Recently, the athletics program at Hampton Roads State University (HRSU), a hypothetical NCAA Division I-AA school...

 

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Recently, the athletics program at Hampton Roads State University (HRSU), a hypothetical NCAA Division I-AA school in the mid-major Eastern Atlantic Athletic Conference (EAAC), completed its annual budget review. The current fiscal year is about to begin in just a few months. Word is rapidly spreading across campus that the state legislature, facing a budget crisis in this election year, has pulled back a considerable portion of the money originally allocated to all state universities for the upcoming fiscal year. As a result, the university president, not known as a supporter of intercollegiate athletics, has chosen to take back $800,000 of student fee money promised to HRSU Athletics for the upcoming year and re-allocate that money to cover the funds withdrawn by the state legislature. The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet found on Canvas represents the recently approved budget for HRSU Athletics for the 2023-24 fiscal year. As you will see on the budget, $800,000 in student fee revenues was deleted from the budget, leaving HRSU Athletics with a projected budget deficit of $737,500 for the upcoming year. HRSU Athletic Director Bob Jones has historically budgeted somewhat conservatively during his five-year tenure at the school, trying to project a budget surplus of $50,000 or more to cover unexpected expenses that always occur throughout the year. While this was the case again this year (a surplus of $62,430 had been projected), that surplus was only a small fraction of the amount needed to compensate for the large loss of student fee money that must now be accounted for. Smith made the decision today to hire Collegiate Athletics Consulting (CAC), a recently created sports consulting firm, to provide an unbiased way to balance the department's budget. CAC, of which you are one of the employees, has a very short period of time to provide HRSU Athletics with a recommended solution to its budget crisis. The short turn-around time on this project was necessitated by the fact that HRSU is nearing the beginning of the new fiscal year and needs a solution immediately in order to proceed with its preparations for the upcoming year. CAC has agreed to come in as a consultant for this budgeting crisis at a fee of $10,000. You have been appointed to serve on a CAC project committee that will handle this project. CAC officials met with Jones and the HRSU athletic staff recently in order to gather information about the project and learned a number of important things, including: 1. Revenue numbers have been conservatively predicted for the upcoming year and are not to be altered by CAC, with two possible exceptions: (1) The University of Virginia has extended an invitation to HRSU to play a football game next fall in Charlottesville. UV will pay HRSU an up-front guarantee of $100,000 for the game, but HRSU will have to cancel one of its five scheduled home games in order to accept UV's invitation.; (2) Our staff economist has analyzed data on HRSU athletic patrons and found that an additional $40,000 in marketing/advertising would likely result in a five percent increase in ticket sales for all sports that charge admission. 2. Methods of balancing the budget available to CAC include trimming expenses in a variety of ways, including dismissing employees, and dropping sports. When CAC interviewed HRSU staff members about ways in which they might balance the budget, feedback centered on ideas like trying to be fair to all sports in the cuts, dropping a sport only if necessary, and trying to avoid directly impacting student-athletes' experiences as much as possible. Note: if you choose to eliminate scholarships (i.e. reducing one or more from a particular program or dropping sports programs altogether), you can reduce the scholarship expenses by $18,000 for each scholarship (not participant) eliminated. 3. HRSU is concerned about its compliance with gender equity legislation, particularly Title IX and the Equal Pay Act. CAC budget recommendations to HRSU should include compliance with these laws in areas such as the granting of scholarships, the number of athletic participants, and coaches' salaries. For Title IX purposes, you can assume that the university's student body is 50% female and 50% male and that recent courts have used five percent as their benchmark for determining substantial proportionality. Writing & Submission Guidelines: 1. You are expected to consider all the information listed above, and examine possible alternatives for balancing HRSU's athletic budget. 2. You are to write a memo of approximately one single-spaced pages to CAC Chief Executive Officer describing how you personally would balance the budget if the decision were entirely up to you. In this memo, you do not have to account for balancing every single penny, but rather, you should describe in some detail how you have balanced of those decisions. the budget, including the logic behind the decisions you've made and the potential impact 3. Additionally, you will turn in your Excel budget. 