We will always lose money on athletics. Most college programs do lose money on athletics.
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources...partments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority
Correct. But that’s not the end of the analysis or even the beginning of the balancing test necessary to determine what level of loss is prudent. And then once that baseline is made, how much less do you spend as an effective strategy to remain competitive, comply with Title IX, avoid draining resources from main campus unnecessarily, while still setting aside monies for projected growth and maintenance in sports that isn’t covered under the maintenance endowments. And those are just the considerations worth mentioning. There are others.
Further complicating things, TU’s athletics deficit is not in a bubble. It relates to, reflects, and effects spending elsewhere on campus. The accreditation folks have no say in whether we make money or lose $190 million on football. What they can say is that here are the following programs that we believe are underfunded, their underfunding is having a fundamental negative effect on the baseline minimum of the education delivered, and therefore if you don’t take documented steps to fund it properly AND pay for people to track the progress and collect evidence to back up your assertions that you meet our minimum standards, we may be forced to take action against you. Oh by the way, be advised we can see you spending $7 million more than what you take in with athletics, please don’t tell us when we come back that this is still underfunded or you couldn’t find the money.
Now, TU has never received that type of threatening letter from the accreditation commission. But the above is how they roll. And the routine letter we got last year did note concerns regarding athletic deficits and underfunded programs without raising any specific concerns.
So we were given a chance to get our house in order. And we have and then some. And athletics is on track to have a zero balance before the next periodic review.
But we aren’t going to be building anything until the next review, we will be thinking twice and a third time about what those buildings will be used for, and it won’t be an IPF without a major conditional gift for two critical areas of need and an additional amount in other academic areas that will help assuage concerns from the people who are in charge of auditing our books and our academic programs on and off campus. A $5 million dollar gift won’t get you an IPF. It won’t get a coach fired. If that money is cash, it needs to be spent elsewhere, if it’s part of a proposed deficit, it needs to be avoided so deficit spending on programs can take place to alleviate concerns. Two years from now, a $15 million dollar gift or campaign would be close to getting it all done, if athletics has a zero balance and the academics have a clean bill of health. But for the next 18 months, TU has essentially pressed pause on the athletic programs and major spending. There’s just too much still unresolved on the academic side to allow athletics to draw that level of scrutiny and attention. You’ll see some exciting upgrades to existing facilities but no major building. People can blame the faculty for being anti-football as the reason why we can’t build what you guys want, but that’s simplistic. Academic compliance and bolstering TU’s position that it’s doing every thing it can to meet accreditation concerns is the real reason we can’t spend.
astrophe they created on the academic side, I suspect nobody in the admin has time to focus on athletics. FWIW, if their ideas on athletics are as "good" as their ideas on academics, then the last thing we want is them being involved. That's the kind of "help" we can do without, thank you. Like hiring Jeffrey Dahmer as your brain surgeon.
