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McNeese athletics get a financial boost (7/11)

By GARY LANEY
AMERICAN PRESS

Athletics will get a share of the new-found wealth enjoyed by the state's universities.

For McNeese State that means money to hire an athletic director at a competitive salary, among other things...

We all (Louisiana public schools except LSU) got a financial boost with the lastest decision. Not only did the legislature vote to provide full funding for all public universities, the state board of regents also voted to raise the cap on the amount the university could spend on athletics. Our budget last year was roughly 93.5 million dollars of which 2.1% was allocated for athletics. With the funding increase, our budget should approach the 115 million dollar range and we are now allowed to allocate 3%. If my math is correct, we could potentially see an increase of roughly 1.4 to 1.5 million for athletics. The other thing is scholarships are now funded at 100% vs 75% previously. Just funding the scholarships at 100%, alone, is a HUGE deal, much less the additional monies.

Excellent! Glad to see funding for education and athletics increase!

This is exactly why UCA and ASU need to work together. Despite what the idiots on sprots radio and in the paper believe, Arkansas colleges don't soend much at all compared to our neighbors on athletics. They are going to fund scholarships at 100% while UCA and ASU fund theirs at 0%. All schools athletic departments in LA will get another $1.5 million in addition to the funding for scholarships where we are capped at $750K.

The $750K needs to be raised and we could all cut out a money game or two. We also need to stop this ridiculous method of making the athletic department pay the school for athletic scholarships. Those students work harder than most and provide more exposure for the school than other scholarship students and it makes no sense for them to "pay" the school back.