Duke Baseball: Welcome to Duke Coach Corey Muscara

Phredd3 said:
And keep in mind that, institution-wide, a 10% budget cut means Duke is cutting roughly the equivalent of the entire massive operation that is the athletics department. That 10% represents an enormous amount of money. And it is OK to say out loud that the reason the cuts are needed are due to reductions in federal grant funding. It's a fact, not a political statement. There's no need to pussyfoot around it.
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I am trying to remain in good standing with the authorities! Good thing that a lot of the athletic budget comes via the TV contracts...
 
I know little about these coaches but I'm guessing the marginal difference between the two coaches is minimal. Yes, it is nice to have someone who worked in the program and is now with a team at the World Series. But Muscara has been at a peer school in the conference that has done well. The knowledge he brings from Wake could actually be more valuable than what Jordan picked up at LSU as LSU and Duke are largely apples and oranges.

My other hope is that by paying him less, there is more money for assistants and facilities. A huge reason for the upswing in Duke football was that Cut wanted better funding for assistant coaches so they could be hired and retained. Hopefully Muscara did the same. And we all agree that facilities are key so if there is a little more money for that, that could be helpful.

There are so many moving parts in college sports right now. As one who thrives on rules and order, it drives me nuts. I do not envy Nina King and appreciate how she has handled things to date.
 
chrishoke said:
Government funding of baseball??
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Sorry, I should have been clearer. An earlier post mentioned that athletic funds at Duke are taking a hit due to the decline of federal government funds going to Duke. While I assume that such funds never went to Duke athletics directly, if Duke athletics are being adversely affected by federal funding cuts that means that such funds were indirectly supporting the athletic program. In other words, funds that would have gone to research were available to go to athletics due to government funding of the former, and the decline of such funding meant that some funds went back to funding research. Now, I don't know if the reported athletic cuts are indeed a consequence of the withdrawal of various federal funds, but at least one commentator said it was, and I was responding to that. I hope I am being clearer now.
 
Mike Petrik said:
Sorry, I should have been clearer. An earlier post mentioned that athletic funds at Duke are taking a hit due to the decline of federal government funds going to Duke. While I assume that such funds never went to Duke athletics directly, if Duke athletics are being adversely affected by federal funding cuts that means that such funds were indirectly supporting the athletic program. In other words, funds that would have gone to research were available to go to athletics due to government funding of the former, and the decline of such funding meant that some funds went back to funding research. Now, I don't know if the reported athletic cuts are indeed a consequence of the withdrawal of various federal funds, but at least one commentator said it was, and I was responding to that. I hope I am being clearer now.
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I presume that it's the other way around and with the research cuts, money without ties that was being allocated to sports will now get funneled to funding research, right? That's how Trump's actions as to university funding would impact college sports.
 
It’s very hard to question Nina King’s judgement to this point. She’s not made good hires. She’s made excellent hires. Duke Athletics, led by Nina King, has decided to dump their resources into football and hoops, which is probably the right strategy. It just means that sports like baseball have to wait in line. The question to me is, how long is said line? All we can do is hold on for the ride and hope for the best. So far so good.
 
Chicago 1995 said:
I presume that it's the other way around and with the research cuts, money without ties that was being allocated to sports will now get funneled to funding research, right? That's how Trump's actions as to university funding would impact college sports.
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Or, in the alternative, colleges and universities could review and audit how "research" dollars are being spent and try to be more selective and efficient in what research they fund and conduct. I have to believe that there is quite a bit of "fat" and wasteful spending taking place in many of these research projects; and who cares when the federal government is funding the research but if much of that federal funding drys up, the schools will have to look more closely at what they pay for.
 
Nina has proven she knows what she’s doing with her hires. The only hire I had wanted different was I was really hoping to bring back Coach G. But Nina was right with choosing Kara over her. We all loved the Elko hire and he did a great job while here. It’s just the way he left n handled that which leaves a bad taste for us all! But she followed that up with Diaz who is doing a fabulous job n hopefully continues n stays for a good while.
 
Mike Petrik said:
In other words, funds that would have gone to research were available to go to athletics due to government funding of the former, and the decline of such funding meant that some funds went back to funding research. Now, I don't know if the reported athletic cuts are indeed a consequence of the withdrawal of various federal funds, but at least one commentator said it was, and I was responding to that. I hope I am being clearer now.
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That's not really how it works. The short story is that Duke has a fair amount of flexibility in how it distributes indirect costs derived from research (which funds are paid in arrears) that are supplied by government grants, and indirect costs alone account for several hundred million dollars per year received by Duke. Given that the funds are generally received about a quarter after they are incurred, how to absorb cuts is mostly a matter of discretion. Traditionally, athletics have mostly been immune to perturbations in the research enterprise, since the athletics department raises a lot of funds on its own. However, on the scale we see here, if Duke were to confine it's cuts to research itself, it would have to make massive immediate layoffs.

