice, in-depth writeup on the state of Nevada football compared to the rest of the MWC today in his blog. Some of the highlights:

Apparently there was no desire in June, or at least the timing wasn’t right. Heck, in a time when the university’s athletic department is facing a shortfall of more than $800,000 for fiscal 2009-2010, there was even talk of dropping down a division.

Two months later, having not done any kind of feasibility study, it was the right time to pull the trigger.

Yes, the circumstances that led to the invitation — Brigham Young’s apparent defection to the WAC and, once it was sniffed out, the MWC’s counterattack — were unusual. Add to that the MWC’s apparent deadline — Nevada had no more than a couple of days to reach a decision — and you’ve got a pretty stressful situation.

But it would have been a lot less stressful had Nevada done its feasibility homework.

And now the football program that survives in the WAC with an underfunded support staff must move on to another conference where nearly every team has much more firepower, where nearly every team is, in terms of finances and support, a Boise State.

Coach Chris Ault and his staff don’t get enough credit for what they’ve built and how they’ve done it. Yes, the Pack has been barely better than .500 the last four seasons and hasn’t won any of its last four bowl games, but given the level of support it receives it is a wonder they even become bowl eligible.

Emphasis mine. Another key quote:

» The coaching staff is among the lowest-paid in the WAC and in the MWC. (This is not to say that if you threw money at the coaches the team would get better. It’s just another example of how the program is underfunded.)

Believe it or not, I actually agree with the bold paragraph. We've touched on Ault's performance given the resources he has at his disposal several times in the past. In the WAC, his abilities as recruiter made it possible for us to stay in the upper echelon of the conference despite his clear handicaps at on-the-field play calling and his tendency to hire "good ol' boys" in assistant coaching positions. That's not going to cut it in the MWC, however - not only are we going to have to contend with Boise State on a regular basis, it looks like we're going to be dealing with a resurgent BYU, an improving Air Force, and a Colorado State team that always plays us tough. If we're not careful, we're going to be square in the middle of the conference with no way out.

Let's discuss what we can do about some of our deficiencies. I found these attendance numbers for the original MWC teams from an MWC message board - though it's not my first choice for a primary source, the numbers I have been able to verify were identical to what I'm seeing in the thread, so I'm running with them. For the WAC, I found the WAC's numbers here, (capacities in parenthesis):

1. BYU - 64,236 (64,045 - not a typo; we used to have attendance figures in excess of "capacity" before the local Fire Marshall told us to cut it out, too)
2. TCU - 38,187 (46,000)
3. Air Force - 35,656 (52,480)
4. Fresno State - 33,578 (41,031)
5. Boise State - 32,782 (33,610)
6. New Mexico - 26,944 (42,000)
7. San Diego State - 24,464 (71,294 - they play out of Qualcomm Stadium)
8. Colorado State - 23,643 (30,000)
9. UNLV - 22,775 (36,800)
10. Wyoming - 19,494 (33,500)
11. Nevada - 17,500 (29,993)

That would be us at the bottom of average attendance in 2009. Lower than Wyoming. Lower than UNLV. Lower than everyone. If you're wondering why we didn't get an invite to the MWC until after BYU took the conference hostage, that's why right there. The scary part, however, is that, if you sort by capacities, you get this:

1. San Diego State (71,294)
2. BYU (64,045)
3. Air Force (52,480)
4. TCU (46,000)
5. New Mexico (42,000)
6. Fresno State (41,031)
7. UNLV (36,800)
8. Boise State (33,610)
9. Wyoming (33,500)
10. Colorado State (30,000)
11. Nevada (29,993)

We not only have the lowest average attendance of all MWC teams, we have the lowest stadium capacity in the MWC. This means that we not only have the smallest revenue stream of all of the teams in the conference, we have the smallest potential revenue stream in the conference.

The good news is, if we actually filled Mackay to capacity on a regular basis, we'd be square in the middle of the conference in average attendance (and revenue). As an added bonus, we're a bigger advertising market than Fort Collins or Laramie, which certainly works to our advantage revenue-wise. We just have to capitalize on it.

Speaking of which, according to Hinxman's article:

The athletic department is operating in the red, having reported that $800,000 deficit mentioned above. But if the answer to that is filling Mackay Stadium — and it is — something has to change in the philosophy of how football is presented.

“Some of (closing the budget deficit) comes through advertising and some of it comes through making sure the experience at games is an enjoyable one so fans have a good time and want to come back,” Michael Wixom, a member of the Board of Regents, told the RGJ in June. “That’s ultimately the main goal and the best way to close the budget deficit.”

An $800,000 deficit, at $16 a ticket for general admission, works out to 50,000 additional seat purchases, or increasing attendance by nearly 10,000 per game. In other words, break-even for our team in the WAC doesn't happen until we nearly fill Mackay to the rafters every single game. We're not even close to that, and that's with us being consistently bowl eligible.

Realistically, there are only three ways we're getting out of the MWC budget cellar:

1. Cut costs. Ault is in the bottom third of coaching salaries in the FBS (what we used to call "Division I-A"), but the coaches he repeatedly hired during his tenure as AD were paid significantly less. There might - just might - have been a reason for that. How'd those coaches work out for us?
2. Raise revenue. You can only raise revenue so high when only 17,500 people are showing up to games, on average. Advertisers aren't going to pay much for the honor of pushing Wolf Pack games and we're not going to get much revenue from the seats or the concessions.
3. Hope Utah State joins so we don't look so bad.

At this point, I'm betting on the third, but I'll do what I can about the "raise revenue" side of things. I'd like to see Ault go, but I'd like to see him replaced by something better - that's not happening if we're holding the bottom end of the MWC.

Just ask Wyoming.