Discounts for the faculty? You know that had to hurt. They’re cheaper on stubhub, but it’s the thought that counts. The JH administrators get in free of course. Well, free to them. The academic budget gives athletics $375K for 80 seats, part of the secret Frohnmayer/Kilkenny deal. 9/5/2012.
Dear University of Oregon faculty and staff members,
It takes much more than good coaching to build a winning program. The success of our student-athletes in the classroom is just as important as their victories on the field. As members of the University of Oregon faculty and staff, you all make immeasurable contributions to the lives of our student-athletes, and we would like to show our appreciation.
The Department of Intercollegiate Athletics is very pleased to be able to offer you the opportunity to purchase tickets for our home football games on Sept. 8 versus Fresno State and Sept. 15 versus Tennessee Tech at the special faculty and staff rate of $55 for Fresno State and $30 for Tennessee Tech.
To take advantage of this offer, click this link http://bit.ly/UOFacStaff and enter in the code FSDUCKS
Thanks for your support,
Rob Mullens
Director of Athletics
A serious question: does Kelly get 3% of the $375,000 too? And if you don’t know, would you make that public records request in return for your usual emolument?
See corrected post, I think Kelly does not get a cut of gate unless it’s in a new contract. Altman’s does but it explicitly excludes administrator freebies. Laphroaig.
They might actually sell some tickets if they included a URL that worked.
Stubhub seems to work fine.
I appreciate being patted on the head and told I contribute to the lives of student-athletes. Was fearing others might feel I was in it for the big bucks. But I don’t know anything about sports. Is this even going to be a good game? Or are they just trying to fill seats with chumps?
Ever,
Cynical Cyndi
No good deed will go unpunished.
For those that are interested in this deal, the correct link is:
http://ev10.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventList?groupCode=FH&linkID=uoregon
Thanks, that works. They’re still cheaper on stubhub though.
Since they’re paying the other team to lose, I think they should also pay me to attend.
Where is the “like” button on this blog? ;)
A state agency is providing a service to employees only, at a price below the fair market value? I hope this was approved by competent legal counsel.
Interesting. The GEC has pages of rulings on this issue, at http://cms.oregon.gov/OGEC/pages/opinion_category.aspx
Since the value of the “discount” is clearly less than $50, I think Rob can skate by on this.
But the rulings on that page raise questions for UO employees who accepted the AD’s offer of Rose Bowl junkets or similar.
And to be clear, I am not licensed to practice law and I am not “competent legal counsel”.
Right…..Dear Faculty and Staff….we know YOU haven’t had a raise in awhile and with your furloughs ya lost wages, so we want to take this opportunity to suck a few more dollars out of you with this offer….come to the game and see what the University is all about…see why you work so hard and get paid so little. GO DUCKS!
THE BEST LAUGH IS THE “COMPETENT LEGAL COUNSEL” I ALMOST FELL OFF MY CHAIR LAUGHING.
@NOT A FAN: I know there are a lot of conspiracy theories that fly around here, but I have yet to hear the one that the Athletic Department is responsible for the salary freeze and furloughs, or your workload, for that matter.
Do the math. The AD takes about $6 million a year from the academic side in various subsidies. That’s close to what it would cost for a 3% across the board raise for faculty, staff, and OA’s.
So if the athletic department were to go away, you think the UO would be $6 million richer?
I’m thinking we could drive a much, much better deal with the boosters if we took a page from their playbook and stopped playing softball. Tell them to get their spending under control or drop some sports, starting with baseball.
It seems like we could keep athletics AND reduce the subsidy needed if the NCAA would help enact measures to rein in coach compensation and other outlays that create this red queen effect of needing to constantly increase everything just to stay even with other programs. People loved sports teams when coaches made just $500k a year.
@uomatters RE: Do the math
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the salary freeze and furloughs were mandated by the state, or at least for reasons out of UO control – not because the UO doesn’t have enough money.
Didn’t seem to have kept Mullens from giving his coaches a 21% raise and some sweet bonus money. Nor did his deficit, for that matter.
