Mark Adams has been posting conference budgets recently, and he put up MVC numbers last night:


https://twitter.com/enthusiadams/status/1103517594026500096?s=21

Wow...Is this accurate?

The results are skewed because Sister Jean earned $3.1 mil. this year based on her new longterm contract.
I advised Tom Kelly to heavilly backload the deal but he chose to ignore the actuarial tables I showed him.

Someone else did point out that Loyola added a major caveat to their actual report saying a large portion of the increase between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 was due to the Final Four run.

I haven't really seen a budget spike like that since I've been keeping an eye on NCAA Division I budgets. That seems like an extraordinary spike to me. Loyola's last published men's basketball budget was somewhere just under $2.8 million, about third or fourth in the league behind Bradley and UNI.

But in general, I like these numbers a lot better-- we need to get the average budget up to about $3.5 million on a consistent basis. The A-10 is outspending us on average by about 25-30%, with an average budget just over $4 million. The A-10 is our competition, more so than the Mountain West or WCC. If we ever want to get multiple bids again, we're going to have to jack up the budgets to make deals for better scheduling, better scouting, events, marketing, recruiting, and better travel.

Somebody needs to sit down with Indiana State, SIU and Illinois State and tell them they need to change or find a lower conference. Compete in the Horizon or Ohio Valley. There's no sense in these teams having badly non-competitive programs after all the money the states put in to their facilities and how much more the flagship state schools get per student. That's just how it is in Division I hoops now, and that's why I look first at budgets when people talk about MVC expansion.