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Tedfurd: the blowback begins - Printable Version

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Re: Tedfurd: the blowback begins - OutsiderFan - 11-22-2012

Anyone who uses Barsky as a credible source of information has no credibility themselves.  He's like Dick Morris on Fox News, feeding baseless opinion to people as credible analysis or fact. Plus, he's an attention whore.

Anyone who depends on ad hominem arguments... - Redrum - 11-22-2012

and doesn't look at the merit of their actual assertions shouldn't make such categorical statements.  This includes opinions on  Barsky, who is a biased participant in the K.al sports funding debate.

"Money is fungible, and the compensation for all coaches is an expense to the campus Intercollegiate Athletics program," Barsky wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle. "But its total annual expenditures exceed its revenues each and every year, and the loss is covered by draining funds from the academic budget."

The italicized part is worth pondering.  In the last university budget, the state of California (via the overall university budget) was subsidizing the athletic dept. by approx. $10 million.  My understanding is this figure is in addition to the disbursement from the university contingency funds recently cut back by the university chancellor.  But the point is the K.al athletic department chronically spends more than it takes in from sports revenue.  That is the kernel of truth in Barsky's statement and that is the issue worth debating.  Barsky's biased position doesn't affect that.  Whether that money,  if not spent by the athletic dept., would make its way into academics is a subject for a separate debate.

Re: Tedfurd: the blowback begins - 81alum - 11-22-2012

Only a tiny number of universities actually make enough revenue from their sports (TV, tickets, donations) to pay the full load of the athletics budgets--the number varies but for most years it is around 5-10%, and it is not always the same 5-10%.  This means that most universities subsidize their athletics budgets with some general funds--k.al apparently does so to the tune of $10 million.  Universities rationalize using general funds by arguing that having successful sports programs raises the profile of the University in a way that normal advancement expenditures cannot--and so spending on sports is actually an investment in university advancement (publicity and good will) that is worth the money.  But that is a very difficult benefit to quantify, and so in times of severe budget shortfalls when classes are cut and library acquisitions are scaled back, it is fair to ask about the comparative advantages of adequately funding the academic mission of a university vs. adequately funding sports.

That is one reason I can be a Stanford sports fan but probably could not be a sports fan anywhere else.  At Stanford I know that the athletics budget does not drain necessary funds away from the academic mission.  At C.al and most other universities it probably does, to a greater or lesser degree.

For those of you who are California residents, you may be interested that the general cutbacks in California to public higher education have had a devastating effect on athletic budgets in a way that no one expected.    Fees and tuition for students have skyrocketed--at UC and the CSU fees have gone up a couple of hundred percent over the last half decade.  This is a crushing blow to "balanced" Intercollegiate Athletics budgets.  Providing a full-ride athletic scholarship used to be cheap at a California public university, since the taxpayer paid for about 85% of the cost of education by keeping fees and tuition low.  The flip side of that was that a full ride athletic scholarship only needed to pay for 15% of the cost of education--the hidden subsidy by the state covered the rest.  Now, however, fees have gone so high that the public subsidy is below 50%, at the CSU it is down to 31% by some estimates.  This means an athletic scholarship now has to cover as much as 69% of the cost of a student's education.  Another way of putting it--it costs Fresno or SDSU or SJSU about 5 times as much to give a student an athletic scholarship as it did just a few years ago.  I'm sure C.al is experiencing similar issues, which has to hope that the new Pac 12 TV deal and increased alumni giving can prevent a need to pillage academic budgets to sustain their athletics program.


Re: Tedfurd: the blowback begins - OutsiderFan - 11-22-2012

Garvin,

I realize this is a Stanford board, and people here like to ridicule and get their schadenfreude fix from California.  That's fine.  But doesn't it get gratuitous at some point?  There are plenty of real blunders and incompetent moves made by the California athletic department and university to revel in, but this Barsky thing is just absurd.  Are you aware how little credibility he has?

