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Posts tagged as “Rob Mullens”

Ducks squeeze students on mandatory ticket fees as football demand falls

12/19/2015 update: 

John Solomon has the latest college football data, on CBSsports. Basketball demand is even lower, in part due to a secular trend, in part because many fans think Knight Arena is a soulless big box, and in part because some fans can’t stomach the sight of Dana Altman after how he handled the rape allegations.

So how are the Ducks going to pay for the admins Alamo Bowl game junkets, and the jock bosses bloated bonuses?

Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 11.39.49 PM

They’ll squeeze our UO students. Since regular fans won’t pay, AD Rob Mullens and AAD Eric Roedl are doing everything they can to extract more money from the ASUO student government, as explained below.

8/3/2015 update: Duck athletics uses monopoly power to discriminate against students

Helfrich & Mullens give Lillis expensive lesson on regression to the mean

10/10/2015: Apparently unaware of a basic statistical principle, Chuck Lillis and the BOT gave Mark Helfrich and AD Ron Mullens fat new contracts in February, just after the #2 BCS outcome. It will now cost about $15M to buy out Helfrich, although there’s a 50% discount if he doesn’t win at least six games in each of 2…

Perverse financial incentives add $20K to Duck AD Rob Mullens’s $700K pay

Rob Moseley has the news here: By Rob Moseley Editor, GoDucks.com A strong spring fueled by NCAA championships in men’s and women’s track & field propelled the Oregon athletic department to a school-record 13th-place finish in the 2014-15 Division I Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings, as announced Thursday. The Directors’…

Oklahoma coaches support athletes’ protests against racism. UO’s Dana Altman, not so much.

3/15/2015: From InsideHigherEd.com, here: This article contains explicit and potentially offensive terms that are essential to reporting on this situation. Instead of practicing on Thursday, University of Oklahoma football players held a silent demonstration protesting the behavior of an Oklahoma fraternity that was caught on video using racist slurs while…

UO Student Senate rejects Ducks’ attempt to raise mandatory ticket fee

2/21/2015 update: That’s the vote from today’s ASUO meeting.

Duck Athletic Director  Rob Mullens is now in the difficult position of having to choose between:

a) taking the same $1.6M as last year and being revealed as the sort of person who would try and bluff our students for money, or

b) cutting the ticket allotment and being revealed as the sort of person who would take revenge on the students over $50K, after getting a $250K raise himself.

Presumably he’ll figure out some way to take the offered 0% increase and try and save face. My guess is this will involve a donation from some Duck booster who suddenly finds it in his heart to give a little to UO students.

By rejecting the Duck try for a 10% increase, our students are leading the way to the March 4th meeting of the full UO Senate, which will consider legislation to hold the Athletic Department to its 2004 promise to start making payments to UO’s academic side for academic scholarships. The student vote is a hopeful sign that maybe UO can finally figure out how to balance the interests of the Duck’s big-time sports enterprise and its well paid coaches and AD’s with those of UO’s cash-strapped academic side.

2/21/2015 update: Meanwhile, the University of Akron is *paying* its students to go to basketball games, in an effort to build some buzz for TV. And in cash – not just Uncle Phil bobbleheads.

Ironically, as Fox Sports points out, if Akron were to give the *players* $5 for showing up for each game, they would swiftly bring down the wrath of UO’s Jim O’Fallon and his NCAA infractions committee.

2/20/2015: Lubash and ASUO Student Senators call out Eric Roedl out on his ticket threat

Letter to the Daily Emerald, written by UO undergrad and Truman Scholar Andrew Lubash, and signed by 13 other Senators and 3 ACFC members, here:

… Out of the $15 million ASUO budget, students spend $1,695,348 paying for the football and men’s basketball ticket lottery. This comes down to about $71 per year that students pay through their mandatory fees for the chance to go to our athletic events. We, the undersigned, think this is too high. …

However, when the ASUO began negotiating with the Athletics Department this year, we were surprised to find out that not only was there absolutely no chance they were going to give us more tickets, they were requesting $169,000 more from students than last year, for the same number of tickets. A 10% increase!

We were infuriated.

