On the budget/cutting sports at MSU

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T11:41:31-0500

Yesterday there was a thread and a lot of noise across the country about Arkansas cutting men’s and women’s tennis. I posted a couple links showing different athletic department’s numbers; I wish I could find a simple graph of ours but our numbers are buried in a mind-numbing like 200 page prospectus. But here is a CL article/snapshot on MSU’s:

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/mississippi-state/2026/02/17/mississippi-state-athletics-budget-2025-fiscal-year/88625461007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx34p000250c000250e007900v11xx34d--xx--b--xx--&gca-ft=213&gca-ds=sophi

Football: revenue $48.3m expenses, $37.6m , profit $10.7m

Baseball: revenue $3.4m, expenses $7.5m, losses $4.1m (losses this year are set to increase to around $5.5m to $6m with the coaches salary going from $1.3m to 3.0m + higher support staff salaries)

Basketball: revenue $16.1m, expenses $16.5m, losses -$400k. (basketball usually makes a $2-5m profit, this was a screwy year due to some capital expenditures on facilities that won’t happen again for a while)

Women’s basketball isn’t in fleshed out in the article but I have seen the prospectus with my own two eyes working in accounting. Was unsure if I should say this but it’s publicly available info if you dig so f*ck it lol. It lost $4.1m.

The rest of the sports revenues/expenses are very similar to the Ole Miss/Arkansas numbers posted below.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T11:41:49-0500

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T11:42:22-0500

Ole Miss.

Dawgbite · 2026-04-25T11:45:03-0500

Baseball question. Since the seat licensing fee had to be prepaid for ten years, is that money reflected yearly over the ten years or was it listed in the year or two that it was required to be paid?

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T11:51:54-0500

So a couple things. One thing that is important to remember here is that to remain FBS in football, we must have 14 sports. We currently have 14 sports offered. Another thing to remember is that due to Title IX, the amount of men’s and women’s sports scholarships must equal. Because football has 85 scholarships, more than 4 times any other sport, almost all universities have more total women’s teams than men’s teams.

She Mate Me · 2026-04-25T11:59:41-0500

If the above numbers presented so far are correct, what is Ole Miss monkeying with to report such high baseball revenue.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T11:59:53-0500

The biggest money losing sports at MSU are baseball, and then women’s basketball.

On the other thread, I stated:

“Baseball is going to lose more money this year, and is the biggest money losing sport at Mississippi State. It will likely be somewhere between $5.5-6m in 2026. If we host a regional it might stay at $4.5-5m. We nearly tripled the coach’s salary. The annual debt service on the Dude is absolutely crazy, it is the highest in the country for a college baseball stadium.

From a financial perspective, paying BOC $3m, players getting big time NIL, chartering 50+ person jets that cost $100-200k each trip, and building a $80m baseball stadium all for the most-money-losing-sport are the worst financial decisions we have ever made as an athletic department. These are just cold hard numbers.

But fandom is not just a bottom line, corporate business. Emotions and tradition are involved. So I’m not even saying it’s wrong to do. But yes, “going all in on baseball” is a financial black hole. For any university.”

This is still true. But I’m not here to criticize baseball fandom, women’s basketball fandom, or complain. I’m here to look for solutions, and would love to hear others ideas. Because while an SEC team cutting a sport is big news, it is only the beginning of what is about to be an avalanche nationally.

She Mate Me · 2026-04-25T12:04:41-0500

It seems obvious to me that the coaching salaries in all the sports, even the big 2, but especially the money losing sports, are completely out of line with reality.

BTCMoonBoy · 2026-04-25T12:06:09-0500

Don’t give the athletic department a single penny until they cut waste fraud and abuse. Put every penny on a public blockchain. Then hire a hacksaw businessman to run the department to enact common sense policies:
- you get nil and not another penny from school
- why in the hell do sports with men/women teams have two different schedules? The women basketball team should play before the men’s game etc
- sell every team to the highest bidder - let the jersey look like a 17n nascar - they’re mercenaries anyway so don’t really represent the university
- give club teams a higher status and more visibility inside the athletic department and to the alumni- they are the true student athletes

615dawg · 2026-04-25T12:06:21-0500

I think we overspent on the new Dudy Noble and will never see that money back. It was a feel good expense for our fanbase though.

it’s not sustainable. That’s why Arkansas got the party started yesterday with cutting tennis.

and I can tell you because I’ve been in the meetings. There’s a lot of support around cutting sports at just about every D1 and D2 university. This isn’t high school. A college does not need a bunch of money losing extracurricular activities to fulfill the mission of the university.

There will be an organization that comes out of this that oversees club sports (not a bunch of organizations that oversee one sport). Universities will say we will keep up minimal to good facilities for minor sports, give them $50k for uniforms and local travel and that will be the collegiate experience for minor sports.

Xenomorph · 2026-04-25T12:11:19-0500

Is there anything to the rumors that we plan to take $10MM from football in the '26-'27 fiscal year and dramatically increase baseball NIL?

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T12:16:36-0500

Here is personally, what I would do. Keep in mind the title IX requirements, and also that we are already at the minimum 14 sports to stay FBS. So if we cut a sport, another has to be added.

The options are to 1.) cut/replace sports or 2.) minimize expenses in money losing sports.

I’ve already said I that having so much debt to service for a $80m college baseball stadium and paying a coach $3m is a massive financial anchor around our neck, but what is done can’t be undone. I’m looking for solutions, not b*tching about decisions that have already been made. The one thing I did suggested cutting down on baseball chartering jets, taking bus instead. And other travel expenses.

That being said, I suspect if you were to poll our fanbase, would you rather cut baseball, or even make adjustments to spending in baseball, or cut women’s basketball program entirely, 99% would say nuke women’s basketball.

We should be the bold ones to do it. Replace it with bowling or rifle or heck beach volleyball. MANY universities would follow our lead; no one wants to be the first one.

The other thing I would do is, absolutely 100% no chartered jet travel of any kind for any sport outside the big three. Beyond coaching salaries, travel is by far the biggest expenses. Someone asked how in the world could Ole Miss volleyball have $3m in expenses? Well, take a $100k charter flight to Columbia, Gainesville, Lexington, Austin, etc for a Tuesday match. Multiple times 15.

We need to aggressively cut expenses in all money losing sports. If we want to protect baseball, that’s fine. Women’s basketball, softball, volleyball, tennis? Yeah sorry, you’re taking the bus. Coaching salaries should be slashed too. The women’s basketball coach should not be making $800k a year.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T12:26:19-0500

She Mate Me said:
If the above numbers presented so far are correct, what is Ole Miss monkeying with to report such high baseball revenue.

You’re not going to want to hear this, but we are servicing on an annual basis a metric sh*tton of debt on Dudy Noble, by far the highest in the country for a college baseball stadium.

But our fans love baseball and it can’t be unspent. So what we need to do is aggressively cut expenses in all money losing sports besides baseball.

Let baseball be our “loss-leader”. Not a perfect analogy, but plenty of corporations around the globe such as Walmart, Costco, retail outlets sell some popular items at a loss to keep customers satisfied and in the hopes that if that item gets their foot in the door, they’ll buy something else while they are in the building.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T12:30:48-0500

One solution is always cutting expenses. The other is to raise revenue.

For revenue raising, I think Dudy Noble is vastly underutilized. It is a premier facility and should be used for far more than 20-30 baseball games.

I think one thing we could and should do more of is holding concerts there in offseason if feasible. I’m not sure we could get you know some major pop star to come to Starkville and sell out Davis Wade with 60,000 people, but there are plenty of country singers who would gladly do a show in Starkville at the Dude in front of 15-20k. Fans on the actual field as well it could be set up easily.

I’m done with my rant. But we’re about to see a tidal wave of money-losing sports being cut, or their budgets being slashed. For once I’d like Mississippi State to be early and on the front of something. Be proactive rather than reactive.

Seinfeld · 2026-04-25T12:32:23-0500

She Mate Me said:
It seems obvious to me that the coaching salaries in all the sports, even the big 2, but especially the money losing sports, are completely out of line with reality.

