Every week, PowerMizzou.com publisher Gabe DeArmond answers questions from Tiger fans in the mailbag. This format allows for a more expansive answer than a message board post. Keep your eye out each week to submit your question for the mailbag or send them to powermizzou@gmail.com. On to this week's inquiries.
RumplyPillow asks: Lindenwood University over in St. Charles is moving up from club to Divison 1 in mens ice hockey next season. Has there been any rumblings anywhere about Mizzou even looking at moving in that direction for hockey?
GD: Not that I know of, but I really haven't asked or thought about it. Mizzou plays hockey as a club sport, I think. I can't imagine there's a real appetite to add another sport, especially after a year in which the athletic department is talking about losing $30 million.
firsttiger asks: In last week’s Mailbag, you concluded your answer to a question about MU’s softball and baseball competitiveness in the SEC by saying about baseball:“Missouri can be better than it's been recently, but can it ever be competing at the highest level in the SEC on a regular basis? I don't think so. It's just not enough of a priority.”My question is: what would making it enough of a priority look like? And if they made it a priority third only to football and men’s basketball, given our unchangeable disadvantages, what if any difference could it/would it make?
GD: In college sports, "making it a priority" is a nice way of saying "spend more money." The biggest part of that for Missouri is the stadium and facilities. While they've poured well over $100 million into football facilities in the last couple of years, the baseball team is still playing on a field that's half turfed because they haven't gotten the money to finish the job. Plus the fact that that stadium is in a dreadful location. I'm telling you, whatever the temperature is in Columbia, subtract a good ten degrees for what it's going to be at Taylor Stadium.
When people talk about money in college sports, the salaries always come into it. Steve Bieser makes $455,000 a year. It's actually pretty competitive for a Power Five baseball coach. Bieser makes more than any coach in the Big Ten and more than about half of the Big 12 and PAC-12. The problem is Missouri isn't in any of those conferences. Only Alabama pays its baseball coach less than Mizzou does in the SEC.
So, does Mizzou need to spend more money to be good in baseball? Yes. Overall, the Tigers spend by far the lowest amount of money on baseball in the SEC. But you can also see from the graphic in that story, Missouri also makes the least amount of money and it isn't close. Five SEC baseball programs were profitable when that story was done following the 2016 season. Four lost at least $2 million. Missouri lost $1.92 million. The team that lost the most five years ago--Tennessee--almost certainly has closed that gap because the Vols are the No. 3 national seed in the NCAA Tournament this year.
But the key here is, should Mizzou spend more money to be good in baseball? I've said over and over, the answer is pretty clearly no. The fanbase doesn't demand it. Mizzou is last in the SEC in baseball attendance annually and it really isn't close. I can't find numbers for this year, but in 2017, Missouri ranked 72nd nationally. The next lowest team in the SEC ranked 47th. In 2019, the Tigers averaged about 1100 fans per home game through the first half of league play. Tennessee was the only other school to average fewer than 3,000 per home game and the Vols still more than doubled Mizzou's number. The immediate counterargument is going to be "Well, Missouri hasn't been any good lately, so of course people aren't going." But in 2007, when the Tigers were 42-18 and hosted Super Regionals, they did not crack the top 50 nationally in baseball attendance.
It's really the ultimate chicken or egg question around Mizzou athletics. Is Missouri not good at baseball because the fans don't care or do the fans not care because Missouri is not good at baseball? There's no true way to know, but I've always thought it's more they're not good because nobody cares. That's not blaming the fans for it. The administration has never really cared either. But it's hard to convince them they should care when it's been shown over and over that the fans don't really care. Why pour a bunch of money into something that is only going to appeal to a small number of people even if you're really good at it? If you're the baseball coach at Missouri, you have to figure out how to do more with less.
This has all been exacerbated by the move to the SEC. The majority of the league probably cares more about baseball not only than it does about all other non-revenue sports, but more than it does even about men's basketball. Missouri is in a group with Kentucky, maybe Tennessee and maybe Arkansas (though that's debatable with the Hogs' recent run) of schools that care more about men's hoops than about baseball. The problem really for the Tigers isn't that they haven't been good at baseball. It's that they haven't been any better in men's basketball in a league where the administration and the fans care far more about that sport than most in this league do. Missouri gets out of baseball what it puts into it. The same can't really be said for men's basketball over the last decade.
Every school in this conference (and really in the country) is going to devote the majority of its resources to football. After that, you have to pick and choose a little bit unless you're one of these places that just prints money and pumps out conference title contenders across the board. For Missouri, it simply doesn't make any sense to put more money into baseball because you're never really going to get it back even if the team is good. College baseball just isn't a thing that moves the needle in Missouri.