Now, they say that they will likely begin cutting student football tickets if we don’t give them at least a 3% increase (~$50,000). Their actions are greedy and deplorable. They’re acting like a business focused solely on profit, when they should be working towards supporting the academic side of this university. Why isn’t there an expectation on our campus that athletics give back to students? Students aren’t even guaranteed a ticket.

… After an article came out in the register Guard saying that the Athletic Director would fundraise millions in order to pay for his own salary increases ($700,000/year) and those of other Athletic department staff, we had had enough. We find it fundamentally unfair that the Athletic Department can find it within their hearts to fundraise for themselves, yet they resort to threatening to cut student tickets if the ASUO does not give them their requested increase. Is it actually that hard for them to raise $50,000 on top of the millions they already plan to raise? We don’t think so.

… At some point, someone needs to stand up and shine a light on the enormous difference that exists between what the Athletic Department deems as “necessary” and what students deem as excessive. Many of us struggle to afford our education as it is. We should not stand for our own Athletic Department to treat us as another lucrative source of funds to line their own pockets with. It’s time for them to start giving back and support students of all financial backgrounds.
We don’t understand how the ASUO, in good conscience, could increase the Athletic Department’s budget $1 unless we guarantee that students get more football ticket. If more tickets is not an option, we should not agree to charge students more for the same amount of tickets.

[Signed by 17 Student Senators, etc.]

2/19/2015 update: Duck’s Eric Roedl threatens to cut student tickets unless they pay 10% more:

Actually, our students have already talked him down to a 3% increase, and Roedl’s latest threat seems pretty unlikely, given that Scott Coltrane just told the UO Board that athletics would have no problem coming up with millions to pay for raises for Helfrich and Mullens.

But Roedl’s giving it a half-hearted effort anyway. Gotta try and cover his own $42K raise, I suppose:

From: Eric Roedl
Date:02/19/2015 4:05 PM (GMT-08:00)
To: [student name redacted]
Cc: Laura Jorgensen
Subject: Student Seating Options

[Student name redacted]

Attached ticket calculator contains two options:

1. Represents a 3% increase to I-Fee as discussed with no impact to student seat allocation.

2. Represents a 0% increase to I-Fee. Under this model we would likely [emphasis added] reduce the number of football seats per Pac 12 Game (Utah, Wash. St., Cal, USC, Oregon St.) by 300. We would then increase the number of Pac-12 Season Student Season Ticket Plans available for student purchase (at a price of $300 per package) by 300.

Please review and let me know if you have any questions or thoughts prior to submitting.

Thanks, Eric

Spreadsheet here.

2/10/2015 10:30 update: AAD Eric Roedl fails to talk students into paying more

The committee can’t agree, so the default recommendation of $0 goes to the ASUO Senate, for a Feb 24. vote. That’s a $1.6M cut from last year. Rob Mullens has two weeks to raise the money from donors, twist enough arms in the student senate to get a bailout, or convince Scott Coltrane to stick to the threat of a cut in tickets if the students don’t pay up.

The compromise plan should be to switch to a voluntary athletics fee. Roedl hates that idea because he wants to hide the true cost of “free” tickets from the students.

8:00 AM Tuesday, Now, in the EMU Rouge River room.

Lubash is giving Roedl a brutal beating. Roedel is trying to cram down a mandatory student fee increase, the day after the AD announced it had the funds to give $2M in raises to the coach and athletic director.

IMG_0519

My guess is Roedl bails and leaves the money on the table, but who knows? Students will have to play hardball, and he’s spewing doubt and confusion.

Student asks what would happen if they cut the IFee? Roedl won’t say.

Lubash: You say you can raise money to pay for coach’s raises. Why not go out to you donors and ask for money to pay for cuts in student ticket prices.

Hansen: Notes that the AD estimate for ticket values assumes demand curves don’t slope down. Ben assigns failing grade.

Schlegel: Never a campaign among donors to get donations for student tickets? Roedl: Not to my knowledge.

I gotta go, sorry no more live-blog.

3:30 PM update: UO Board approves fat raises for Helfrich, Mullens. Ducks want more student cash.

Diane Dietz has the story, here.

