SOCON FUTURE PRO GAMES

[apaladin]

FU may have to do some readjusting.

No worries so far with Elizabeth Davis and the Board of Trustees in control. HIgh schools students still want to attend Furman. https://www.furman.edu/news/application ... %20percent.

That’s the scary part with ED and the BOT n control. Same peeps that ended baseball for no reason.

[Furmanoid]

FU may have to do some readjusting.

No worries so far with Elizabeth Davis and the Board of Trustees in control. HIgh schools students still want to attend Furman. https://www.furman.edu/news/application ... %20percent.

Impressive.
But what is the actual yield (# actually attending of the # accepted from the # who applied); & then what is the retention rate.
Hopefully all good.

Smart kids sometimes apply to the prestige schools just to see if they can get in, but without huge financial aid they can’t actually go. But I can see Furman taking advantage of the current mood of the country if they’re smart.

[AllTimeFU]

FU may have to do some readjusting.

No worries so far with Elizabeth Davis and the Board of Trustees in control. HIgh schools students still want to attend Furman. https://www.furman.edu/news/application ... %20percent.

Good point. FUBeAR recently saw the article below and thought most of that uptick in applications was due to the addition of this wonderful-sounding class…

https://www.furman.edu/news/where-ther ... tradition/
Where there’s smoke, there’s BBQ: MayX pulls apart the tradition
The students in “BBQ: It’s a Noun, Not a Verb” spend three weeks learning the many facets of the ancient method of cooking meat that’s become a pop culture phenomenon in recent years.

But…FUBeAR, excited to learn more about a BBQ class @ FU, kept reading…

“They cover the history of barbecue, inherent racism and appropriation, the environmental impact of cooking with wood and creating demand for hogs and cattle reared en masse by corporate conglomerates…”

“We’ve looked at wood sourcing. That’s a lot of impact…”

“Another topic the class explores is diversity. In an industry dominated for decades by white men…”


…and FUBeAR, then, wasn’t sure. Maybe this IS the lens through which 18 year olds of today want to analyze BBQ. FUBeAR is ‘old school.’ He has made an extensive lifetime study of BBQ of the Carolinas, but he has tended to focus on the GOOD EATIN’ parts, as opposed to deeply searching for some inflammatory alleged aspects of the topic to dissect to distraction.


Outstanding results to increase applications to FU so substantially. FUBeAR has to wonder, though, perhaps apropos of the issue, about the sustainability of those results.


* BTW … “Cattle?” Thought this class was about BBQ … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm intentional about being inclusive. However, this is disconcerting to me.

[Affirm]

[Some people who are South Carolinians associate SOME of what we know about barbecue with the ‘big time’ endeavors of …]

(… From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia …)

