Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:eagle33 {l Wrote}:deion sanders to fsu. i hope this happens.
FSU is a glorious train wreck. A neighbor down in Captiva is a big booster and he tells me that the entire Athletic Department is on the verge of economic collapse. The booster fund is completely depleted, the athletic budget basically begged the boosters for a massive cash infusion just to keep the department running last year and the football attendance/season ticket holders is down massively--exacerbating the already disastrous financial outlook. The Taggert firing and the money it is going to take to pay him off is basically going to leave them--financially speaking--at the bottom of a crater. They haven't even figured out how to pay for a new appropriate coach. The fact is, that it is going to take five years, at a minimum, to clean up this superfund-sized disaster. Oh, and in addition to all this, the state is giving them nothing towards the athletic program and is currently looking to right size the bloated administration (which is actually a smart and sensible policy) so while they are busy shooting expensive and worthless school administrators they have to be circumspect about athletic spending.
Florida State should also be a warning that the college football arms race has gotten to the point where very few schools will be able to participate. Building a new, state of the art practice facility every twenty years is unsustainable, particularly as coaching salaries rise and everyone who wants to keep up is also forced to hire an army of analysts and younger fans increasingly prefer to watch from home (now that tv coverage is basically universally available for P5 conferences. The entire economic model is under pressure because of technology. My guess is Florida State is just the first to whom this happens. I expect they will be followed by some of the shittier and poorer state schools in the Big 12, Big 10 and SEC.
It was also a teaching college for women until relatively recently and so doesn’t have nearly the money pool of comparably sized state schools. It’s not a sleeping giant, it’s a school that’s had some good coaches with proximity to talent, on and off the field.