It’s tough listening to Coltrane push this on the Board: “The cost of these contracts is borne entirely by athletics”. Sure, if you ignore the millions in hidden subsidies from student tuition money.

The brown-nosing at this meeting is pretty deep. The trustees did have some tough questions about the Falling Sky contract to sell beer to the students at the new EMU though.

2/9/2015 update: That’s what’s happening today, in 15 minutes, at the Board’s EAC meeting. Angela Wilhems is still hiding the contracts, but it looks like Mullens will get a $250k raise to $700K, while Helfrich will go from $1.5M (if I remember right) to ~$3.5M. Plus a plethora of bonuses, of course.

Well this certainly explains why Mullens has been trying to get more money out of the UO students. More on that below and here.

2/9/2015: With Matt Court attendance < 50%, Mullens wants to raise student fee

According to this new report from the OC Register’s Ryan Kartje, Oregon’s basketball attendance is down 24% from last year. Word is the student section was half empty tonight.

But apparently that’s not going to keep Duck Athletic Director Rob Mullens and his AAD Eric Roedl from trying to raise the mandatory fee they charge UO students for tickets. Kaylee Tornay has the report in the Daily Emerald, here:

The Feb. 6 budget hearing between the athletics department and the Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, which determine annually the amount and price for student ticket distribution for football and men’s basketball games, led to yet another stalemate in reaching an agreement. The ACFC approved a proposal of an 18.9 percent decrease to the Athletics Department’s current ASUO budget. Later, this decision was overturned due to faulty voting processes, according to ACFC Chair Andrew Lubash.

The budget hearing was the second held this year to work out how much it will cost students next year, regardless of whether they attend athletic events or not, to receive the same amount of tickets to athletic events that they received in the 2014-2015 school year. Students pay for 5,448 tickets per regular season football game and 1,854 per basketball game. These are distributed via a lottery system (when you log onto goducks.com and watch the O spin for an hour hoping to get a ticket) that is funded by a percentage of the Incidental Fee, which each student pays every enrolled term.

This year the student body as a whole paid the Athletics Department $1,695,348 for the ticket lotteries for football and men’s basketball. The Athletics Department opened negotiations this fall requesting a 10 percent increase to provide the same amount of tickets for the 2015-2016 year. This would mean an additional $169,535 and would bring next year’s total to $1,864,883.

The ACFC met with Athletics on Jan. 16 and negotiated the request to a possible 3 percent increase rather than 10 percent. That would mean students would pay $50,860 more than they did this year. However, no official agreement was reached, and the ACFC discussed the athletics budget again in a meeting on Jan. 30. Ronnie Grenier-Hemphill, the chief liaison between the Athletics Department and ACFC, informed the Committee that Eric Roedl, Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director of Finance, had brought up the possibility of having to cut the amount of tickets, if anything less than the 3 percent increase were approved.

The Emerald followed up with Roedl on the matter and he delivered the following comment:

“Maybe we’d adjust the ticket allotment in some ways to more accurately reflect the value and the money that’s being transacted…we’d continue to have dialogue to find something that works for everybody.” Roedl said.

Funny, I don’t remember anything about falling attendance in Roedl’s powerpoint, when he was hitting up the students for a 10% increase.

If the students do pay this, where will the money go? To people like AD for Finance Eric Roedl, who’s already managed to scrape up the funds to give himself a $42K raise, to $212K, in just two years:

2014:

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2012:

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Coltrane to give Duck AD Rob Mullens a retention offer, drop perverse incentives?

Rumor down at the faculty club snookers table is that Duck athletic director Rob Mullens is entertaining an offer from high roller Gordon Gee, currently president at West Virginia University. It seems unlikely Mullens would seriously consider a step down like that, even if he is an alumnus. But maybe he can…

Duck basketball players accused of gang rape, the week before Altman played them in the NCAA tournament, earning Altman and Mullens $52.5K in bonuses.

5/6/2014: The ODE has a new statement from UO, saying they knew of the allegations on March 9, but were asked by the EPD to not start an investigation until the EPD investigation was concluded. UO chief strategic communicator Toby Klinger also is quoted as saying:

Due to Federal privacy laws, the university cannot provide further details regarding its actions at this time.

