The Board officially approves UCLA's move to the Big Ten (with accompanying conditions) by a vote of 11-5.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) December 15, 2022

I'd just like to shout out the regents member who opposed UCLA having to give back money to Cal who said, quite reasonably, "We compete in athletics at a campus level. That's why they have different mascots."

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) December 15, 2022

sycasey said:

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WalterSobchak said:

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When did you change your user name and what was your old one?

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Used to be OaktownBear.

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Thought that was fairly obvious.

philly1121 said:

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Breaking: UC Regents agree to let UCLA go with a possible $2-5 million subsidy once new media deal is finalized. Money is to go to student/athlete support programs.

Less subsidy/tax than I thought but completely in line with what I thought and said would happen.

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Yeah, letting UCLA go with some kind of subsidy (depending on the media deal) seemed like the most likely outcome.

sycasey said:

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philly1121 said:

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Breaking: UC Regents agree to let UCLA go with a possible $2-5 million subsidy once new media deal is finalized. Money is to go to student/athlete support programs.

Less subsidy/tax than I thought but completely in line with what I thought and said would happen.

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Yeah, letting UCLA go with some kind of subsidy (depending on the media deal) seemed like the most likely outcome.

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Possibly bumped to 10 million based upon the rec. of the OoP. Unclear annual or one time. TBD

BearlyCareAnymore said:

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sycasey said:

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philly1121 said:

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Breaking: UC Regents agree to let UCLA go with a possible $2-5 million subsidy once new media deal is finalized. Money is to go to student/athlete support programs.

Less subsidy/tax than I thought but completely in line with what I thought and said would happen.

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Yeah, letting UCLA go with some kind of subsidy (depending on the media deal) seemed like the most likely outcome.

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I guarantee you it won't take long before they are humiliating us over the fact that they are subsidizing our athletics.

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Meh. Take the money. The Big Ten is subsidizing them.

BearlyCareAnymore said:

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sycasey said:

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philly1121 said:

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Breaking: UC Regents agree to let UCLA go with a possible $2-5 million subsidy once new media deal is finalized. Money is to go to student/athlete support programs.

Less subsidy/tax than I thought but completely in line with what I thought and said would happen.

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Yeah, letting UCLA go with some kind of subsidy (depending on the media deal) seemed like the most likely outcome.

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I guarantee you it won't take long before they are humiliating us over the fact that they are subsidizing our athletics.

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We should do the same to all 28 of our non-revenue generating sports. Shame them and force them to either be self-sufficient or cut

philly1121 said:

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Not clear but I would think its a one-time subsidy.

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Yes, it's one-time.

BearSD said:

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gardenstatebear said:

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Just wanted to mention that stadium project seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. Cal football and basketball were on the upswing under Jeff Tedford and Ben Braun respectively. As I remember, there was an academic component involving the expansion of the Haas business school and (I think) the law school. But the financing did not work out, and so here we are.

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The financing would have to have been in place for the project to make sense.

Because the financing didn't make sense, the result was an expensive project that didn't even touch the eastern half of CMS, and an obscene amount of money was borrowed with no realistic way of paying it back.

Without realistic financing, the project was just a foolish mistake.

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All I can say is that the financing seemed realistic at the time. I don't remember anyone here saying it was unworkable. It was thought there would be buyers for the personal seat licenses necessary to finance the payback of the bonds. It turned out there weren't. At least part of the problem was that the football and men's basketball programs rapidly declined, something that couldn't be anticipated. In fact, it was thought that the training facility that was built as part of the stadium project would help attract first-rate recruits.

Is it clear yet whether the UCLA payment to Cal is one-time or annual?

The funny thing about this is that sports fans totally don't get how UC operates as a SYSTEM and the fact that really the campuses don't have bond obligations and how much revenue (and costs) are "pooled".

And while I know this is sports centric and we live and die about this stuff it really is small strokes in the big picture.

gardenstatebear said:

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Is it clear yet whether the UCLA payment to Cal is one-time or annual?

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It isn't on the web page but most are saying one time. Future item..we will see.

WalterSobchak said:

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BearlyCareAnymore said:

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WalterSobchak said:

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BearlyCareAnymore said:

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UCLA's deficit does not dwarf Cal's anywhere but on a balance sheet. That is clear. If UCLA had paid $83M to athletics out of the general fund like Cal did the last three years, their deficit over that time period would be $19M and ours would be $12.5. (I'm hoping that "other operating revenue" for Cal means an anonymous donor bailed us out, in which case, hey, that $17M is fair to call revenue. Just can't expect it again)

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This is just ridiculous. The Ucla deficit is discretionary spending. The Cal deficit is primarily debt service on campus infrastructure. CMS isn't going anywhere. It's a National Historic Register building. If it's there, it has to be used for something. If it has to be occupied by people it has to be safe. If it's going to be used it might as well be used for its intended purpose. Ucla doesn't have to spend millions per year on gourmet catered food. Cal had no choice but to retrofit CMS.