…an American (SC) BBQ restaurateur and politician noted for his defense of racial segregation.
[This restauranteur opened his} first drive-in restaurant, in West Columbia, South Carolina in 1953. By 1968, he had four drive-ins, and by 2002 the chain had grown to nine restaurants. The South Carolina-style barbecue was and continues to be well-regarded, and … has been included in multiple compilations of the best barbecue in the United States.
also sold BBQ sauce under [brand name] whose recipe included mustard, brown sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar. By 1999, this had become the largest BBQ operation in the United States.
[his} restaurants were segregated, such that African-Americans were not allowed to eat inside the restaurants, until a lawsuit, … won an injunction in 1968.
…wife of an African-American minister, sued …after… refused her entry to his restaurant. … and won an injunction against the chain requiring them to stop refusing service to African-Americans. At the Supreme Court, this case also set a precedent assigning attorney's fees to someone who successfully sues for an injunction under the act.
On July 1, 2000, the state of South Carolina stopped flying the Confederate Flag over the capitol, following a vote earlier that year. In response, [this restauranteur] raised Confederate flags over his restaurants, also calling the flags "a real Christian symbol... fighting tyranny and terror and suppressive government."
A number of grocery chains responded by dropping his [brand name] sauce from their shelves. The Council of Conservative Citizens and the South Carolina Heritage Coalition responded with a call to boycott Wal-Mart, and [this restauranteur] filed a lawsuit against Bi-Lo, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Publix, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, and Winn-Dixie, arguing that their refusal to carry his products violated South Carolina's Unfair Trading Practices Act and intruded onto his right to free speech. [this restauranteur] asked for $50 million in damages. The South Carolina Supreme Court rejected his claims in 2007.
After [his] children took over the operation, they took down these flags, the last of them in 2013.
In 2014 [this restauranteur] restaurant property, approximately 130 square feet (including a flagpole and Confederate flag), to the organization Sons of Confederate Veterans Rivers Bridge Camp 842 for $5
The remainder of the property, approximately 18,000 square feet, was sold in 2015 to [new owner who flew] … the flag until "shortly after the massacre at Mother Emanuel,
members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans showed up, took down the flag, and replaced it with a new one that was three times as big. “Before, I’d just sucked it up, but then it was, like, ‘Man, I’ve got to try to do something here,’ ” [new owner] said, explaining that he could no longer abide “this huge flag sticking up in the air telling everyone to screw themselves.” [new owner] – whose business suffered due to perceived association with the flag, yet was also criticized for wanting it gone – hired a lawyer to find a way to compel its removal. However, in 2017… zoning board rejected the legal argument that the flagpole did not comply with the site’s business zoning requirements.
In defeat, [new owner] put the restaurant property up for sale in 2019.
[original restauranteur] was a Baptist, and argued in [court case] that requiring that he serve African-American customers was a violation of his religious beliefs.
[original restauranteur] believed that "God gave slaves to whites", and claimed that South Carolina had had a gentler "Biblical slavery". In 2000, The State columnist John Monk wrote a column about the restaurants noting that one tract distributed by the restaurant, John Weaver's Biblical View of Slavery, argued against the idea that slavery is inherently evil, since it appears in the Bible
[original restauranteur] also notably opposed flying flags at half-mast following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., saying King had only been in Memphis "to stir hatred, violence, and discord."
[original restauranteur] ran for a seat in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1964, only losing by a slim margin of around 100 votes. A 1974 run for governor was far less successful, drawing only 2.5% of the vote in the Democratic primary.
Behind the scenes, in 1964 he was Chairman of the George Wallace presidential campaign.
In the 1970s, he was also the chairman of the South Carolina Independent Party
In 2001, [original restauranteur] published his autobiography, Defending My Heritage.
[One of the reviews that] … was negative, saying that " [original restauranteur’s] gasbagging autobiography is one of the most weirdly entertaining summations of the delusional cultural southern mind-set ever printed. My favorite line about growing up Southern: 'White people are the best friends, historically, that blacks have ever had.'"

[FUeveryday]

[gofurman]

FU may have to do some readjusting.

No worries so far with Elizabeth Davis and the Board of Trustees in control. HIgh schools students still want to attend Furman. https://www.furman.edu/news/application ... %20percent.

Good point. FUBeAR recently saw the article below and thought most of that uptick in applications was due to the addition of this wonderful-sounding class…

https://www.furman.edu/news/where-ther ... tradition/
Where there’s smoke, there’s BBQ: MayX pulls apart the tradition
The students in “BBQ: It’s a Noun, Not a Verb” spend three weeks learning the many facets of the ancient method of cooking meat that’s become a pop culture phenomenon in recent years.

But…FUBeAR, excited to learn more about a BBQ class @ FU, kept reading…

“They cover the history of barbecue, inherent racism and appropriation, the environmental impact of cooking with wood and creating demand for hogs and cattle reared en masse by corporate conglomerates…”

“We’ve looked at wood sourcing. That’s a lot of impact…”

“Another topic the class explores is diversity. In an industry dominated for decades by white men…”


…and FUBeAR, then, wasn’t sure. Maybe this IS the lens through which 18 year olds of today want to analyze BBQ. FUBeAR is ‘old school.’ He has made an extensive lifetime study of BBQ of the Carolinas, but he has tended to focus on the GOOD EATIN’ parts, as opposed to deeply searching for some inflammatory alleged aspects of the topic to dissect to distraction.


Outstanding results to increase applications to FU so substantially. FUBeAR has to wonder, though, perhaps apropos of the issue, about the sustainability of those results.


* BTW … “Cattle?” Thought this class was about BBQ … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

FUBEAR. I’m usually with you on this stuff (DEI etc) but then I slowed down and things like the cattle comment make sense. I recall being in San Francisco and the bbq was a hamburger. I was shocked lol

And, as said above. There has been local racial division over some known bbq brands

[FUBeAR]

Scratch everything about this topic covered here to date.

