Press "Enter" to skip to content

"loss of institutional control" of athletic budget

10/17/2011: (revised) Two weeks ago we wrote how Duck athletics pays just half what other UO units pay towards UO’s administrative costs. How did this happen? In late 2007 a UO task force chaired by AVP Laura Hubbard recommended all “Auxiliary” units (a term which is explicitly defined to include athletics) pay according to this schedule: (Full report here.)

This policy was announced and posted on the BAO website. Then suddenly the numbers got changed. They added two new categories, one for incidental fees students pay to fund the EMU, etc. The new policy is here, and the chart below from it makes it explicit the students will pay the 7% rate as other auxiliaries. 

The other new category is Athletics. They get a permanent 3% rate. This one special subsidy for athletics costs the rest of UO about $3.2 million a year. For comparison, the recent faculty raises cost $2.8 million. 

 
We started digging into this after hearing Jamie Moffitt and Rob Mullens claim that the athletic department is “self-supporting” – and then finding out their math depended on sticking the academic side with the bill for the Jock Box and the NCAA lawyers. Made me wonder what other crawly things are hiding under that rock.  
As it turns out there’s an OUS policy on overhead rates. A very specific policy, which I’m guessing came down because of some IRS ruling:

.170 GUIDELINES FOR DEVELOPING INDIRECT COSTS ALLOCATION METHODS
Allocation of indirect costs should be based on a process that is reasonable relative to the activity and the related costs. OUS institutions will each develop their own methodologies for allocating indirect costs within the guiding principles listed below:

  • Reasonable – costs which are applicable to the overall operation of the activity
  • Properly allocable – costs are allocated in accordance with the relative benefits received by the auxiliary enterprise
  • Simple and easy to understand
  • Auditable – recalcuable based on documented principles and procedures
  • Objective – Based on relevant and reliable financial and other information …
I love that word “Auditable”. As usual, we got the brushoff from the athletic department’s Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration Jamie Moffitt when we asked for an explanation for why athletics gets a break. The administration is claiming there are no public records explaining the change from 7% to 3%. This could only be true if it was some sort of verbal backroom tit-for-tat deal. Between whom, and for what?
We’ll keep poking around, and post whatever comes crawling out. Probably not going to be pretty though.

2 Comments

  1. Duck Soup 10/17/2011

    Note that with or without athletics, the overall policy apparently is to jack up the share of the budget that comes out of the hides of the real producers to pay for central administration. When the administration surely knows that administrative bloat has become a scandalous national issue.

    Where is our ace UO Senate? Or even our crackerjack Senate Budget Committee?

    That said, it’s ridiculous if they’ve really gone stonewall on the change in the athletics contribution. You can only buy off even the ace Senate for so long with a decent raise.

    So where is our king of spades Chancellor, or even our queen of diamonds Legislature?

  2. Anonymous 10/19/2011

    Do you know DPS is footing the bill for the new arena parking and athletics takes in all the parking money during arena events? Athletics is screwing our campus as usual and nobody has the balls to call that department on this nonsense except this blog.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *