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Duck football is below the curve. Mullens’s pay is above.

Last year was the best ever for Duck football. Perfect regular season, second in the BCS. So good that AD Rob Mullens and Interim President Bob Berdahl argued that it was time to expand Autzen, and that if we did the athletic department might finally be able to follow through on its 2004 promise to start contributing towards academic scholarships:

1. The Task Force and the Athletic Department recommend a voluntary financial contribution by athletics to the Presidential Scholarship fund. This voluntary contribution will help symbolize the mutuality of the relationship between athletics and academics.

But the Ducks have not been doing so well when it comes to profits – the most recent data has them falling well below average, controlling for stadium size. In fact there are only a few AD’s doing worse. Oregon got trounced by places like Washington State, Wyoming, and Florida Atlantic – all with much smaller stadia:

The Duck’s problem is not revenue, it’s spending. So here’s hoping Mullens makes at least some effort to get his expenses under control before he tries to sell an Autzen expansion to President Gottfredson. Of course the Duck’s biggest variable costs are the salary for Mullens and his coaches. And those guys have no problem whatsoever diverting the money that should be going to fund scholarships to fill their own pockets. Rob Mullens is paid $200,000 or so more than his comparators:

Does Mike Gottfredson have the stones to rein in Rob Mullens and his buddies? UO will find out soon.

Thanks to an anonymous UO Matters contributor for the figures. Your bottle is on its way. Any defamation is the sole responsibility of UO Matters. English libel law does not apply, since this post was written under the influence of scotch.

15 Comments

  1. Anonymous 12/02/2012

    I think someone has a spending problem, no?

  2. Anonymous 12/02/2012

    Why exclude University of Michigan from graph?

    • Anonymous 12/02/2012

      Michigan didn’t merge. When included, their reported profit comes in just below the predicted level (obviously up to the top right, as they have a stadium of 109,901.)

    • UO Matters 12/02/2012

      Michigan has now been added to the figure. We apologize for the editing error.

  3. Anonymous 12/02/2012

    There are a good amount of Pac-12 teams under the curve, while the SEC (at least the top teams represented) are very profitable. Is there something going on at the conference level that might influence this?

    • Anonymous 12/03/2012

      May be TV contracts. The PAC12 was late and just signed for more money. But I am not sure if these revenues will affect profits.

    • Anonymous 12/03/2012

      Dog Says

      If the chart above includes TV revenues then its not easy to
      make baseline comparisons. Notre Dame, for instance, was the
      first to get its own private cable Football Channel. So to first order, I suspect TV contracts come into this, and as said, the PAC 12 has arrive late to this game.

    • Anonymous 12/03/2012

      Interesting. I’ve heard the “we need a larger stadium” line and justification has never been offered. Looking at football profit by stadium capacity and basketball profit by arena capacity would be interesting.

  4. Anonymous 12/03/2012

    “Does Mike Gottfredson have the stones..” ?

    No. It has been four months and still he hides. When he comes out to ‘lead’, for what will it be? Not likely he will come out.

  5. Anonymous 12/03/2012

    Why do so many schools come exactly even? Surely, that can’t be right, and there must be some sort of fudgy accounting going on for the vast majority or university athletic departments to have a completely balanced budget?

    • UO Matters 12/03/2012

      Their business model is to spend every cent of extra revenue on their own salaries. UO’s model is to spend all that plus millions they take from academics.

    • Anonymous 12/04/2012

      The accounting at these other universities is (gasp) a shell game, just like it is here.

  6. Anonymous 12/03/2012

    Question: When Chipper gets a whole lot of cash for taking the team to a bowl game. does he also get fined when he causes the team to lose 15 yards because he was yelling @ the ref deemed by the official to be *unsportsman like conduct*.

    Apparently jacking up the ticket prices was not popular w duck fans.

    Also as an aside ever notice news footage of b ball games, the camera never pans up higher – I assume they are not allowed to show all the empty seats?

    • Anonymous 12/03/2012

      You’re right. Jacking up ticket prices backfired. Mullens and Kelly don’t seem hurt by it, though.

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