And this is not even arguable. Our university has now hidden it behind a login screen, but last year's detailed athletic budget was on the internet for all to see a few months back, and the coaching salaries that we're paying for sports that bring very little back to the university are wild. $250-600k for golf, tennis, or volleyball coaches for little reason other than that the money was simply there a few years back, so why not?? Let's just make everyone rich

It's been completely out of control for a long time

Seinfeld · 2026-04-25T12:40:03-0500

615dawg said:
I think we overspent on the new Dudy Noble and will never see that money back. It was a feel good expense for our fanbase though.

We very well may have, but I think we also need to admit that our administration to include even Cohen himself has done an absolutely piss poor job cashing in on the popularity of baseball at our university. We have the best stadium and most devoted fanbase in the country, and yet we see that schools like OM and the Hogs are lapping us in baseball revenue. It should be embarrassing

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T12:52:15-0500

Seinfeld said:
We very well may have, but I think we also need to admit that our administration to include even Cohen himself has done an absolutely piss poor job cashing in on the popularity of baseball at our university. We have the best stadium and most devoted fanbase in the country, and yet we see that schools like OM and the Hogs are lapping us in baseball revenue. It should be embarrassing

Well, this is another thing no one wants to hear, but we should raise the ticket prices for baseball, by a LOT. and increase concession prices as well. You can’t build the most expensive stadium in the country and then not increase the ticket prices much. The demand there is so massive, we sell out 15,000 people all the time with a waitlist. Welp, you need to raise the prices to increase revenue. You’ve got to weigh the pros and cons of pricing and attendance. Yeah it’s cool to say we have the largest baseball attendance records. But if having 10-12,000 there, who paid a lot more for those tickets thus bringing in a lot more money, that’s better financially for the athletic department.

DesotoCountyDawg · 2026-04-25T13:40:51-0500

This will probably piss all of you off but I wouldn’t change much of anything. The university isn’t a business. Some things won’t make money and will be losers forever. They enhance the university by offering extracurricular activities and athletics.

Flame on if you want. I don’t give a shít.

RocketDawg · 2026-04-25T13:49:16-0500

Anon201138 said:
Yesterday there was a thread and a lot of noise across the country about Arkansas cutting men’s and women’s tennis. I posted a couple links showing different athletic department’s numbers; I wish I could find a simple graph of ours but our numbers are buried in a mind-numbing like 200 page prospectus. But here is a CL article/snapshot on MSU’s:

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/mississippi-state/2026/02/17/mississippi-state-athletics-budget-2025-fiscal-year/88625461007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx34p000250c000250e007900v11xx34d--xx--b--xx--&gca-ft=213&gca-ds=sophi

Football: revenue $48.3m expenses, $37.6m , profit $10.7m

Baseball: revenue $3.4m, expenses $7.5m, losses $4.1m (losses this year are set to increase to around $5.5m to $6m with the coaches salary going from $1.3m to 3.0m + higher support staff salaries)

Basketball: revenue $16.1m, expenses $16.5m, losses -$400k. (basketball usually makes a $2-5m profit, this was a screwy year due to some capital expenditures on facilities that won’t happen again for a while)

Women’s basketball isn’t in fleshed out in the article but I have seen the prospectus with my own two eyes working in accounting. Was unsure if I should say this but it’s publicly available info if you dig so f*ck it lol. It lost $4.1m.

The rest of the sports revenues/expenses are very similar to the Ole Miss/Arkansas numbers posted below.

Does the football revenue/expenses include stadium upgrades? And revenue sharing with the players? Does baseball include the cost of the Dudy Noble overhaul of a few years ago?

RocketDawg · 2026-04-25T14:00:41-0500

Anon201138 said:
So a couple things. One thing that is important to remember here is that to remain FBS in football, we must have 14 sports. We currently have 14 sports offered. Another thing to remember is that due to Title IX, the amount of men’s and women’s sports scholarships must equal. Because football has 85 scholarships, more than 4 times any other sport, almost all universities have more total women’s teams than men’s teams.