FUBeAR has just determined that the article, itself, is actually nothing more than an extremely well-disguised “hit piece” on Carolina BBQ.

Yep - the author is a native of Texas, where they are so wrong-headed as to falsely and fraudulently believe that beef (hence the curious, previously noted, mention of “cattle” in said article) can be BBQ. Not only that, truth be told on their evil and wicked ways, they deeply and most blasphemously believe that beef is really the one true BBQ meat - give or take a spit-roasted jackalope or two.

FUBeAR’s Research Team cracked the case. The author, whose name, as he does with the names of serial killers and mass shooters, FUBeAR refuses to use, outed himself as being on the wrong side of the pit in the very 1st 2 lines of an online bio of himself that FUBeAR’s Team uncovered…

“Bio - [Extremist, infiltrating, BBQ-insurrectionist, pork traitor article author’s name] grew up in Texas. Brisket and Tex-Mex course through his veins…”

Crafty and clever are the ways of the wicked. Yet FUBeAR shall ever endeavor to ferret them out from behind their seductive-sounding words and smite them down. Their heresy shall not stand!

[aqualung]

(I realize that FUBeAR knows, and that I do not know, how the financing of football scholarships works at schools like Furman.)

Nope … FUBeAR would need to review ALL of FU’s financial records to understand fully how athletics scholarships are treated.

FUBeAR does know they are NOT accounted for by Athletics writing a check to the University in a manner similar to how athletics might pay for athletic tape and book it as an expense. The ‘cost’ of athletics scholarships, most likely, involves a much more complex and nuanced financial treatment within FU’s financial records.

BUT…related to that … here’s another matter associated with this NCAA ‘plan’ to handle these lawsuits and restructure - “Roster Size Limits are “in” / Scholarship limits are “out”. Again, we would need to see the fine print of a final plan, but FUBeAR is reading that Football roster sizes will be capped at 85 and scholarship limits will be eliminated. That works great for the big schools as they all ‘fully funded’ their 85 allowed scholarships AND in recent years expanded their rosters by using NIL Collective Funding to fully ‘scholarship’ as many “walk-on’s” as they desired - typically 10-20. Now, they won’t have to ‘waste’ that NIL money on the ‘worst’ 10-20 Players and can use it to distribute more to the 85 Roster Players whose ‘scholarship expenses’ they will also cover…knowing their competitors are playing on a level field … roster-size-wise.

So…your 1st thought may be, “Wow, that means 1,340-2,680 ‘FBS Quality’ Players are gonna be ‘off-rostered’ by FBS Teams and available to play FCS Football. FCS Foootball is going to be so much better!” And, you would be correct about the numbers, but FUBeAR would disagree with you about a significant quality uptick. The bottom 10-20 Players on an FBS roster, would probably fall into the 35-55 ranking level of Players on an FCS roster - so, some more barely visible quality depth. Great to have, but not really very ‘sexy’ in the big picture.

OTOH …Furman had around 120 Players on last year’s roster. So, way oversimplifying the ‘math’, FU was receiving full tuition from 57 ‘students’ (whole or partial ‘students’) who happened to also be on the Football roster. In the new world, FU will only be able to receive full tuition from 22 whole or partial ‘students’ that also happen to be on the Football roster. So…further over-simplifying the math, that’s 35 x 80k = $2.8 million in tuition revenue that FU’s VP of Enrollment management has to find from elsewhere …cuz in most cases, those young men aren’t coming to Furman if they don’t get to wear their purple jerseys in Paladin Stadium on Saturday’s in the Fall. They can take their tuition $’s to Alabama or Clemson or to MIT and also NOT play D1 Football instead.

So…that certainly hurts the Football Team’s overall contribution to the University. And, also…Furman’s FCS competitors may also be in a better financial position to ‘fund’ an 85 man (non-tuition-generating) roster than Furman is…further compounding the economic issues with this whole thing. Maybe not, but maybe so.

Stay tuned…

I think that FUBear is overthinking this a bit. There is no incremental gain or loss to FU by a student paying their tuition and also playing football as a walk-on. If 35 walk-ons go away, the admissions dept. just opens up the spigot a bit and admits 35 additional qualified applicants in. Easy peasy.

Aqualung is assuming infinite demand for an FU education.