It sounds like we need to hire some quality people like Mullens that know how to compensate their people on the academic side.
Bigger issues.
UO decided 5 DAYS AGO to institute random student-athlete drug testing after saying it would wait. Let’s see … five days makes it exactly when it released reacted nonsense but spelled GUILTY in big letters. Imagine that. Football season looks promising so, hey, why not test?
Guess we know already where Gottfredson stands.
Anybody remember back in the early 90s when the athletic department would send the faculty offers of cheap season tickets to the football games?
Why is the Sept. 15 game cheaper? Is Tennessee Tech so much worse than Fresno?
Wait, that’s $55 for ONE TICKET? What??!? Did I fall asleep and wake up in the Weimar Republic? Granted, I don’t pay attention to big-time college football at all, but really, if I wanted to take my family to a ball game, it would cost me $220 just to get through the gates? Color me gobsmacked.
I’m thinking we’ll go to the park instead, maybe see some real ducks. With feathers and stuff. I’ll pack a picnic lunch.
I was stunned by this too! It’s a strange world we live in…
If you’re stunned by the $55 tickets you should see what a ticket costs for a popular game in the good seats…
Strange though? I guess it depends on how judgmental you are.
Let’s not spoil a perfectly good blog with a flame war about inflation and macroeconomics.
Hold on a sec while I check the ticket prices…. Nice, $93 per ticket (plus handling fees) for the Washington and Stanford games. Too rich for my blood.
As for ruining this “perfectly good” [sic] blog, I wasn’t trying to bring up academic topics. I was just trying, The Price is Right style, to see how close I could get to Godwin without going over. So far, so good.
What’s a Bundesliga ticket run these days?
Actually, I didn’t mean to be judgemental with my ‘strange world’ remark — there are plenty of things I spend money on that many people would find silly, and I have no complaints about people spending money on athletic tickets. I meant ‘strange’ in the more personal sense of finding that some ‘simple’ number is so far off what I would have guessed. (I routinely feel the same way, but in the other direction, with hard drive costs!)
It’s somewhere between 10-85€ for a single ticket, and the average is around 23€… Good players make more than their coaches and fans don’t make tax evasive contributions for season tickets. No market distortions there…
Next you’re going to tell me the players get health care.
They get health care, (reduced) sick/injury pay, and are entitled to (capped) unemployment benefits. Their contracts are subject to German labor laws. Same is true for youth players.
I am pretty sure you will like this one: Most players get cars from their clubs (teams have sponsor deals with Audi, Volkswagen, Ford, Opel, etc). BMW does not sponsor soccer (but motorsports, golf, etc). So I believe players have to pay for their own BMWs…
Like
How does that compare to the NFL? Or perhaps the better question is how well college athletes in Germany are compensated?
NFL teams are not similar to German clubs. All German clubs (in any league) are democratically organized (different to the British owner-investor model) and their members can articipate in youth, adult, or senior teams “in-house” (competitive or recreational and not just soccer). So your “sports career” does not end if you can’t make the next step. Bundesliga clubs (and Second Bundesliga clubs too) are also required to have youth academies that coordinate practice and school curricula with high schools (mandatory schooling in Germany). Oh, and high schools provide PE classes but do not hire coaches or compete against each other.
So there is no college sports – it’s an American thing (as far as I know). Universities leave sports up to the clubs and their associations. Some (professional) athletes get university degrees but there are no connections between universities and clubs. It would be similar to Eugene Ems players or OTC athletes going to UO if they think it’s worthwhile.
I had a friend who got an MLB deal out of high school, and had to decide between that and a college baseball offer. Part of the standard MLB contract was that the league would pay his college tuition after his career ended. He lasted a few years (at an impressive salary) then got injured and went to college. It’s a far more sensible arrangement than what the NCAA offers: try to get a good education while training and playing and getting paid nothing. If you get injured, you have nothing to fall back on – not even extra scholarship years to make up for the time you spent playing sports for them. The NCAA cartel doesn’t want to offer their players that because it would cut into the pay for the coaches and AD’s.