Reducing (or eliminating) that number for every FBS school in the country might go a long way in solving financial problems.

thatsbaseball · 2026-04-25T14:17:06-0500

Do these numbers reflect donations to athletics ? And more specifically do they reflect donations that are earmarked for one program or another I.E. baseball .

ETK99 · 2026-04-25T14:18:01-0500

Anon201138 said:
The biggest money losing sports at MSU are baseball, and then women’s basketball.

On the other thread, I stated:

“Baseball is going to lose more money this year, and is the biggest money losing sport at Mississippi State. It will likely be somewhere between $5.5-6m in 2026. If we host a regional it might stay at $4.5-5m. We nearly tripled the coach’s salary. The annual debt service on the Dude is absolutely crazy, it is the highest in the country for a college baseball stadium.

From a financial perspective, paying BOC $3m, players getting big time NIL, chartering 50+ person jets that cost $100-200k each trip, and building a $80m baseball stadium all for the most-money-losing-sport are the worst financial decisions we have ever made as an athletic department. These are just cold hard numbers.

But fandom is not just a bottom line, corporate business. Emotions and tradition are involved. So I’m not even saying it’s wrong to do. But yes, “going all in on baseball” is a financial black hole. For any university.”

This is still true. But I’m not here to criticize baseball fandom, women’s basketball fandom, or complain. I’m here to look for solutions, and would love to hear others ideas. Because while an SEC team cutting a sport is big news, it is only the beginning of what is about to be an avalanche nationally.

Baseball only loses money due to the stadium debt. Once that's gone it's making money. Solid money too.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T14:25:10-0500

thatsbaseball said:
Do these numbers reflect donations to athletics ? And more specifically do they reflect donations that are earmarked for one program or another I.E. baseball .

Yes. For example there was a large chunk of money donated that went directly toward paying for the new baseball stadium. So I’m just making the numbers smooth as an example if Dudy Noble cost $100 total and $30 were donated to pay for the cost, we only took out debt on $70 total to finance it. Donations paid for about 1/3 of Dudy Noble.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T14:27:51-0500

ETK99 said:
Baseball only loses money due to the stadium debt. Once that's gone it's making money. Solid money too.

Possible. But baseball never once made a profit before the new stadium. And we have about 10-15 years left paying it down.

DesotoCountyDawg · 2026-04-25T14:29:41-0500

ETK99 said:
Baseball only loses money due to the stadium debt. Once that's gone it's making money. Solid money too.

Anon201138 said:
Yes. For example there was a large chunk of money donated that went directly toward paying for the new baseball stadium. So I’m just making the numbers smooth as an example if Dudy Noble cost $100 total and $30 were donated to pay for the cost, we only took out debt on $70 total to finance it. Donations paid for about 1/3 of Dudy Noble.

What’s the debt service on the baseball stadium?

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T14:32:44-0500

DesotoCountyDawg said:
What’s the debt service on the baseball stadium?

Total was around $50m. 20 years to pay it off initially but usually places refinance terms. Not too much different than taking out a 20 year note on a house. 20 years technically gives us until 2040 or but I think our goal should be to pay it off by 2035.

By the way I totally agree with your sentiment that MSU athletics is not like a money making corporation. The goal is not to make a profit. I mean who would that money go to? You can’t buy shares of stock in MSU Athletics. The goal is to break even maybe make small profit in the wisest way you can.

For us, and really any P4 program outside of the absolute basketball blue bloods (UNC, Duke, KY, Kansas), that means doing damn near anything you can to get the football program winning. I’ll put is this way: from a bottom line, and even donor fundraising, perspective, us paying $10m+ for a heck of a football coach if Lebby is fired is better than than hiring another FB coach for $5m and then spending that other $5m a year in money losing sports.

OM making those extra millions this year in football from all the excitement of making a run if the playoffs is a more realistic and efficient way to make money to pay, or defray costs, for a baseball program than to just pay extra millions of what is already in our coffers to hire a $3m baseball coach and pay for a massive stadium. Let’s say we won the CWS this year—that still wouldn’t generate a fraction of the revenue for the baseball program as a football playoff run would.