That’s not true. The federal Dept of Ed guidelines are here They are focused on protecting the victim to the extent reasonable. Otherwise they give UO plenty of latitude – particularly when it comes to revealing information that might prevent further incidents:

As discussed in the 2001 Guidance, if the complainant continues to ask that his or her name or
other identifiable information not be revealed, the school should evaluate that request in the
context of its responsibility to provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for all
students. Thus, the school may weigh the request for confidentiality against the following
factors: the seriousness of the alleged harassment; the complainant’s age; whether there have
been other harassment complaints about the same individual; and the alleged harasser’s rights
to receive information about the allegations if the information is maintained by the school as an
“education record” under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C.
§ 1232g; 34 C.F.R. Part 99.
15

The school should inform the complainant if it cannot ensure
confidentiality. Even if the school cannot take disciplinary action against the alleged harasser
because the complainant insists on confidentiality, it should pursue other steps to limit the
effects of the alleged harassment and prevent its recurrence. Examples of such steps are
discussed later in this letter.

Meanwhile Josephine Wollington reports in the Register Guard that:

Under federal guidelines, a school should not wait for a criminal investigation to be completed or charges to be filed before starting its own investigation.

Actually, it’s little more complicated. The rules say:

Schools should not wait for the conclusion of a criminal investigation or criminal proceeding to
begin their own Title IX investigation and, if needed, must take immediate steps to protect the
student in the educational setting. For example, a school should not delay conducting its own
investigation or taking steps to protect the complainant because it wants to see whether the
alleged perpetrator will be found guilty of a crime. Any agreement or Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) with a local police department must allow the school to meet its Title IX
obligation to resolve complaints promptly and equitably. Although a school may need to delay
temporarily the fact-finding portion of a Title IX investigation while the police are gathering
evidence, once notified that the police department has completed its gathering of evidence
(not the ultimate outcome of the investigation or the filing of any charges), the school must
promptly resume and complete its fact-finding for the Title IX investigation.

Moreover, nothing in an MOU or the criminal investigation itself should prevent a school from notifying complainants of their Title IX rights and the school’s grievance procedures, or from taking interim steps to ensure the safety and well-being of the complainant and the school community while the law enforcement agency’s fact-gathering is in progress.

5/6/2014: The ODE posts Lane County DA Alex Gardner’s detailed explanation for his decision not to prosecute:

… None of the above would be individually inexplicable, but collectively, and in the absence of additional evidence, they provide an insurmountable barrier to prosecution.

As they say, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. And there’s still no word from our President on what he and his administration and coaches knew, and when they knew it. The 3/19 Steve Mims story on Dana Altman’s knowledge of the previous sexual assault history of his recruit is here. And Rachel Bachman has a story in the WSJ here, which notes:

Apart from any criminal investigation, universities are obligated under the Title IX federal gender-equity law to investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual assault involving students. According to federal guidelines issued in 2011, universities are required to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard for deciding responsibility for an alleged sexual assault, lower than the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

And to whom has Gottfredson given responsibility for UO’s Title IX compliance? The famously incompetent AAEO Director Penny Daugherty, who can’t even figure out how to fill out UO’s affirmative action reports on time. UO’s policy on reporting sexual assaults is here.

5/6/2014 update: A commenter points out this 2002 RG story by then reporter Rob Moseley, now a Duck athletics PR flack, on a previous UO sex and athletics scandal:

Byline: ROB MOSELEY The Register-Guard

The University of Oregon athletic department has jumped to the defense of a program that hosts high school recruits after it was featured on a national cable television special about schools that use sex as a tool to lure prospective student-athletes.

The program, called Teamwork, was featured in an episode of HBO’s series “Real Sports” that aired Tuesday. A reporter from the series interviewed two former Teamwork members, both female, and a former member of the UO football team, all of whom verified that sex can indeed be an aspect of recruiting visits.

The former player was Eddie Smith, who is still on scholarship but never played a down of football for the Ducks after leaving the team due to recurring shoulder problems. Smith was quoted as saying one of the attractions for recruits on official 48-hour visits to the university was “girls. Girls, girls, girls.”