Economics, inflation, cost of capital, etc., etc., etc, may very well have a chilling effect on the demand for education services / experiences such as those provided by Furman University in the near future.

With what we witnessed on college campuses this spring, that chilling may come much sooner than expected.

We all know how it feels to turn that tap and only hear a sucking sound. 35 extra at-the-ready pours can go a long way to quenching a school’s revenue thirst!

I'm not assuming infinite demand, just more than sufficient incremental demand. 35 is an immaterial gap to fill given their current and foreseeable applicant pipeline. I do agree that the value proposition seems way out of whack given the ridiculous high tuition rate. Apply yourself at a state school and you'll do just as well as a FU grad. Plus the student and/or their parents will be much better off financially. I love FU but if I had to pay my own way I would not attend. Of course FU is not alone in charging an exorbitant amount as they are in line with their competition. When I graduated a scholly/tuition was $7,500. Today it's ~$74K. That's a 5.74% CAGR, over 2X the rate of inflation over that same period which was 2.83%. Nothing short of ridiculous.

[aqualung]

(I realize that FUBeAR knows, and that I do not know, how the financing of football scholarships works at schools like Furman.)

Nope … FUBeAR would need to review ALL of FU’s financial records to understand fully how athletics scholarships are treated.

FUBeAR does know they are NOT accounted for by Athletics writing a check to the University in a manner similar to how athletics might pay for athletic tape and book it as an expense. The ‘cost’ of athletics scholarships, most likely, involves a much more complex and nuanced financial treatment within FU’s financial records.

BUT…related to that … here’s another matter associated with this NCAA ‘plan’ to handle these lawsuits and restructure - “Roster Size Limits are “in” / Scholarship limits are “out”. Again, we would need to see the fine print of a final plan, but FUBeAR is reading that Football roster sizes will be capped at 85 and scholarship limits will be eliminated. That works great for the big schools as they all ‘fully funded’ their 85 allowed scholarships AND in recent years expanded their rosters by using NIL Collective Funding to fully ‘scholarship’ as many “walk-on’s” as they desired - typically 10-20. Now, they won’t have to ‘waste’ that NIL money on the ‘worst’ 10-20 Players and can use it to distribute more to the 85 Roster Players whose ‘scholarship expenses’ they will also cover…knowing their competitors are playing on a level field … roster-size-wise.

So…your 1st thought may be, “Wow, that means 1,340-2,680 ‘FBS Quality’ Players are gonna be ‘off-rostered’ by FBS Teams and available to play FCS Football. FCS Foootball is going to be so much better!” And, you would be correct about the numbers, but FUBeAR would disagree with you about a significant quality uptick. The bottom 10-20 Players on an FBS roster, would probably fall into the 35-55 ranking level of Players on an FCS roster - so, some more barely visible quality depth. Great to have, but not really very ‘sexy’ in the big picture.

OTOH …Furman had around 120 Players on last year’s roster. So, way oversimplifying the ‘math’, FU was receiving full tuition from 57 ‘students’ (whole or partial ‘students’) who happened to also be on the Football roster. In the new world, FU will only be able to receive full tuition from 22 whole or partial ‘students’ that also happen to be on the Football roster. So…further over-simplifying the math, that’s 35 x 80k = $2.8 million in tuition revenue that FU’s VP of Enrollment management has to find from elsewhere …cuz in most cases, those young men aren’t coming to Furman if they don’t get to wear their purple jerseys in Paladin Stadium on Saturday’s in the Fall. They can take their tuition $’s to Alabama or Clemson or to MIT and also NOT play D1 Football instead.

So…that certainly hurts the Football Team’s overall contribution to the University. And, also…Furman’s FCS competitors may also be in a better financial position to ‘fund’ an 85 man (non-tuition-generating) roster than Furman is…further compounding the economic issues with this whole thing. Maybe not, but maybe so.

Stay tuned…

I think that FUBear is overthinking this a bit. There is no incremental gain or loss to FU by a student paying their tuition and also playing football as a walk-on. If 35 walk-ons go away, the admissions dept. just opens up the spigot a bit and admits 35 additional qualified applicants in. Easy peasy.

Aqualung is assuming infinite demand for an FU education.

Economics, inflation, cost of capital, etc., etc., etc, may very well have a chilling effect on the demand for education services / experiences such as those provided by Furman University in the near future.