4. Both of these items are due at 11:59 PM on Mar. 19th, 2023. Grading Rubrics: You will be evaluated on how well you met the requirements of the assignment (2 pts), the logic/rationale behind the budgeting decisions you made (4 pts), the use of Excel (2 pts), and the quality of writing in your memo (2 pts). Recently, the athletics program at Hampton Roads State University (HRSU), a hypothetical NCAA Division I-AA school in the mid-major Eastern Atlantic Athletic Conference (EAAC), completed its annual budget review. The current fiscal year is about to begin in just a few months. Word is rapidly spreading across campus that the state legislature, facing a budget crisis in this election year, has pulled back a considerable portion of the money originally allocated to all state universities for the upcoming fiscal year. As a result, the university president, not known as a supporter of intercollegiate athletics, has chosen to take back $800,000 of student fee money promised to HRSU Athletics for the upcoming year and re-allocate that money to cover the funds withdrawn by the state legislature. The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet found on Canvas represents the recently approved budget for HRSU Athletics for the 2023-24 fiscal year. As you will see on the budget, $800,000 in student fee revenues was deleted from the budget, leaving HRSU Athletics with a projected budget deficit of $737,500 for the upcoming year. HRSU Athletic Director Bob Jones has historically budgeted somewhat conservatively during his five-year tenure at the school, trying to project a budget surplus of $50,000 or more to cover unexpected expenses that always occur throughout the year. While this was the case again this year (a surplus of $62,430 had been projected), that surplus was only a small fraction of the amount needed to compensate for the large loss of student fee money that must now be accounted for. Smith made the decision today to hire Collegiate Athletics Consulting (CAC), a recently created sports consulting firm, to provide an unbiased way to balance the department's budget. CAC, of which you are one of the employees, has a very short period of time to provide HRSU Athletics with a recommended solution to its budget crisis. The short turn-around time on this project was necessitated by the fact that HRSU is nearing the beginning of the new fiscal year and needs a solution immediately in order to proceed with its preparations for the upcoming year. CAC has agreed to come in as a consultant for this budgeting crisis at a fee of $10,000. You have been appointed to serve on a CAC project committee that will handle this project. CAC officials met with Jones and the HRSU athletic staff recently in order to gather information about the project and learned a number of important things, including: 1. Revenue numbers have been conservatively predicted for the upcoming year and are not to be altered by CAC, with two possible exceptions: (1) The University of Virginia has extended an invitation to HRSU to play a football game next fall in Charlottesville. UV will pay HRSU an up-front guarantee of $100,000 for the game, but HRSU will have to cancel one of its five scheduled home games in order to accept UV's invitation.; (2) Our staff economist has analyzed data on HRSU athletic patrons and found that an additional $40,000 in marketing/advertising would likely result in a five percent increase in ticket sales for all sports that charge admission. 2. Methods of balancing the budget available to CAC include trimming expenses in a variety of ways, including dismissing employees, and dropping sports. When CAC interviewed HRSU staff members about ways in which they might balance the budget, feedback centered on ideas like trying to be fair to all sports in the cuts, dropping a sport only if necessary, and trying to avoid directly impacting student-athletes' experiences as much as possible. Note: if you choose to eliminate scholarships (i.e. reducing one or more from a particular program or dropping sports programs altogether), you can reduce the scholarship expenses by $18,000 for each scholarship (not participant) eliminated. 3. HRSU is concerned about its compliance with gender equity legislation, particularly Title IX and the Equal Pay Act. CAC budget recommendations to HRSU should include compliance with these laws in areas such as the granting of scholarships, the number of athletic participants, and coaches' salaries. For Title IX purposes, you can assume that the university's student body is 50% female and 50% male and that recent courts have used five percent as their benchmark for determining substantial proportionality. Writing & Submission Guidelines: 1. You are expected to consider all the information listed above, and examine possible alternatives for balancing HRSU's athletic budget. 2. You are to write a memo of approximately one single-spaced pages to CAC Chief Executive Officer describing how you personally would balance the budget if the decision were entirely up to you. In this memo, you do not have to account for balancing every single penny, but rather, you should describe in some detail how you have balanced of those decisions. the budget, including the logic behind the decisions you've made and the potential impact 3. Additionally, you will turn in your Excel budget. 4. Both of these items are due at 11:59 PM on Mar. 19th, 2023. Grading Rubrics: You will be evaluated on how well you met the requirements of the assignment (2 pts), the logic/rationale behind the budgeting decisions you made (4 pts), the use of Excel (2 pts), and the quality of writing in your memo (2 pts).