Also featured were former Teamwork members Monica Rodman and Lisa Wanjala. Teamwork is a program for UO students run by the athletic department that can be taken for credit as a college course and that involves participating in many aspects of recruiting, from preparing literature on the program to giving presentations to athletes on various aspects of athletics, as well as hosting recruits’ on-campus visits.

Duckweb CRN info here. And you thought FHS 199 was a scandal?

5/6/2014 update: An anonymous correspondent notes that the delay in reporting the alleged rape may have been driven by an effort to inflate UO’s NCAA “Academic Progress Rate”. An APR of 1000 means every player graduated or is on track to graduate. A 900 means that about half the students are graduating or on track. Players that are suspended or expelled for misconduct hurt the APR, while those transfer out of UO in good standing (or go to the pros) count as on track. The NCAA rules are that

For 2014-15, teams must earn a 930 four-year average APR or a 940 average over the most recent two years to participate in championships. In 2015-16 and beyond, teams must earn a four-year APR of 930.

UO’s most recently reported APR was 918:

So Altman’s Ducks are close to being banned from the NCAA tournament, giving UO a strong incentive to keep these players on the books as “making progress”, or keep the alleged rape quiet while Altman convinced them to transfer and found another university to take them off his hands.

This is how one of the alleged rapists, Brandon Austin, transferred to UO from Providence College, where he had also been accused of sexual assault. It’s still not clear how much Altman and Rob Mullens knew about that before accepting him. Rachel Bachman story here.

It’s also not clear whether UO’s committee on “special athletic admits”, which includes VP for Enrollment Roger Thompson and President Gottfredson’s special assistant Lorraine Davis and a few hand-picked faculty members, was involved in admitting Austin, or what they were told about his history.

How the NCAA can reform

I’m not sure that the NCAA can reform itself, too many powerful people are making too much money off the unpaid players. But there’s some fascinating history in this piece by Ken Pendleton of the Sports Conflict Institute: In 1956, the NCAA finally accepted the idea that scholarships could be…

Rob Mullens drives another student-athlete to drink

2/23/2014: UO BBaller caught using a fake ID (a passport?) at Taylor’s. Coach Dana Altman desperately needs this kid in the next few games to save his season, have any chance of making the NCAA tournament, and get some bonuses to top off his $1.8M salary. We’ll see how many games he suspends him for. Maybe Mullens should do what the Russians did at Sochi and relax his THC threshold? Keep these players safe in the Courtside Apartments, doing cannonballs on the couch.

10/12/2012: A little data and theory:

  • August 2011, Duck cornerback Cliff Harris busted for driving 118 MPH after “we smoked it all”.
  • April 2012, ESPN published a story on widespread weed use by Duck athletes.
  • September 2012, Duck athletic director Rob Mullens begins random drug testing of his players for marijuana. This raises the expected cost of smoking pot and lowers the relative cost of drinking. Players, as rational optimizers, substitute toward the cheaper good.
  • UO General Counsel Randy Geller accuses Senate President Rob Kyr and IAC chair Brian McWhorter of “false and misleading” statements about his efforts to subvert the law and implement an OAR allowing random pot testing and taking away scholarships.
  • People smoke pot at home, then fall asleep on their dorito encrusted couch. They drink in bars, which can be made easier if they have already asked the question of “where to get a fake id from” so they don’t get caught, then they proceed in trying to drive home.
  • October 2012, Duck defensive tackle Isaac Remington busted for driving drunk.

For more, see this UO economist’s work, here:

The current study examines the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana and traffic fatalities, the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5 through 34. Some people opt to get the effects without the drawbacks by using Blessed CBD oil products, or products from other dispensaries. Silll, the first full year after coming into effect, legalization is associated with an 8 to 11 percent decrease in traffic fatalities.

10/15/2012: More on Drugs:

1) Pres Gottfredson (in his Senate speech) said the new random drug testing policy is not an academic matter. This claim is contradicted by many things. The OAR itself states:

(3) Illicit Substances. If the student-athlete tests positive for the use of prohibitedIllicit Substances, the sanctions will be consistent with the sanctions listed in this subsection. These sanctions define the least severe sanctions that may be taken after each positive test. Notwithstanding the sanctions outlined in this subsection, if thought appropriate, a student- athlete may be dismissed from the team and lose all grant-in-aid after a single positive test.

