2/2/2021: No details on the deal til 4PM today. Maybe some wealthy UO donor finally decided to start paying for the students, like he pays for the coaches raises? While UO’s students pay the Ducks $1.7M a year for “free” tickets, at Maryland the athletic department pays the students to…
Posts tagged as “Eric Roedl”
The students won’t watch even at $0 a seat – but the Ducks are charging ASUO student government ~$300K anyway:
11/21/2019: I’m sitting at the meeting in the EMU now – four athletic department administrators and several very skeptical ASUO students. Here’s the data for revenue from tickets sold to non-students. It’s fallen by about $4M in 5 years. So he’s trying to increase what students have to pay to…
Henry Houston has the report in the Eugene Weekly: UO spent more than any other Pac-12 college team this year for its nonconference schedule — sometimes scornfully called “body-bag” games because of the mismatch between teams. Bowling Green received $900,000, Portland State received $500,000 and San José State received $1.6…
The Emerald has the story here about how Taggart is “committed” to Oregon despite the Florida job. I’m no economist, but what’s “committed” mean in dollars? Duck AD Rob Mullens is famously easy to roll – just ask Mark Helfrich, Dana Altman, or Eric Roedl. I’ll give my last University of…
8/25/2017: While the Ducks are so broke they can’t pay for tutoring their student-athletes, they’ve got no problem paying Southern Utah $500K to show up and lose the football season’s opener next weekend. The contract is below.
10/13/2015: It’s not really a fair contest. While for years the UO administration has used its Public Records Office and their $300K budget to delay, redact, and charge excessive fees to frustrate the intent of Oregon’s public records law, the PRO’s at most other universities are in the business of making public records public. Here’s the latest example.
Monday morning I emailed identical public records requests to UO and Southern Utah University, asking for copies of the contract for the football body-bag game scheduled for September 2017:
Date: October 12, 2015 at 10:14:21 AM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton <[email protected]>
Subject: public records request, football game contract with SUU
Dear Ms Thornton –
This is a public records request for a copy of the football game contract between SUU and UO, for the game to be played in the fall of 2017.
A sample of the sort of contract I am looking for is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/971644/uomatters/IAC/Football%20contract%20-%20Georgia%20State%20(Final%20Executed%20Version).pdf
I edit a news and opinion blog about the University of Oregon, and I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.
I would appreciate it if you could send a pdf copy of this contract to this email address.
Thanks for your assistance
This sort of request typically takes UO a week or two. But SUU responded in less than 24 hours:
From: Jennifer Oberhelman
Date: October 13, 2015 at 9:13:01 AM PDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: GRAMA Response
Good morning Mr. Harbaugh,
Attached is the contract between Southern Utah University and University of Oregon for a football game set for 9/2/17 in Eugene, OR requested 10/12 in the form of a GRAMA request.
Please contact me if you have any additional questions.
Thank you.
Jennifer Oberhelman
Exec. Asst. for Administration
“We don’t quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.”
Not bad, though the record is still the 50 minutes it took Georgia State to provide their contract, and Eastern Washington’s General Counsel only took 3 hours.
So Rob Mullens will pay SUU $500K to come to Eugene. Presumably AAD Eric Roedl will get the cash by raising the price he charges ASUO for “free” student tickets to these body-bag games:
…
9/14/2015: Georgia State Panthers whip Oregon Ducks in football public records release
Steve Mims has the news in the RG here: Oregon drew an average of 7,467 fans last year, but that number will rise to 9,895 this season after another full house of 12,364 shows up for the home finale. That is the largest average attendance since 9,984 watched at McArthur…
Jack Moran has the story in the RG here:
The University of Oregon has accepted a $242,000 settlement deal to end a legal dispute over bonuses the UO paid to then-head football coach Chip Kelly and his staff for the 2012-13 season.
“The university is glad we were able to reach a settlement agreement and now we are looking forward to the upcoming season,” UO spokesman Tobin Klinger said.
The university had paid a nearly $490,000 premium for an insurance policy the UO says it thought would cover all incentive bonuses Kelly and his assistants earned in the 2012-13 season.
After the highly successful season, the UO paid out bonuses totaling nearly $688,000 and sought reimbursement under its policy. The insurer refused.
