I posted this yesterday on the insider board and have received a few DMs asking me to repost on Growls. Doing so now. If you read the insider version you can skip. I will however make one additional point to what I wrote there. I have been asked how NIL fits into all this. The answer is what follows is an analysis of what I think the Cal administration, the Regents and a few individuals should be doing. In terms of what the fanbase should be doing, the answer is still the same. Nothing fans can do is more impactful for our program than NIL. Nothing comes close. It allows a levelling of a playing field that has been tilted against Cal for the entire modern era of football and MBB. Agree or disagree, that's not really the point of what follows.

And we're off.


THE PROBLEM

I will make a few posts outlining my thoughts on what I believe we need to change about Cal athletics to preserve the program. This first post will focus on our finances. The second will focus on the cultural/attitudinal reset I believe we desperately need within the school, the department and as fans. This will be long and largely be the ruminations of just some dude who holds no official title and occupies no position of authority within the athletic department. So proceed at your own peril.

Note this also isn't a discussion on "Why". Why do we need big time athletics at Cal? Honestly much as people want to continue to discuss whether Cal can or should operate in some sort of Xanadu West-Coast Ivy model, that boat left the dock more than a decade ago when we spent half a billion dollars to renovate the stadium. We needed to go big or go home and we went big. It has also been pointed out many times how many schools have enhanced their academic standing using athletics (primarily football but also MBB), how it drives undergraduate applications, how every study from Marts & Lundy on down has shown how impactful it is as a means of donor outreach and in driving donations to the rest of the University, etc. To say nothing of the thesis that Cal should excel at everything it does. And that includes both athletics and academics. Some aren't convinced by any of that. Fine. There are definitely counterpoints to everything I just wrote. But since these are my thoughts, I'm going to spend the time discussing how does Cal athletics survive and stay relevant and not on the why it should.

There is however at least one "why" question that I do want to tackle. It's not why do we need big time athletics at Cal. It's why we came within a hair's breadth of being relegated out of existence. As our recent near-death experience with the end of the Pac-12 fades into the rearview mirror, I believe one of our greatest risks is that we continue trying to do the same things in more or less the same way, which will create the exact same problem in three or four years. I'm already sensing less urgency around issues like the need to restructure the athletic department that were almost a given as we came within a North Carolina State vote of oblivion. We can't allow ourselves to ignore what happened and why. Because when the wheel turns again with the next round of realignment (and realignment is absolutely happening again soon) we won't be facing a "near" death experience. It will be actual death and 138 years of Cal athletics history will come to an end. On our watch.

The answer to why no conference wanted us and why we and Stanford had to struggle to find a home while far less illustrious academic institutions were warmly embraced is somewhat obvious. The answer is we have sucked in our revenue sports. We have underfunded our revenue sports for far, far too long compared to our peers and this has resulted in us . . . well sucking. That is blunt, but that's the truth. We have lost more than we have won, we have not been entertaining to watch and many of our alumni (to say nothing of more casual fans) have tuned out. We have at the same time degraded the game day experience to a significant extent (although we've made some strides in reversing that tide the band played more last week than it has in years). But fundamentally our performance stunk, our alumni tuned out and "tuning out" resulted in us being radioactive (or at least unattractive) to the television networks who pulled the strings on this last round of realignment. Gene Smith of Ohio State has noted that realignment is about two things and two things only: Football and money (which are really the same thing when you get down to it). We failed to invest in football, we pursued other priorities and as a result this round of realignment almost cost us everything.

To be clear, I absolutely do not believe that anyone in our administration has wanted us to suck at football (at least since Chancellor Tien - still have some doubts about why he did what he did to Bruce Snyder). Our current administration would of course be completely delighted if Cal would win the conference and go to the Rose Bowl. It would tremendously burnish their reputations and legacy and result in the secondary and tertiary benefits I outlined above. But wanting something and doing everything it takes to achieve it are not the same thing.

So why did we underfund our revenue sports? Well to be fair, I think our administration would dispute that's what has happened. They would note that Cal has devoted significant financial resources toward sports in general. And that is objectively true. The $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the Chancellor, taking half of the stadium debt off the department's books, etc. are all meaningful and significant and appreciated. But I would note that these were investments in athletics in general, not just in football in particular. I'd also note we aren't operating in a vacuum. That the $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the university is not out of line with what other public flagships are doing. Cal is not doing something outsized there. From everything I've been able to uncover it actually seems we may even be on the low side. Is it good for universities to do this? Well across America schools have decided it is a good thing in terms of engagement and donations and the other factors I mentioned above. But again, that's a discussion for another post. The bottom line is we have maintained a larger number of teams and a larger number of athletic scholarships than virtually any other public school in the country. Instead of having as broad an athletic program our conference peers chose to invest their resources in their football programs, specifically. It's as simple as that. Too much of the football revenue we have generated at Cal has gone to fund the athletic department and too little has gone to football itself and the results speak for themselves.

