So many questions to be answered before donations start to flow in. I just hope this isn't a temporary thing. Once we see we can't compete with the Alabama's of the world for money, it could go south rather quickly.
I think we need to take a different approach here...
What will it take to compete? Right now, it is not that difficult.
Most schools are talking about giving players in the 50k to 100k range (MBB, CFB). That is 100 total scholarship players, or:
100 x $50k = $5M
100 x $100k = $10M
What would it take?
We have 61.5k fans going to Jack Trice on Saturday afternoons. We have almost 150k people following Iowa State Football on twitter. We have 31k students at the University, 3.2M people in the state, and a population of 66k in Ames.
It takes $10 a month from 100k of us to generate....
$12M / Yr
We can listen to paul finbaum, stuart mandel, and the rest of the national media tell us that we don't matter. Or we can do something about it. It's in our hands.
The Green Bay Packers are one of the most valuable franchises in the world and they are in a town that has only 40k more people than Ames, IA. Why? Because they care that much about their local team... they were on the brink of bankruptcy multiple times. How did they get out of it? The fans stepped up.
My point is, we can be the difference. Most fan bases are lazy. They don't care enough to be part of the solution. If we are not part of the solution we will fail. It will take all of us. But if we all do a little, do what we can, it will make a big difference.
Historically, the 5 yr average contributions for a P5 school are about $28M (5 yr average from 2016-2020). This year (School Year '22/23) we got to $30M in donations. We are making huge strides here.
We are moving in the right direction. But unlike the big brands, it's not 100 donors, it's 100k. We can do it, if we all do a little.