While what he says is factually true, the reasoning he uses to make the point he makes, is as weak as California's OL.  He carefully chooses facts to support his case, and conveniently ignores any that poke holes in it, including any that would provide a complete factual context and destroy his argument.  Barsky hates sports.  He has an agenda to destroy sports at California.  If you ever see him point out these facts, let me know:

1. No general fund money paid Tedford off
2. The money for a new coach will come exclusively from funds generated by the Athletic Department revenues and donors
3. Library funding being cut has nothing to do with California  sports

To put it another way...  Libraries are cut.  The football coach's salary increases.  Barsky concluded Libraries were cut because the coach's salary went up.  He doesn't even consider that the money to pay for the coach would never have been spent on the library.  Barsky's positions don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.  It's frankly pretty surprising that a Stanford person would fall for his flimsy reasoning. 

The truly sad thing is that if Barsky and his ilk supported California sports, the AD might actually be able to generate revenue for the university as a real profit center.  Increased interest in California sports programs, and the potential for higher university donations as a result of people feeling good about California sports program successes (in particular football and mens' baskteball), could provide more money to the university.





Yet another strange sports budget factoid & its implications - Redrum - 11-22-2012

This, from the Bear Insider posted by calumnus,  who used to be a fairly tame, reasonable B.ear poster on the early Cardboard.

And, as everything K.al these days, it involves Te.dford.  It seems that Tedford, either by action or by open policy, began trying to play more seriously for recruits on a national level.  Looking at Keenan Allen, it paid off.  Looking at Allen's bro Maynard.... well, it was a work in progress. 

Meanwhile, one of the running critiques of  Te.dford's regime was how the number of Northern California recruits was dropping off.  It was a view that in the past Cal had treated N. Calif. as its prime recruiting ground but more and more those recruits were heading south to UCLA or north to the Oregon schools.  This critique surfaced with a vengeance during his ritual pre/post firing fricassee.  What was never established was whether Tedford's national outlook actually caused a decline in N. Cal. signees, or whether K.al was simply less successful competing w/ other schools...or whether the first caused the second.

Anyway, calumnus asserted that out-of-state recruits hit the football budget hard,  as the athletic dept. had to pay the out-of-state tuition rate for them vs the in-state tuition for local players.  The difference was about $25K per player per year.
They don't actually cost the university more to support and educate, but they "cost" more in an accounting sense because out of state tuition has become a revenue source for UC.  Seems silly given how nobody complained about the "cost" of signing Olympic superstar Missy Franklin or Keenan Allen,  but maybe in the aggregate it does matter to the total budget. 

Just for grins I checked the K.al roster.  I counted 40 of 99 roster players from out of state,  roughly 40%  although only 65 total hit the scholarship budget.  No simple way of knowing which are scholarship players and which aren't but the percentage is probably about right.  Maybe the new K.al coach will be told that California is his sandbox and with few exceptions that's his recruiting pool.  Or, maybe a hard budget limit will achieve the same thing without it being an expressed policy.  How UN-fun for a head coach and his staff, trying to figure out whether the marginal cost for a 4-star out of stater is worth it from an ROI perspective vs. hoping a 2-star in-state alternative would return a better ROI.  All coaches have to do this to an extent, but there they just care about the recruit's possible impact on the won/loss record, not so much the budget as a hard limit.

Re: Tedfurd: the blowback begins - OutsiderFan - 11-22-2012

Money is fungible.  The issue is that it has to be available to be spent.  Donors determine where dollars go.  If a donor wants his money to go to the football coach, it isn't going to be used on a library, and may not be spent at all if not on the football coach.

As far as public money being spent on sports, I agree it is not sound to allow a public university to fritter away money without producing quality results.  California has failed to do this, but as I said, the attitude of guys like Barsky contribute heavily to California struggling to produce them.  It takes a university-wide commitment for a place like Berkeley to have a football program in the black, and capable of supporting a self-sustaining athletic program.  This is what California's goal is, and why it makes fiscal sense to remove Tedford and pay top dollar for a coach that can field a program capable of driving revenues to the athletic department.