If we got a hell of a coach, made the playoffs, etc, so much more money comes in. Which makes baseball healthier. I guess my point is that the football team going 11-1, 10-2 and making the playoffs is as good for baseball as paying a baseball coach $3m.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T15:00:04-0500

RocketDawg said:
Reducing (or eliminating) that number for every FBS school in the country might go a long way in solving financial problems.

Realistically, what they should do, is exempt football from the Title IX scholarship match requirement.

Football has 85 scholarships, no other sport has more than 15-20. Should we really have to add five different money-losing women’s sports teams to match this?

Football pays the bills at 95% of power programs. It is the lifeblood of almost all athletic departments. Give it a special exemption from title IX and then yes the rest of the scholarships have to be equal between men and women.

But this makes too much sense, so the career politicians and college administrators would never do it.

ETK99 · 2026-04-25T15:05:59-0500

Anon201138 said:
Possible. But baseball never once made a profit before the new stadium. And we have about 10-15 years left paying it down.

And we never averaged the people, had the cost of rigs like we have and will be having, and seat license coming will be a significant increase as well. Then you've got the lofts and semi-premium seating spots beer sales etc etc.

patdog · 2026-04-25T15:11:02-0500

I’ve mentioned before but you have to take capital expenditures & debt service out of the numbers to get a valid comparison. Otherwise you could make some very bad financial decisions based on faulty data.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T15:17:42-0500

patdog said:
I’ve mentioned before but you have to take capital expenditures & debt service out of the numbers to get a valid comparison. Otherwise you could make some very bad financial decisions based on faulty data.

You can’t just take that out that’s one of the biggest expenses. If Ole Miss recently said you know what heck yeah we’ve won 50 games in 5 years, made the playoffs. Let’s do a huge $100-200 million+ renovation to Vaught Hemingway and make it 80k seats, it would be one of the most expensive, dumbest things they could do. Because of how much it would cost over more than a decade to pay for.

As a matter of fact many in their fanbase that don’t realize this have been clamoring for the AD to expand the stadium. He is smart and is like look I get we’re good, but that’s not the way to spend money right now. Said it openly in a press conference.

Duke Humphrey · 2026-04-25T15:25:42-0500

Anon201138 said:
Well, this is another thing no one wants to hear, but we should raise the ticket prices for baseball, by a LOT. and increase concession prices as well. You can’t build the most expensive stadium in the country and then not increase the ticket prices much. The demand there is so massive, we sell out 15,000 people all the time with a waitlist. Welp, you need to raise the prices to increase revenue. You’ve got to weigh the pros and cons of pricing and attendance. Yeah it’s cool to say we have the largest baseball attendance records. But if having 10-12,000 there, who paid a lot more for those tickets thus bringing in a lot more money, that’s better financially for the athletic department.

I tend to agree with you but we have to be realistic with our market, and truth is we have a cheap fanbase. Arkansas and UM have a market that allows them to charge more because their fanbase is different (NWA population and corporate community; Oxford just the price to “be seen”).

the most underpriced real estate is the Left Field Lounge. And many of the old guard are already pissed that prices have gone up from the $250 or $500 they were paying when they hauled cotton trailers in there during old stadium days. On the other hand, we raise prices and they get sucked up by companies and out of town fans, you run the risk of losing people in them every game who are cooking, etc.

I think we need to charge more but we have a fanbase that doesn’t want to pay

Seinfeld · 2026-04-25T15:34:11-0500

DesotoCountyDawg said:
This will probably piss all of you off but I wouldn’t change much of anything. The university isn’t a business. Some things won’t make money and will be losers forever. They enhance the university by offering extracurricular activities and athletics.

Flame on if you want. I don’t give a shít.

If the money's there, sure. And the money was there to do everything that everyone wanted and more just a couple years ago.

But then revenue sharing happened, and athletic departments across the country are realizing that going out and begging cash strapped fans for another $25M/yr isn't cutting it. Maybe football keeps growing and printing money that can pay for all of this, I don't know. If it doesn't, though, big money losing sports are going to be in trouble.

