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Rob Mullens throws more cash at losing baseball coach George Horton

8/23/2017: The RG’s Austin Meek’s report on this porkfest is unusually incurious. In fact this new contract is not a pay cut as Meek suggests, it’s a $50K raise for Horton to $500K a year, plus some new and remarkable bonuses. Although the old contract did guarantee him $90K for ticket sales that never happened, so I suppose you could see it as a cut.

In any case, not bad for a man who sold about $160K in tickets last year, and whose team costs UO at least $2M a year in subsidies.

For contrast, $2M is more than the UO administration seems willing to spend on merit raises for ~800 tenure track faculty over the next 2 years.

Horton’s full contract is here. It’s great to see that his players will get cash bonuses for good grades, to be paid within 45 days of the end of the term:

Just kidding, the players do the work, but the money is “earned by Coach”. The 45 days is real though – these jocks really don’t trust each other, do they? Soon we’ll have to pay them in bitcoin and make use of apps like News Spy App to help us get the best return for our investments. The new contract also makes clear that Horton is not a faculty member – something the UO GC’s office has claimed of coaches in the past to try and hide their public records – and also that he’s bound by standard UO ethics policies etc.

5/29/2017: UO to pay Horton for 2 years as he closes down Duck baseball program

Apparently the women’s softball team did not react positively to the idea of a merger. Austin Meek has more in the RG here.

5/23/2017: UO baseball loses games, money

Kenny Jacoby has a comprehensive report in the Emerald on the increasing baseball losses – $17M so far. Attendance is so bad that Rob Mullens is offering the *faculty* free tickets. Duck spokesperson Tobin Klinger:

UO spokesman Tobin Klinger said President Michael Schill is “working to determine the best approach forward,” but suggested it is unlikely he would take any away from athletics to mitigate cuts to academics. Schill did not respond to multiple email requests for comment.

“Should it come down to re-examining the budget, it would be safe to say that we will need to think as broadly as possible,” Klinger said in an email. “That said, athletics is a self-sustaining auxiliary unit… and this exercise is ultimately about right sizing our general fund budget.”

Story here – this just a snippet:

17 Comments

  1. Dog 05/23/2017

    This is a real opportunity for Schill to improve his standing among us faculty as an academic scholar and not a lawyer that manages an operation

    1. The UO functioned fine with out a baseball team

    2. The current baseball team is a fetish manifestation of a few

    3. The entity loses significant money

    4. Duh …

    • Fishwrapper 05/23/2017

      Understatement of the season: “I think I’ve let the people who hired me originally, Pat Kilkenny and President [Dave] Frohnmayer, when he was here — I think I’ve let them down a little bit.”

      I think it’s time for someone new to let the new administration down going forward.

  2. Payroll Guy 05/23/2017

    If the Athletic Department is self sustaining why are they using the University of Oregon in their name? Maybe the University should charge them for the rights to use that name.

  3. Fishwrapper 05/23/2017

    Wait – UO has a baseball team…?

    (It doesn’t get old to me.)

    • UO Matters Post author | 05/23/2017

      In keeping with the UOM “bang the drum slowly” baseball comment policy, please don’t say this more than once a day.

  4. Weight watchers 05/23/2017

    2016 photo. George has added another 20 pounds since.

  5. not on my watch 05/23/2017

    Nope, academics will never get a single dime from athletics. Baseball won’t get cut until every last professor has been laid off and tuition costs more than the national debt. Schill didn’t even cut a dollar off athletics before going back to the HECC. Hopefully they remind him of our priorities, not the whims of some out of state rich trustees.

  6. Simplius Simplicissimus 05/23/2017

    17 Million? Now we know where the 25 or so million shortfall in teh UO budget comes from. But wait – it’s NOT a problem. Let’s raise the tuition!

  7. Simplius Simplicissimus 05/23/2017

    On a lighter note. UO Baseball? The proverbial sticky wicket!

    • Fishwrapper 05/24/2017

      You’re thinking cricket. While the two games are linked in ancestry, baseball has no wickets, sticky or otherwise…

  8. honest Uncle Bernie 05/24/2017

    A certain level of unreality here, as often happens with athletics?

    I don’t see what the annual baseball deficit has to do with the UO academic budget.

    As long as Uncle Phil, or someone else, is willing to blow their money on athletics, without asking for anything from academics (or anything more than the little they take, talk to the accountants), I don’t see much of a problem with it.

    The dough in the athletic budget, Ducks “legacy” endowment, etc. is not currently and probably in the case of the endowment, not legally available for academics.

    I suppose UO could try to “tax” Uncle Phil’s athletic contributions. I don’t think this would be a great idea, because he might get turned off to ever giving more money to UO academics (the “old campus” not the “Knight campus.”) Of course, that might already be a lost cause, but an attempted tax might kill it off completely and forever.

    • Fishwrapper 05/24/2017

      If the athletic enterprise is not self-funding, it’s not profitable. If it’s not profitable, it’s not returning to the academic side; it is, in fact, taking from the academic side. Long-time readers may have noticed a trend by now where the athletic enterprise has historically been taking from the academic side. While not the only reason, the baseball deficit does, in fact, have to do with the UO academic budget.

      Why should UO be different that the vast majority of other D1 schools? It certainly is convenient to have the academic budget there, as it means an academic enterprise, which in turn means NCAA eligibility, which in turn means lower operating costs for the athletic enterprise since they don’t have to pay their labor…

      • honest Uncle Bernie 05/24/2017

        I believe you are simply misinformed about UO athletics financing.

        • Fishwrapper 05/25/2017

          I am, admittedly, applying a larger generalization about the state of the athletics enterprise in D1 schools. There is another, more nebulous aspect that could easily allow one to argue, as Dave Frohnmayer did, that the success of campus fundraising is directly tied to the presence of the athletics enterprise; he stated that he could raise more money in one football game than than at an academic event.

          Mea culpa to applying a broader brush to the fine details of UO athletics financing. That said, baseball (UO has a baseball team!) was established on the promise of being a profit center, and it has proven to be a loser. Perhaps the loss can be spun as a loss leader – go for it. How does baseball’s drain on the bottom line result in a positive gain for the school? Please better inform me.

        • dog 05/25/2017

          I think this is all about legislative and public perception

          1. We are laying off faculty ….

          2. The Men’s baseball team has lost 17 Million

          It doesn’t matter, relative to perception, if the pots of money
          are different

  9. tuition at work 05/30/2017

    Hecc approves 10+% tuition increase, immediately money starts getting blown on crap like this. Word is uopd is going to expand thrir brand new motorcycle fleet. Enjoy the layoff notices if you’re a plebe academic.

  10. Zach V. 05/30/2017

    This blog has gone soft…ever since that lame ice cream with the new president event. The blog also worships infantile and ignorant reporters. Condolences.

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