Those charges are:
- (1) creating and implementing a self-sustaining funding model for basketball and flag football regional and national championships, and
- (2) standardizing, to the extent possible, our regional tournaments in basketball and flag football.
Whether or not you have noticed, the NCCS has actually tried to make progress in that regard this year. In flag football regionals, we tried to use a decentralized approach to financially support the national tournament. In this model, which had mixed success, regional hosts were asked to provide entry fees for winning teams ($400/team), travel stipends for officials (4 @ $150) and cover the cost of their insurance. The cost of these expenses to the regional host could have been as high as about $3000, depending on the number of divisions that actually occurred at their tournament. Multiplying that by 8 regionals comes to $24,000, which is a decent percentage of what it costs to run the tournament. Due to a number of factors, we didn't actually generate that much revenue. Regional hosts did receive the $2000 NIRSA stipend (minus insurance) and the $1000 POWERade stipend, for a total of $3000 of financial support from the NSC/NNC. Fees were not standardized. Each regional tournament set their own entry fees.
Now, in basketball, we are attempting to do the same thing through a centralized model. In this model, fees are standardized at $300 for every regional tournament. Of that $300, $90 of it flows back to the NSC to financially support the national tournament. That's it. In theory, it relieves the host's burden of having to deal with regional travel stipends, regional officials and their stipends, entry fees and so forth. It simplifies the process. Critics might say it takes away the professional development aspects of running a tournament like this. That might be true, but the host still has to do everything they did before, including developing a budget (to run on $210/team, plus the NSC and POWERade stipends), recruiting teams, finding local sponsorship, all of the operational elements of the tournament; I could go on and on. In the end, a centralized approach seems to be more efficient administratively, with less financial risk, for the host institution.
The other difference between basketball and flag football this year is that in basketball, we employed a championship format. Championship format means that the only way a team gets to play in the National Championship is by winning a regional championship. Teams must participate in and win a regional championship to advance to the national. Flag football employed open regional tournaments and an open national tournament. What difference does this make? Well, financially, it makes it much easier to determine expenditures and staffing levels if you know the number of teams you are going to have. From a budgetary perspective, championship format makes life easier.
Let me know which model -- centralized or decentralized -- you would prefer. And, of course, let me know why you feel one is more appropriate than the other.
1 comment:
A decentralized model seems to be the way of the past with regards to NCCS and extramural (which we are strictly speaking of in regards to basketball and football) events. Instead of having one set of guidelines, expenditures, and expectations, each tournament is given the freedom to do as they please in regards to financial expectations. For the benefit of the NCCS, a centralized, standard, across the board theory seems more plausible.
However, the number one question which comes to mind is in regards to the financial burden host institutions may incur. Let’s look at basketball. If plans include moving the National Basketball tournament into a hybrid model (to include regional champs as well as an Open division), the financial burden needed at the national tournament will increase – by default the amount of money needed from each regional tournament would theoretically increase from this year’s $90 per team. Perhaps this means the fee for each team in the regional tournaments would increase as a solution, but at some point, the difference in the amount of money the national tournament would need from each registered regional team would pull from each regional host. As such, the fear here revolves around how much financial burden regional hosts are expected to endure.
A solution might be finding financial support for each regional championship on a local level. Again, this puts a burden on a host institution that may or may not be met – in cases where it is not, we risk alienating schools willing to host these events.
Further, the expenditures of each regional event might be standardized as well. Staffing might be a great example. Certain tournaments may overstaff in an effort not to offend colleagues in the area under the guise of professional development. Limiting the number of staff and officials against a standardized formula rate based on number of teams entered may be a solution. For example, having 20 full time staff volunteers, 32 officials, and 30 teams may be a bit extreme. Perhaps a sloping scale would help this issue in regards to each events specific needs.
Until a self-sustaining funding source exists, it seems to make financial sense to move towards Championship level events with standardized regional tournaments. Looking at other NCCS events, soccer would appear to be the event to which others should strive. The national soccer championships can be appropriately planned for because administrators can be almost 100% certain that the Championship as well as the Open divisions will fill. Why? Teams recognize this as the premier non-varsity championship event in the country. Basketball is moving toward this model with the 2009 Championships in Detroit – at least financially planners should be able to budget accordingly based on regional winners. Volleyball (as previously discussed) is a huge event, and thus planning can be done for staffing and officials, but debate continues as to the viability of the tournament in its current state (see Chad’s previous post re: volleyball). Football for the past 3 years has been a hit and miss proposition in the sense that tournament planners can’t have an accurate guess as to how many teams to expect, and thus may over or under-staff the event.
In order to create Championships on a national level that are financially feasible (which should be our first goal), we should move towards more centralized and standard regional tournaments. This will help build prestige with national championships (like soccer), and when the financials make sense, we can open those Championship models up to include a wider spectrum of teams with an OPEN division in the hybrid format.
Just my cents.
Andy Lemons
UT Southwestern
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