Reporter Meerah Powell, here.
Tag Archives: Howard Slusher
UO to replace Hayward Field with bigly 30k seat stadium for IAAF
A teardown seems a bit extreme. I wonder what sort of city approval this will require. Ken Goe has the report in the Oregonian:
An IAAF team has been in Portland and Eugene this week to discuss preparations for the 2021 World Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
The championships are more than three years away. But there are unresolved issues, such as repeated delays to required renovations of Hayward Field, and a reported FBI investigation into how the championships were awarded. …
The IAAF minimum capacity for a stadium hosting the world championships is 30,000.
Original plans called for an extensive renovation to begin immediately after the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials. It was expected to take two years with a pause late in the spring of 2017 to allow Hayward to stage the Prefontaine Classic, the Oregon state high school championships and the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
But the work has been delayed several times and has not yet begun. Sources say the original plan, which preserved the iconic east side of the stadium, has been scrapped.
The stadium project now is expected to be a complete teardown and rebuild under the direction of Howard Slusher, a longtime adviser to Nike co-founder Phil Knight. Knight is said to be a large contributor to the project. Slusher has supervised other building projects for Knight and Nike.
Paul Weinhold, president and CEO of the University of Oregon Foundation, said Wednesday he expects the project to begin this summer, and for the plans to become public early this spring.
“We’re doing it, and it’s going to be ready,” Weinhold said. …
those unscrupulous football agents
8/15/2014: Ducks will finally pay for player’s insurance. It’s amazing what can change when the judge rules you’ve been running an illegal cartel. Now it turns out the NCAA was never against this, honest. UO PR flack Rob Moseley has the spin, here.
7/3/2011: Ever wonder what happens to college football players who suffer career ending injuries? They don”t get workmen’s compensation, because they are “student-athletes”, not employees. Very clever.
However, the NCAA will *lend* “student-athletes” money to buy their own insurance. I know, and you thought the NCAA was a heartless cartel. Read on, friend:
“The impetus behind it was really to keep student-athletes and their eligibility safe from unscrupulous agents,” said Juanita Sheely, the NCAA’s associate director for travel and insurance. “One of the ways they would entice them is: ‘I will get you this insurance coverage if you sign with me.’
Academic side pays Jock Box electricity bill
11/3/2011: I’m not exactly shocked to learn that the Jaqua Center glass box burns through electricity like a Norwegian Casino. But it is rather surprising to discover that the academic side of UO – meaning tuition money, mostly – pays the electric bill. The athletic department sticks us with a bunch of other maintenance costs as well, totaling about $160,000 a year:
Sure, we’ll take out your trash, Mr. Mullens. And, of course, as we learned from the Register Guard earlier this year, general fund money also pays for the athlete only tutoring operation itelf – about $1.8 million, last time I looked. Let’s round it to a $2 million subsidy. Here is a summary of the previous stories:
5/8/2011: Greg Bolt has dual front page stories on the UO administration’s complicity in subsidizing UO athletics with state tax revenue and regular student tuition, in today’s Register Guard. The first compares the dismal support services for regular students with what the athletes get at what the NY Times calls UO’s “Jock Box”:
The agreement requires the UO to run the Jaqua Center “at the leading edge of academic excellence” by substantially increasing staff and services. The cost of providing those services comes from the UO’s academic budget, not from the athletic department. It comes to almost $2 million a year, which works out to about $4,000 per student-athlete. … (vs. about $225 a year for regular students.)
Bolt’s second story points out it’s the regular students who pay for the athletes-only Jock Box extravaganza:
At the University of Oregon, the cost is borne by the UO’s overall academic budget. It’s not part of the athletics department’s budget.
The weird part is that, given how his gift letter reads, I think Phil Knight expected the athletic department would pay for this – but then they realized they could trick our Provost, and keep the money for their own salaries. So get that dumb jock stereotype out of your head. We are the fools here.
Bring it on Mr. Slusher, you aren’t even close yet.
6/4/2010: Bill Graves of the Oregonian has a new story on the latest sports facility craziness here. This seems to be another “gift that keeps on taking,” like the Jock Box:
But Phit’s gift does not come without costs. The license agreement requires the university to employ a facilities manager, museum curator, museum receptionist, food service administrator and a senior administrative assistant for football operations — all full time for at least six years. The university also would maintain the facilities, which could become costly.
Phil Knight and Howard Slusher are rolling on the floor over the dumb shit they can get UO to agree to for some vague promise of $1 billion, someday. We pay for a football Museum Curator? That is a pretty good one, though I still think taking away the law school profs parking lot tops it. But bring it on Mr. Slusher, you aren’t even close yet.
4/14/2010: Ron Bellamy of the RG reports that Phil Knight is planning on a new building for football team, to be constructed by the legendary Howard Slusher, under the same contracting scheme used for the Jock Box.
“I’ve been told repeatedly since I’ve come here that there are coaches in what used to be closets and that sort of thing,” Lariviere said. “It does look to be pretty jammed up. I’m not sure that this would be absolutely the top priority for the university if we were having to pay for the building, but that’s another matter.”
So far as I can tell, Knight has not given a dime to UO’s academic causes since former President Dave Frohnmayer signed UO up for the the anti-Nike “Worker’s Rights Consortium”. My recollection was that Dave was persuaded by the argument of the students camping outside his office, who told him that the way to improve the lives of the poor is to get everyone to all join together and agree to stop buying what they know how to make. Some sort of complicated economic thing they learned from their sociology professor. I’m sure it made sense after the first few bong hits. But a recent commenter provides an alternative explanation for why Knight is not so happy with the faculty either:
As I remember it, the WRC was a national movement backed by students at the UO, who took the issue to the Senate, which advised Frohnmayer to join the WRC (see http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen990/US9900-10.html). He did so. This was an example of faculty actually being listened to on a matter of school policy.
Here’s hoping Lariviere can convince Knight we’re not such a bad lot. He’s already talking tougher to Slusher than Frohnmayer ever did:
“Parking is obviously part of the requirements for this building,” Lariviere said. “The initial conversations I’ve had with Howard Slusher made it clear that we would have to have at least full replacement, if not more parking spaces, as a result of this.”
Back when Frohnmayer and Melinda Grier “negotiated” with Slusher for parking for the Jock Box, we lost something like 120 parking spots. We just gave them to the athletic side gratis, and paid for new ones by increasing general parking fees. Of course, Frohnmayer did get a $150,000 bonus that year from some anonymous donor.
Here’s the former law school lot. 70 spots, 2 cars with jock hang tags. 2 cars and a motorcycle is the most I’ve seen there all quarter.
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