Just kidding, the RG reports he’s considering selling some land, but unfortunately it’s not PK Park. To bad, because baseball is a money pit. It’s the English Department of the Duck Athletic enterprise.
The Ducks make a lot of money on football, break even on basketball, and lose money on everything else. Women’s basketball once did OK, but Kilkenny trashed it, and the rebuilding is slow since the fans hate Matt Court and many would rather see a woman coach. In any case the NCAA makes us have Women’s basketball.
Baseball is the big money looser. When Duck booster Pat Kilkenny started a baseball team in 2009, he told us they’d turn a profit by 2014. He lied. Here are the latest numbers. After their share of central costs and a little – very little – TV revenue, it looks like they’re loosing roughly $4.5M a year, with no positive trend. And that’s just cash flow – they’re also sitting on some valuable real estate.
If baseball were an academic department, with 25 students, $360K in revenue, and $2.5M in direct costs, Andrew Marcus would be taking a knife to the place and reallocating the funds to save UO’s academic mission and keep us in the AAU.
But instead UO is cutting English faculty. Can anyone explain how this makes sense?
And why is athletics allowed to have continued negative carry-forwards?
Well, at least the baseball players aren’t being set up for a life of wondering whether they’ve developed CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). The fact that our university’s most financially lucrative enterprise is one that specializes in damaging young brains is not so easy to wrap one’s head around, so to speak.
“Can anyone explain how this makes sense?”
Priorities. You are putting a high priority on fiscal responsibility and educating students. The administration puts a high priority on entertaining students and alumni. That seems to be simple to me. It makes sense with different priorities than what you are assuming.
Schill is crazy if he thinks UO has excess land. UO has a very small campus for its enrollment. Just compare to OSU or most other public universities. Selling off UO’s “excess” real estate would be a dumb idea. Someday UO might want or need that land. Look at how much it cost to acquire the land for the Knight Arena, and how cramped it is, with its impact on the Fairmount neighborhood due to the complete failure to provide parking. OK, UO can squeeze in 9000 more students, supposedly. What happens if there are more in the future? What happens if unforeseen new facilities are needed?
One of the smartest things John Moseley did way back was to acquire “excess” land for UO. A lot of it is now in use. A lot of people thought he was crazy. I think he was showing foresight.
Selling land is desperate. Interest rates are zero. Isn’t that why we should borrow or sell bonds?
Low bond rates mean potential buyers will pay more. Now that pot’s legal, let’s buy Kilkenny’s PK Park and turn it into a Grateful Dead theme park. You in?
Sounds good to me. Always loved the look of grass on a baseball field.
awesome, you make sense to me. That land, even if not used by UO, is an appreciating asset. Selling it sounds like a desperation move to me. Selling off the estate to live beyond your means. Schill made his career in real estate law, right? But he isn’t sounding like a smart real estate trader to me. What happens five years down the line when they’re short of dough again (as they will be, this is Oregon, this is UO).
agreed completely – part of the price of being locked by a Cemetary