And to be clear, I hate all of this

BTCMoonBoy · 2026-04-25T15:36:14-0500

Anon201138 said:
Realistically, what they should do, is exempt football from the Title IX scholarship match requirement.

Football has 85 scholarships, no other sport has more than 15-20. Should we really have to add five different money-losing women’s sports teams to match this?

Football pays the bills at 95% of power programs. It is the lifeblood of almost all athletic departments. Give it a special exemption from title IX and then yes the rest of the scholarships have to be equal between men and women.

But this makes too much sense, so the career politicians and college administrators would never do it.

That’s easy … football is paid for by NIL so eliminate scholarships

patdog · 2026-04-25T15:45:14-0500

Anon201138 said:
You can’t just take that out that’s one of the biggest expenses. If Ole Miss recently said you know what heck yeah we’ve won 50 games in 5 years, made the playoffs. Let’s do a huge $100-200 million+ renovation to Vaught Hemingway and make it 80k seats, it would be one of the most expensive, dumbest things they could do. Because of how much it would cost over more than a decade to pay for.

As a matter of fact many in their fanbase that don’t realize this have been clamoring for the AD to expand the stadium. He is smart and is like look I get we’re good, but that’s not the way to spend money right now. Said it openly in a press conference.

Nobody evaluates a business that way. It completely misleading. And in this case it’s a sunk cost. You’re paying that with or without baseball. If you want to argue we shouldn’t have rebuilt the stadium fine. Argue that. But it has zero effect on any evaluation of the baseball program.

Called3rdstrikedawg · 2026-04-25T15:46:25-0500

Anon201138 said:
Yesterday there was a thread and a lot of noise across the country about Arkansas cutting men’s and women’s tennis. I posted a couple links showing different athletic department’s numbers; I wish I could find a simple graph of ours but our numbers are buried in a mind-numbing like 200 page prospectus. But here is a CL article/snapshot on MSU’s:

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/mississippi-state/2026/02/17/mississippi-state-athletics-budget-2025-fiscal-year/88625461007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx34p000250c000250e007900v11xx34d--xx--b--xx--&gca-ft=213&gca-ds=sophi

Football: revenue $48.3m expenses, $37.6m , profit $10.7m

Baseball: revenue $3.4m, expenses $7.5m, losses $4.1m (losses this year are set to increase to around $5.5m to $6m with the coaches salary going from $1.3m to 3.0m + higher support staff salaries)

Basketball: revenue $16.1m, expenses $16.5m, losses -$400k. (basketball usually makes a $2-5m profit, this was a screwy year due to some capital expenditures on facilities that won’t happen again for a while)

Women’s basketball isn’t in fleshed out in the article but I have seen the prospectus with my own two eyes working in accounting. Was unsure if I should say this but it’s publicly available info if you dig so f*ck it lol. It lost $4.1m.

The rest of the sports revenues/expenses are very similar to the Ole Miss/Arkansas numbers posted below.

No way that baseball income is right just based on average tix price before all the add ons. Tix income per game has to be at least $200,000 x 15 SEC home games and at least $100,000 for the remaining -19 home games. I’m not including fees and donations. Just tix cost. There is huge markup in all concessions, especially beer and soft drinks. No way Ole Miss baseball income is that much more than State.

Willow Grove Dawg · 2026-04-25T15:57:48-0500

Anon201138 said:
Well, this is another thing no one wants to hear, but we should raise the ticket prices for baseball, by a LOT. and increase concession prices as well. You can’t build the most expensive stadium in the country and then not increase the ticket prices much. The demand there is so massive, we sell out 15,000 people all the time with a waitlist. Welp, you need to raise the prices to increase revenue. You’ve got to weigh the pros and cons of pricing and attendance. Yeah it’s cool to say we have the largest baseball attendance records. But if having 10-12,000 there, who paid a lot more for those tickets thus bringing in a lot more money, that’s better financially for the athletic department.

Outfield Rigs have increased from $2K in 2021 to $4K this season. I expect them to continue to increase. I would not be shocked if they started charging folks to bring in beer,etc.
The seat license for chairback seats will increase significantly as soon as the 10 year deal expires. I feel certain prices for the Omaha Club & Suites will also increase.

