Bellotti asked UO for as much as $7 million.

5/24/2010: From Rachel Bachman in the Oregonian:

Lariviere recounted when Bellotti told him — amid his first year as athletic director after stepping down as football coach — that ESPN was seeking to hire him.

“That’s when he told me that we owed him a great deal of money as a result of his employment relationship,” Lariviere testified. “A very great deal of money. A surprising amount of money.

“I, of course, immediately asked the general counsel what his contract called for. That’s when I discovered there was no contract.”

Things will get more interesting when the people donating the money to pay Bellotti the $3 million he did get from UO realize their donations are not tax deductible, because they are for the benefit of a specific individual.

Meanwhile, because the athletic department has raised the minimum required donations for tickets in order to pay for the Arena and various other extravagances, regular UO donors are cutting back on gifts to pay for the new Alumni Center. So UO is asking people who typically give to academic causes to give to the Alumni Center instead. And they are. But, of course, all this is hidden in the black hole of the UO Foundation – which is not subject to Oregon’s public records law.

To put Bellotti’s $7 million request in perspective, the first year of Lariviere’s effort to move UO faculty salaries towards comparator levels will cost $9.6 million.