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This is simply not true. Cal spent at least $45M in discretionary spending in the last 2 years - straight up checks paid from the campus to athletics and called "revenue" on the books and that is just what was paid out of the general fund. That is in addition to the $40M in debt service. ($18M attributed to athletics, $22M to general fund)

Cal didn't need to spend $300M on the stadium. The majority of that was above and beyond the retrofit.

But regardless, they both have to play somewhere. Cal pays for the stadium debt, over half of which was discretionary. UCLA has to pay Pasadena. I think it is fair to count those the same. UCLA renovated Pauley for $136M and has its own debt service. It badly needed it. (I'm sure they did it up better than they had to, but they didn't attach a whole new training facility to the project). And UCLA athletics is both responsible for the debt and also has to pay the campus for the use of the facility. Cal athletics is paying nothing for Haas. UCLA can make the same argument for Pauley that you are making for CMS.

When you break down the numbers, UCLA's and Cal's spending is pretty close to the same both in amount and in the breakdown. The difference is UCLA is not cooking the books by giving athletics a bunch of money and calling it revenue on its balance sheet.

The expenses of the two departments are pretty similar. It is the revenue that is different and that is because Cal is frankly fudging that. You can't possibly believe that Cal athletics brought in twice what UCLA athletics brought in.

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You've obviously done the analysis. Link your spreadsheets.

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Walter:

If you go to the link to the Cal spreadsheets, there is a line item under revenue called "Direct Institutional Support". That is not revenue. That is what it sounds like. The university is giving the athletic department money. Cal has done this for a long time. You can see this on the spreadsheets dating back a long time. For several years that number was roughly $3.5M (and back then they were screaming at sports that they had to be financially self sufficient or risk being cut). With that number, Cal was losing money as well. Then in 2015, Cal's losses went up to like $9M. Then in 2016 the losses went up to $21M. In 2017 it was like $16M. All this time the Direct Institutional Support was roughly $3.5M

In 2018, the Direct Institutional Support went up to $4.7M. But our losses went up as well. $19M. In 2019, they kept the Direct Institutional Support at around $4.7M+. They did, however, move $11M of the debt service off the athletic department books and onto the general funds. With that changed, athletics still showed a loss of $19M+. In 2020, they obviously said "in for a penny in for a pound", and they upped the Direct Institutional Support to $25M+, and hooray, athletics showed a net profit of $3.2M. I think it is obvious that the primary thing that changed athletics financial fortunes was the $25M. In 2021, The Direct Institutional Support was $20M+, and athletics showed a profit of $3.4M. Included in that, however, is a weird "other operating revenue" line item of $19M. (I think I said $17M before). It isn't clear what that is for, but Cal said to Wilner it was a one time sponsor, so I'm going with wealthy donor bailed them out. That said, for this exercise I'm assuming it is not university funds. I would also warn that if it is truly one time, we are hurting even more next year.

So direct checks from the university of $50M (the +'s add up to more than $1M). $33M in debt service that the university is paying for an athletic facility. Loss over the 3 years of about $12M. Those are pretty solid numbers. That adds up to $95M that athletics lost over 3 years that the university has to pay for that are directly attributable to athletics.

By the way, no problem with a $3.5M - $4.7M subsidy. $30m+, I got a problem with.

gardenstatebear said:

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BearSD said:

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gardenstatebear said:

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Just wanted to mention that stadium project seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. Cal football and basketball were on the upswing under Jeff Tedford and Ben Braun respectively. As I remember, there was an academic component involving the expansion of the Haas business school and (I think) the law school. But the financing did not work out, and so here we are.

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The financing would have to have been in place for the project to make sense.

Because the financing didn't make sense, the result was an expensive project that didn't even touch the eastern half of CMS, and an obscene amount of money was borrowed with no realistic way of paying it back.

Without realistic financing, the project was just a foolish mistake.

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All I can say is that the financing seemed realistic at the time. I don't remember anyone here saying it was unworkable. It was thought there would be buyers for the personal seat licenses necessary to finance the payback of the bonds. It turned out there weren't. At least part of the problem was that the football and men's basketball programs rapidly declined, something that couldn't be anticipated. In fact, it was thought that the training facility that was built as part of the stadium project would help attract first-rate recruits.