Anon201138 · 2026-04-25T15:59:34-0500

Seinfeld said:
If the money's there, sure. And the money was there to do everything that everyone wanted and more just a couple years ago.

But then revenue sharing happened, and athletic departments across the country are realizing that going out and begging cash strapped fans for another $25M/yr isn't cutting it. Maybe football keeps growing and printing money that can pay for all of this, I don't know. If it doesn't, though, big money losing sports are going to be in trouble.

And to be clear, I hate all of this

Personally, with this pay-to-play, NIL, huge TV, corporatized era I think that eventually what is going to happen is that football and possibly men’s basketball break away, have a collectively bargaining agreement, with all profits going to just that FB/BB program’s players/coaches/families just like any other pro team. I think money-losing sports in the next 10-20 years are essentially going to be club sports. Meaning if you can’t pay for yourself you’re no longer a varsity sport at this university.

College football and basketball are basically TV-money-driven professional sports just like any other pro league now. There’s only one major money losing (and only women’s) pro sports league in America, the WNBA, and the only reason it still exists is for political correctness reasons it is subsidized by the NBA.

Any other professional sports league, if it is not commercially viable and does not make a profit, it folds.

Basically for decades basketball and football money has subsidized the 12+ other sports at every university, similar to the NBA/WNBA.

So unfortunately, I think in 20 years, college baseball as a varsity sport is finished. Which sucks because we have the most rabid fan base in America. But even if we could somehow turn a profit on baseball, without having to use football TV money to pay for the Dude/coaching salaries (which I believe we could). The problem is what maybe 10-15 universities across the country have big enough support to make their baseball program financially viable on its own? Who would we play? Have a national championship of 15 schools?

The biggest money by far is in TV. Very few people in the entire country outside of alumni are tuning into Georgia-Ole Miss or MSU-LSU today. Millions and millions, from all over the country will tune into LSU-Ole Miss or Bama-Georgia in the fall. If football and basketball break away, and the coaches and players decide you know what we don’t want to share our profits to subsidize 12 other money losing sports at this school, college baseball is finished.

615dawg · 2026-04-25T16:10:23-0500

We need to be cheering on a 24 team playoff. With the right leadership, we could make a 24 team field 3-4 times a decade.

MStateDawg · 2026-04-25T16:25:16-0500

Anon201138 said:
Baseball: revenue $3.4m

This number seems questionable. Dudy Noble has ~4500 chairbacks in the grandstand. The cheapest cost of those 4500 seats is $495 with obviously the club levels costing more. But regardless, 495x4500 is over over $2.2 million. Your telling me that sales of all club levels, skyboxes, outfield rigs, Lofts, GA tickets & concessions is ONLY $1.2 million??? Frankly I don’t think that’s remotely accurate.

Maroon13 · 2026-04-25T16:29:12-0500

Are you going to post the numbers next year when the football players get 80-90% of the rev share in salaries?

That will be an additional $16-18million dollar expense on the books to run a football team. Therefore State football will be $8-9 million under water when 26-27 financials are published.

Another point, how has "sound financial decisions" worked for football? You have a clueless inexperienced coach, the oldest and worst stadium in the sec. You have absolutely no way to sell football to increase tickets sales. You have no extra amenities to offer fans to generate excitement.

Because of baseball, Starkville is packed this weekend. Excitement is in the air. The baseball stadium will be full tonight.

In September, the football stadium will be half full, the atmosphere in stadium and town will rival a wake.

On the budget/cutting sports at MSU

Redshirt

Redshirt

Redshirt

All-American

Redshirt

Heisman

Redshirt

Heisman

Junior

All-Conference

All-American

Redshirt

Redshirt

Redshirt

All-American

All-American

Redshirt

Heisman

All-Conference

All-Conference

All-American

Heisman

Redshirt

Redshirt

Heisman

Redshirt

Redshirt

Heisman

Heisman

Redshirt

All-Conference

All-American

Junior

Heisman

All-Conference

All-Conference

Redshirt

All-Conference

All-Conference

All-Conference