Budget crisis? Not for the Ducks and their special subsidies. In the RG here:
New coach Mark Wasikowski confirmed that the Ducks plan to install a new turf on the baseball field and bring the fences in about 20 feet, but it is uncertain if those changes will be done in time for next season. Kendall Rogers of D1baseball.com was the first to report Tuesday night that Oregon will invest $2.5 million for alterations to the ballpark. …
That would be Mark Wasikowski, who is “honored and humbled to have this opportunity from Rob Mullens, Eric Roedl and the University of Oregon administration”. The Oregonian has the exciting news here.
Add in OPE, bonuses, car, club memberships, tickets and travel for family and friends, and miscellaneous other porkalicious perks, and we’re talking $750K easy, for a program that costs UO millions every year, and which averaged 987 sports-fans per home game this year.
$750k is what a one percent increase in resident tuition will bring in. President Schill will be going to the Higher Ed Coordinating Commission on Thursday, to ask for a 7% increase.
Here are some snippets from his predecessor’s contract:
8/21/2012: Pat Kilkenny paid for the park with a secret balloon loan from the UO Foundation that UO wouldn’t explain unless I paid the public records office $484.42:
UO students had to pay $1.54 million in subsidies for baseball last year, and even Bob Berdahl thought that coach George Horton scheduled too many away games during classes.
And now Horton is asking Mullens and UO President Mike Gottfredson for a 33% raise, to $600,000 a year. Adam Jude story in the Oregonian. Best suggestion from their comments? Pay Horton 10% of the profits. Net profits, that is.
InsideHigherEd has the story on SUNY-Buffalo here. At UO, Duck baseball sells about $300K in tickets, and sucks about $5M a year out of our budget for expenses and allocated administrative costs – enough to buy a healthy chunk of academic excellence:
Duck AD Rob Mullens has shown quite the talent for signing expensive long term contracts just before Duck coaches start to lose. But Horton peaked years ago. His players won some sort of NCAA championship in 2012, so Mullens gave him the sweetheart contract below. All downhill since. This year the Ducks aren’t even ranked in the pre-season top 40, while OSU is #5.
So it will be interesting to see how much Mullens will spend to save Pat Kilkenny’s baseball program, which is losing millions for UO. Horton’s 2012-17 contract expires in June. More on the secret deal that built Kilkenny’s PK Park here.
etc. Contract here.
6/3/2013; Word down at UO’s heavily mortgaged PK Park is that they can barely sell half the seats for an NCAA final 8 match. Total ticket revenue this year is about $385K, operating costs are $5.8M plus the coaches salaries. Rob Mullens can’t meet his promises to the academic side, but he gave Coach Horton $450,000 plus these rather easy bonuses:
And the balloon loan former UO Foundation trustee Pat Kilkenny got from from the UO Foundation to pay for construction of the park he named after himself is due in a few years. Want more info? Pay UO $484.42 to see the public records.
1/15/2012: Has Pat Kilkenny paid off his previous pledges, or is the UO Foundation still on the hook for the $10 million PK Park costs?
(Amounts in $ thousands). The Ducks have to pay the Foundation 6.25% to borrow money for baseball? Weird. You’d think a solid pledge would be good enough colateral to get a substantially better rate. But UO won’t explain what’s going on, unless we pay them $484.42:
Now former athletics finance director and new UO CFO Jamie Moffitt is letting out a bid for still more work on PK Park. While Rob Mullens argues that the athletic department does not have any money to contribute towards student scholarships. PK Park – another athletic department gift that keeps on taking from the academic side.
3/25/2013: Let’s help UO’s VPFA (and former athletic department chief financial officer) Jamie Moffitt find the money to pay for the faculty raises in the Lariviere plan. Every 1% raise for the faculty (TTF and NTTF) costs UO about $910K. Add in the variable benefit costs and it’s about $1.15M.
Sharon Rudnick has asked the faculty for suggestions on where to find the money. Here’s one. Pat Kilkenny’s baseball program cost UO millions in fixed costs – we still owe about $5 million on a balloon loan for his PK Park. We’re stuck with that “gift”. But, according to the official AD data posted at GoDucks.com, this year’s variable costs for baseball will be almost $2.2 million:
11/16/2012: Adam Jude has the story in the Oregonian. Horton’s program loses a cool $1.5 million a year, not to mention the upcoming $5 million balloon payment the athletic department owes on the loan Kilkenny used to build the ball park he named after himself. But Rob Mullens pays Horton $500,000 plus a cut of the gate. He’s losing money, so Mullens will pay him based on the gross! These guys are always so generous when they spend our money on themselves. A reader points me to this Mark Johnson story in the RG.
Gottfredson approved this raise for a coach, but not the 3.5% raise for faculty that the union has proposed.
Bellotti was able to take advantage of a variety of loopholes – including a well timed divorce and remarriage, plus payments based on Nike earnings for which no contributions were made – to get a budget busting $500,000 a year PERS payoff. Ted Sickinger of the Oregonian did an amazing investigative story on that last year, after the Oregonian sued PERS for the data. The always well informed Hannah Hoffman explains that b-baller coach George Horton won’t get the same special benefits, due to recent federal reforms. Meanwhile all of us in the 57% are paying for Bellotti, and will be for a long time. The state recently announced huge increases in the cost of covering past PERS largess, the Oregonian has covered this in detail, one story here.
Fishduck.com is a great fan run website for seriously obsessed ducks, and an interesting example of how sports fan sites are taking over from old media. Today’s top story there is a long piece by Jerod Young, which comes down in favor of cutting Kilkenny’s baseball program, because of its $1.5 million deficit. Last thing I expected to read there!
There’s also a post by Charles Fischer, the site’s founder, on how the PAC-12 is cracking down on fans who repost video highlights and the sort of analysis he is famed for. Very sad, I learned a lot of football from those. 9/18/2012.
WSJ legal blog reports the US 2nd circuit court has ruled that cheerleading is not a sport. My recollection is Kilkenny claimed it was, to argue for Title IX gender equity after he ditched wrestling to start a money losing UO baseball team. The solution is simple: ditch baseball.
5/17/2012. But instead we have a baseball team like they do, thanks to Pat Kilkenny and his tool Dave Frohnmayer. It costs us about $5 million a year. Yes, UO had to borrow money to build his PK park, using future TV revenue as collateral. What a stupid waste. Ask Jamie Moffitt. Nice story in the Oregonian about PSU’s E-school here.
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