Remember, many of the costs we are talking about here are inflexible, since the buildings that house research have largely been built with financing and need to still get heat, light, and other services, regardless, and those costs aren't going away. Therefore, most of the flexible costs in research are salaries. But massive layoffs would have a huge, and in some cases even catastrophic, effect on the research. I personally think the spread-the-pain approach Duke is taking is far preferable, even if it means that perhaps Duke isn't willing to spend a few extra hundred thousand dollars on a baseball coach just now.

But no, the federal government doesn't fund baseball, even indirectly, at Duke or at any other large research institution.
 
Phredd3 said:
That's not really how it works. The short story is that Duke has a fair amount of flexibility in how it distributes indirect costs derived from research (which funds are paid in arrears) that are supplied by government grants, and indirect costs alone account for several hundred million dollars per year received by Duke. Given that the funds are generally received about a quarter after they are incurred, how to absorb cuts is mostly a matter of discretion. Traditionally, athletics have mostly been immune to perturbations in the research enterprise, since the athletics department raises a lot of funds on its own. However, on the scale we see here, if Duke were to confine it's cuts to research itself, it would have to make massive immediate layoffs.

Remember, many of the costs we are talking about here are inflexible, since the buildings that house research have largely been built with financing and need to still get heat, light, and other services, regardless, and those costs aren't going away. Therefore, most of the flexible costs in research are salaries. But massive layoffs would have a huge, and in some cases even catastrophic, effect on the research. I personally think the spread-the-pain approach Duke is taking is far preferable, even if it means that perhaps Duke isn't willing to spend a few extra hundred thousand dollars on a baseball coach just now.

But no, the federal government doesn't fund baseball, even indirectly, at Duke or at any other large research institution.
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Well, there are a lot of words there making a number of technical claims that I confess I don't understand, so I'll just take your word for it. Suffice to say it is confusing to me that the following statements can both be true. 1. Cuts in federal research funding are causing cuts in Duke funding of athletics. 2. Duke athletics hasn't been indirectly financially benefiting from federal funding. But as I said, I'll take your word for it.
 
Phredd3 said:
That's not really how it works. The short story is that Duke has a fair amount of flexibility in how it distributes indirect costs derived from research (which funds are paid in arrears) that are supplied by government grants, and indirect costs alone account for several hundred million dollars per year received by Duke. Given that the funds are generally received about a quarter after they are incurred, how to absorb cuts is mostly a matter of discretion. Traditionally, athletics have mostly been immune to perturbations in the research enterprise, since the athletics department raises a lot of funds on its own. However, on the scale we see here, if Duke were to confine it's cuts to research itself, it would have to make massive immediate layoffs.

Remember, many of the costs we are talking about here are inflexible, since the buildings that house research have largely been built with financing and need to still get heat, light, and other services, regardless, and those costs aren't going away. Therefore, most of the flexible costs in research are salaries. But massive layoffs would have a huge, and in some cases even catastrophic, effect on the research. I personally think the spread-the-pain approach Duke is taking is far preferable, even if it means that perhaps Duke isn't willing to spend a few extra hundred thousand dollars on a baseball coach just now.

But no, the federal government doesn't fund baseball, even indirectly, at Duke or at any other large research institution.
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I am not disagreeing with you but point out that $$$'s are fungible so flat statements about what $$$ fund what costs, it seems to me, is an assumption without support.
 
Indoor66 said:
I am not disagreeing with you but point out that $$$'s are fungible so flat statements about what $$$ fund what costs, it seems to me, is an assumption without support.
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It isn't without support. I'm very knowledgeable in this very narrow area. Indirect research costs are reimbursements for expense already incurred. If you incur a meal expense on a business trip and apply to be reimbursed, does your business care how you spend the reimbursement? However, let's say all your room and board expenses are reimbursements, and have been for the past 25 years. Do you think you might be making some plans on how to spend those reimbursements, including some plans that are difficult to cancel? When those reimbursements are cut, how are you accounting for that?

The analogy only goes so far, of course, but that's the structure of the problem Duke is currently facing.
 
diveonthefloor said:
Has Nina been primary decision-maker in any bad (or even mediocre) hires since her arrival?
I can't think of any....
Looking forward to new Duke Baseball era.
Crossing fingers that a substantial facility upgrade is one of the end results.
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Too early to tell…new rowing, cross country, wsoc coaches plus 2 football and soon to be Mgolf. Wouldn’t say we can say she has done well or bad on any of them yet
 
duke79 said:
Or, in the alternative, colleges and universities could review and audit how "research" dollars are being spent and try to be more selective and efficient in what research they fund and conduct. I have to believe that there is quite a bit of "fat" and wasteful spending taking place in many of these research projects; and who cares when the federal government is funding the research but if much of that federal funding drys up, the schools will have to look more closely at what they pay for.
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As a former (retired) academic, I can assure you that this is the case. Accountability is largely absent.
 
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