Losing all your student aid because of one positive random urine test for pot or adderall strikes me as a very consequential academic matter. I know I would have had to have been pretty lucky to have finished college under this rule. The thing is now, many professional, semi-professional, and amateur athletes often tend to use a compound found in cannabis to alleviate pains and inflammation. This compound is known as CBD, and many people consume this legally. It can be found in the form of oils, ointments, CBD capsules or gummies (found on sites similar to Vibes CBD), and it can even be infused into foods and drinks as well. There are easy ways to consume it and more obscure ways to consume it, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is actually a pain relief drug and used for those suffering from muscular or skeletal injuries. Especially for athletes as they will be experiencing these issues a lot of the time. These people that wish to use this cannabinoid are even finding ways to purchase it cheaper than retail price by looking at websites like https://thecbdinsider.com/cbd-coupons/elixinol-coupon/ and others. The athletes don’t use this substance to gain a high, they do so as a pain reliever and muscle relaxer, proving beneficial for their daily workout regimes. Does this mean that the faculty members would choose to disband or invalidate student aid due to the use of CBD too?

UO Admissions recruits top scholars

Diane Dietz has the story in the RG. Good to see Roger Thompson’s admissions office is doing more than organizing sham events to cover for our administrators’ bowl game junkets. Speaking of which, President Gottfredson’s office is now denying they have any public records showing which UO administrators and spouses got junkets “paid work related travel” to the San Antonio Bowl:

The university has searched for, but was unable to locate, records responsive to your request made 12/24/2013.  The office considers this to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter.  Thank you for contacting the office with your request.

Sure. Last year’s Fiesta Bowl memo is here. I wonder why JH is so secretive about this year’s list?

1/6/2014: Ducks to lose money on Alamo Bowl after administrator junkets?
Now 3 weeks, and still no memo from the public records office. But Troy Brynelson has a great article in the ODE about our administration’s tortured efforts to justify their Alamo Bowl junkets as a worthwhile admissions recruiting trip, here.

12/30/13: More than two weeks since I made this request, and UO is still hiding the memo showing which administrators got Alamo bowl junkets.

12/27/2013 update from Lewis Kamb in the Seattle Times:

For the Alamo Bowl, which pays nearly $3.2 million to the conference, the conference pays a school $1.2 million, plus up to 500 charter seats and the ticket subsidy.

“The reimbursement usually does not cover the entire bowl game expense amount,” the UW’s Sasaki said.

True, but each university also controls the size of its travel party to a bowl game — a factor that largely determines whether it financially wins, loses or breaks even.

Then there’s the $50K bonus we have to pay Rob Mullens.

12/26/22013: Ducks cancel Alamo Bowl junkets over tax issues

Or maybe they just gave them a different name. On Dec 11 I made this public records request, after hearing rumors that President Gottfredson had cut back on the number of UO administrators and spouses getting all-expense-paid trips to this year’s bowl game:

12/11/2013: This is a public records request for a copy of any email, memos, or similar announcing which UO employees will get paid junkets to this year’s “Valero Alamo Bowl”. I ask for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest.

These trips are a potential conflict of interest for UO administrators like VPFA Jamie Moffitt, who must make tough decisions about cutting athletics subsidies after getting a sweet free vacation from the Ducks. Just to make sure the public records office knew what I was asking for, I followed up with a link to last year’s announcement – which took a month or so to obtain, if memory serves me:

12/11/2013: if you need any clarification on this PR request about junkets, last year’s announcement from President Gottfredson is here:

UO Athletic Director decries U of Nike "arms race". Also privatization, debt, Rudnick, and e-cigarettes

11/11/2013: In the RG: “In a way, I have to say that the so-called arms race is understandable but it’s out of perspective,” he said. “I think Oregon, Ohio State, Alabama, all the schools that are building more and more facilities, all of that is a little overboard in terms…