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Back then we were experiencing the Good Tedford. Lots of wins. Lots of Bowl appearances. Regular appearances in the Top 25. Games regularly scheduled during the daytime. Good attendance at CMS. Great attendance at marquee games USC, UCLA, UO, UW and Big Game.
What could go wrong???

At some point, the Big Ten is going to want a team in the Bay Area so that the cable networks there will have to pay much more to carry the Big Ten network. But when, and which teams? Who knows?

socaltownie said:

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gardenstatebear said:

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Is it clear yet whether the UCLA payment to Cal is one-time or annual?

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It isn't on the web page but most are saying one time. Future item..we will see.

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I note that the resolution presented to and adopted by the Regents does not use the word "annually."

If the wording says between X and Y amounts (where X < Y), then Cal will get no more than X.

BearlyCareAnymore said:

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sycasey said:

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WalterSobchak said:

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When did you change your user name and what was your old one?

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Used to be OaktownBear.

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Thought that was fairly obvious.

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Nah man I thought you quit cold turkey and was both envious and a little surprised. This being you kinda bums me out a little tbh.

I don't have an issue with it either. We kept seeing $50-100 million buyout from the P12 and that was just never going to happen. In any scenario. I figured they would measure the old media deal and the value of USC and UCLA leaving as a percent of what UCLA might pay. Realistically, it was USC driving all the value up to 30-35% of the current media deal. UCLA was estimated somewhere around 9-15%.

But if were any more than that, i had always said that UCLA would not accept that.

Props to the Regents that said - its an athletic competition. that's why there are different mascots. lol

I wonder what Christ and Knowlton thought about that funny but valid statement.

bluehenbear said:

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If the wording says between X and Y amounts (where X < Y), then Cal will get no more than X.

Y was 5 million during the closed meeting. During the open meeting a Regent made a motion to increase it to 10 million. This was voted on and approved separately by the board to increase it. I do not believe this would have been done if a majority of the Regents did not believe the amount could be larger than 5 million.

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Who gets credit for that CMS financing plan? Sandy Barbour and Teresa Gould?

movielover said:

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Who gets credit for that CMS financing plan? Sandy Barbour and Teresa Gould?

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The plan was developed and implemented by then Cal CFO Nathan Brostrom, now a Chancellor at another UC.

Wilner is his story says it will be an annual subsidy.

Separately, the regents agreed to consider a potential annual subsidy for Cal, which stands to lose media revenue because of UCLA's departure from the Pac-12.
The approved range for a subsidy is $2 million to $10 million, with the exact figure based "on the best available information on projected revenues for both campuses."
A final decision on what the regents described as "a contribution by UCLA to the Berkeley campus" will be made once the Pac-12 finalizes its media-rights deal.

UC Regents act (finally):
- UCLA gets its approval
- Cal gets its subsidy (maybe)
- Newsom gets some flesh
- Pac-12 gets (full) clarityhttps://t.co/0FkUubqZps

— Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) December 15, 2022

BearSD said:

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gardenstatebear said:

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Just wanted to mention that stadium project seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. Cal football and basketball were on the upswing under Jeff Tedford and Ben Braun respectively. As I remember, there was an academic component involving the expansion of the Haas business school and (I think) the law school. But the financing did not work out, and so here we are.

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The financing would have to have been in place for the project to make sense.

Because the financing didn't make sense, the result was an expensive project that didn't even touch the eastern half of CMS, and an obscene amount of money was borrowed with no realistic way of paying it back.

Without realistic financing, the project was just a foolish mistake.

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There was no world where Memorial wasn't going to be renovated. The question was whether it would be renovated and repurposed, and a new smaller stadium built, or whether it would be renovated for sports.

The University is always strapped for land, and for once did the things that alumni begged for despite it being the costlier option, which was stick with tradition and keep Memorial the home for football.

CAL4LIFE said:

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For all of the bluster from scribes like Wilner and Canzano, and all of the gnashing of teeth here, thinking the Regents would play the heavy and kill the UCLA deal to help out Cal....



It's just a matter of time before UO and Udub bolt.

If that happens Utah, Colorado, and the Zona schools will probably head to the B12.

I honestly don't think Cal has the appetite to remain a P5 conference school. Knowlton remaining as AD supports that notion.

Unless George Kliackoff is a wizard and can broker a pacific division of the B1G? Maybe get Amazon involved to make it so financially lucrative Kevin Warren and the B1G cannot refuse.

Yeah, probably not.

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As the say Texas, George is all hat, no cattle. All that noise about a media contract that would make UCLA want to stay... Goes with all the comments about the Alliance being a savior or the Pac 12, and the rest of the BS he likes to pedal. UCLA and USC obviously lost confidence, and it should pretty clear so did the Regents.