With what we witnessed on college campuses this spring, that chilling may come much sooner than expected.

We all know how it feels to turn that tap and only hear a sucking sound. 35 extra at-the-ready pours can go a long way to quenching a school’s revenue thirst!

I'm not assuming infinite demand, just more than sufficient incremental demand. 35 is an immaterial gap to fill given their current and foreseeable applicant pipeline. I do agree that the value proposition seems way out of whack given the ridiculous high tuition rate. Apply yourself at a state school and you'll do just as well as a FU grad. Plus the student and/or their parents will be much better off financially. I love FU but if I had to pay my own way I would not attend. Of course FU is not alone in charging an exorbitant amount as they are in line with their competition. When I graduated a scholly/tuition was $7,500. Today it's ~$74K. That's a 5.74% CAGR, over 2X the rate of inflation over that same period which was 2.83%. Nothing short of ridiculous.

And as an FYI and valuable reference point, if the FU tuition did escalate at the general rate of inflation, tuition today would be about $24K. Wow.

[FUBeAR]

financing of football scholarships

…tuition revenue that FU’s VP of Enrollment management has to find

the admissions dept. just opens up the spigot a bit

Aqualung is assuming infinite demand for an FU education.

I'm not assuming infinite demand, just more than sufficient incremental demand.

Infinite demand…Sufficient incremental demand…

Po-tay-to…Po-tah-to…

What you know ‘bout BBQ meat?

[Davemeister]

What you know ‘bout BBQ meat?

Last month while traveling in Florida I saw a sign for the Vegan Rehab Center. It's a BBQ joint.

[FUBeAR]

Scratch everything about this topic covered here to date.

FUBeAR has just determined that the article, itself, is actually nothing more than an extremely well-disguised “hit piece” on Carolina BBQ.

Yep - the author is a native of Texas, where they are so wrong-headed as to falsely and fraudulently believe that beef (hence the curious, previously noted, mention of “cattle” in said article) can be BBQ. Not only that, truth be told on their evil and wicked ways, they deeply and most blasphemously believe that beef is really the one true BBQ meat - give or take a spit-roasted jackalope or two.

FUBeAR’s Research Team cracked the case. The author, whose name, as he does with the names of serial killers and mass shooters, FUBeAR refuses to use, outed himself as being on the wrong side of the pit in the very 1st 2 lines of an online bio of himself that FUBeAR’s Team uncovered…

“Bio - [Extremist, infiltrating, BBQ-insurrectionist, pork traitor article author’s name] grew up in Texas. Brisket and Tex-Mex course through his veins…”

Crafty and clever are the ways of the wicked. Yet FUBeAR shall ever endeavor to ferret them out from behind their seductive-sounding words and smite them down. Their heresy shall not stand!

Uh-huh…yep

[FUBeAR]

Scratch everything about this topic covered here to date.

FUBeAR has just determined that the article, itself, is actually nothing more than an extremely well-disguised “hit piece” on Carolina BBQ.

Yep - the author is a native of Texas, where they are so wrong-headed as to falsely and fraudulently believe that beef (hence the curious, previously noted, mention of “cattle” in said article) can be BBQ. Not only that, truth be told on their evil and wicked ways, they deeply and most blasphemously believe that beef is really the one true BBQ meat - give or take a spit-roasted jackalope or two.

FUBeAR’s Research Team cracked the case. The author, whose name, as he does with the names of serial killers and mass shooters, FUBeAR refuses to use, outed himself as being on the wrong side of the pit in the very 1st 2 lines of an online bio of himself that FUBeAR’s Team uncovered…

“Bio - [Extremist, infiltrating, BBQ-insurrectionist, pork traitor article author’s name] grew up in Texas. Brisket and Tex-Mex course through his veins…”

Crafty and clever are the ways of the wicked. Yet FUBeAR shall ever endeavor to ferret them out from behind their seductive-sounding words and smite them down. Their heresy shall not stand!

Uh-huh…yep

Even mo’ betta…

[gofurman]

Have to stand up for NC and SC BBQ. Tops in my opinion. Granted I’ve never had KY BBQ or. Hawaiian and I’ve had friends tell me KY is strong.

But without that one piece I’ll stand my ground that the Carolinas BBQ rocks

[FUeveryday]

It's all fun and games but facts are facts