Financially, it appears the university would have been better off not buying the insurance at all, as the lawsuit settlement doesn’t even cover the cost of the premium the UO paid. …
Duck Associate Athletic Director Eric Roedl, who agreed to this $490,000 contract without understanding it, has been fired:
Just kidding, Rob Mullens gave him another raise:
So how much did HLGR bill UO for settling this case for 50¢ on the dollar? I don’t know, but judging by the long docket below, they probably did OK at ~$300 per. Here’s hoping PURMIT picked up their tab:
Case details
| Court: | ord |
| Docket #: | 6:15-cv-00260 |
| Case Name: | University of Oregon v. Drummer et al |
| PACER case #: | 120541 |
| Date filed: | 2015-02-13 |
| Assigned to: | Judge Ann L. Aiken |
| Case Cause: | 28:1332 Diversity-Insurance Contract |
| Nature of Suit: | 110 Insurance |
| Jury Demand: | Both |
| Jurisdiction: | Diversity |
Parties
Sports Illustrated has the details on the ~$11M a year deal here. Meanwhile the Ducks get only $600K a year from Nike, plus free shoes and clothes for UO administrators, of course. Frances Dyke renewed this contract in 2009, and it expires November 30, 2017. This deal is so bad. Unfortunately the Nike contract renegotiation will likely be…
3/7/2016: And another raise. Mediation starts April 27, meanwhile the legal bills pile up. All paid from the academic budget, of course. 2/07/2016: What’s it about this time? Duck bowl games. Back in 2012 Duck Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration Eric Roedl got a call from some insurance salesman, and…
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?
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
11/16/2015: Full docket here, full opinion here. I have no idea what it means, except that UO’s lawyers at Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick are going to get many more billable hours out of us before this ends: 2/17/2015: UO sues over Chip Kelly’s bonus insurance policy The bonuses Rob Mullens and Dana Altman…
What’s it about this time? Duck bowl games. In a nutshell, Duck Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration Eric Roedl – let’s just call him the DESAADFA – got hit up by some insurance salesman for a policy that would pay the Duck football coaches in the event their unpaid student-athletes won enough…
7/11/2015 update: Matt Prehm has an interview with Duck spokesperson Craig Pintens on basketball tickets, here:
The Ducks averaged just 6,209 fans per home game during the 2014-15 season, ranking seventh in the Pac-12. It was the lowest figure since 1992 when an average of 5,819 fans attended games at McArthur Court.
… The Athletic Department operates on zero funding from the University of Oregon [Yeah, sure it does], and so every penny can sometimes count. That’s why when Oregon decided to slash prices across the board – a 34-percent slash on average – was such a difficult decision.
The Athletic Department is reporting a near 90-percent season ticket renewal rate from last season, and while that’s well above the 80-percent renewal norm for the basketball team, it’s still a huge financial hit with the slashed prices.
… With a better marketing plan of the program, ticket costs slashed, and a better non-conference schedule Oregon is seeing early returns pay off.
No, actually this isn’t paying off. I’m no economist, but if you cut prices 34% and sales only increase by 10 points on a base of 80 – lets call that 13% – total revenue will drop. As it did. And as explained below the basketball program is now losing millions – even if you ignore the sunk costs of the $13.5M Knight Arena bond payments.
And it seems that they are prepared to lose more millions to avoid the embarrassment of having the country’s most expensive college arena sit half empty. Meanwhile, the millions in hidden subsidies from the academic continue – including the $450K we pay athletics each year for the Knight Arena land.
Meanwhile Coach Altman has also succeeded in driving away the UO student fans:
… Based on numbers given to me by [Duck PR flack Craig Pintens], the average student attendance for this season was 989 per game. Last season, they were 1,539. In 2012, it was 1,541. In 2011, it was 1,574.
5/15/2015: UO could save $3M a year by shutting down basketball, mothballing Knight Arena
Today’s devastating Civic Stadium fire prompted me to look at the agreements between UO Foundation CEO Paul Weinhold, UO Presidents Frohnmayer and Lariviere, and Duck Athletic Directors Bellotti and Mullens for the UO Foundation guaranteed loans that financed PK Park, which became the Eugene Emerald’s replacement field. One interesting clause shows that UO is…