While we were spending $23m to operate football at Cal, Utah was spending $33m. And Utah went to the Rose Bowl and we . . . did not. With two full-time staff members we run the smallest recruiting department for football in the Pac-12. By far. Justin Wilcox is well-compensated, but we have historically had one of the smallest assistant coaches salary pools (certainly taking into account cost of living), which honestly is how we wound up with Bill Musgrave. We found an OC we could afford, not the one we needed. Our social media investment is miniscule compared to our peers. And above it all, our administration has to spend time overseeing 30 sports giving us huge administrative overhead expenses and the things our revenue sports need get delayed and attention gets diverted. And guess what? All of this is going to get worse, and all of these distinctions are going to be more pronounced vis--vis our peers, when we move to the ACC. We arguably have needed a fresh start for a very long time in football and MBB but we desperately need it now if we plan to compete in the ACC and win enough games and build enough of a television audience with enough fan support so Cal will not be on the outside looking in the next time the realignment roulette wheel spins. Which, as I said, virtually every observer who has written about the topic (to say nothing of all the myriad coaches and administrators who have proffered opinions) have said absolutely will happen before the end of this decade.



THE NUMBERS

Some numbers to keep in mind. And I'm going to speak in round numbers here so let's not get caught up in whether something is $20m or $18m. For purposes of this discussion that level of precision doesn't matter. What matters is what we have and what we need and directionally what I'm about to write is accurate enough for purposes of this "problem/solution" analysis.

What we have is a $120m problem. That is the approximate current size of running the Cal athletic department annually. Jon Wilner from the Mercury news has reported on this extensively. I think Cal athletics receives approximately $23m in direct assistance from the Chancellor which is booked as revenue (note in 2022 this was allegedly $31m according to Wilner but there may have been some one-time costs in there. I don't know). I often hear the direct campus subsidy described as a "$20m annually" with a goal of driving it down to $13m over time. Bottom line it's a lot.

On media revenue the near-term revenue hit to Cal (while it is receiving only 30% of Tier 1 revenue) from joining the ACC compared to what it got from the Pac 12 is going to be about $20m annually.

So to recap:

• We are losing $20m annually in media revenue.
• We have chronically underinvested in football and that underinvestment is what just about killed off everything. Meaning if we are moving forward (and we are) we need to spend more on football. How much more? Back of the envelope, I would calculate we need to spend about $15m more annually on football operations to become competitive and position us so we aren't left out in the next round of realignment. This number is soft but it's my best (educated) estimate.
• We are about to face increased travel costs of joining the ACC of somewhere around $10m annually.

So $20m less revenue annually from the media deal and the need to spend $25m more (at least) including travel paints an ugly picture. A $45m gap. And that of course assumes that the subsidy from Central Campus of $20m to $30m stays the same under the next Chancellor. Without that things are much uglier. All without taking into account any buyouts we may need to come up with to replace personnel or the significant investments our fans need to make in NIL.

In a word: Yikes.


THE SOLUTION
So that's the problem as I see it. Both historical and present. Which begs the question of what is the solution. What do we need to do? We collectively spend far too much talking about how awful things are and our problems and candidly it's tiresome and nihilistic. So I would like to talk about the path forward instead.

I think Cal athletics needs to do three things to survive. None of these are easy. None of these are pleasant (with the exception of forcing the song stealers from UCLA to pay a Calimony penalty for trying to murder our athletic department). But I believe they all are absolutely necessary if we want to survive and must be done now.

1. Calimony payment from UCLA. This entire debacle was caused by UCLA and by the Regents acceding to their request to leave Cal and the other members of the Pac-12 to join the Big 10. Had the Pac-12 been able to preserve the LA media market (by keeping UCLA even as it lost USC) while it negotiated its new distribution deal things would have come out differently. Let's not fool ourselves. The LA media market is the second largest media market in the country. It is more than 2x the Pac-12's next largest media market (the Bay Area). Losing that market was never going to end well or even acceptably for a conference trying to ink a new media deal. I screamed from every rooftop that the conference was dead the moment UCLA and USC announced and that prediction unfortunately proved 100% correct.

So how much Calimony should the Regents give us? As a refresher when the Regents approved UCLA's move they set the range as $2m-$10m (with $10m being a very late addition thrown in almost as they were adjourning given the uncertainty on the damage this move was going to inflict on the system's flagship). It was also unclear at the time if this was meant to be an annual payment or just a one-time payment, although "one-time" doesn't make sense in this context. The media payments are annual so the subsidy needs to be annual as well. This was left open while the Regents awaited what George Kliavkoff could come up with for the Pac-12. Well that answer is now in and unfortunately $10m annually is only a down payment on the damage UCLA wrought.

So what should the Regents do? In a perfect world given who did what to whom they would take all the money that Cal is getting from the ACC add it to all the money UCLA is getting from the Big 10, divide that total in half and give each school that amount. So $65m from the Big10 for UCLA and $15m from the ACC for Cal would mean each school would get $40m annually. And please spare me the sputtering outrage of those who think everything that went down is Cal's "fault" and this would be unjust. Yes, Cal made mistakes. It's most egregious one being underfunding its football program to the extent it was uncompetitive. As I've noted, Utah wins a lot more than Cal because Utah spends a lot more than Cal on football. But this mistake isn't the proximate cause of this fiscal train wreck. What caused this was UCLA slinking off in the dead of night and leaving Cal and the rest of the conference holding the bag. So this revenue split is not only "fair" it is right. We aren't stealing UCLA's windfall for ourselves. The University of California system (and it is indeed one system) is redistributing the revenue essentially stolen from Cal by UCLA.

Now, it doesn't really make any difference how this happens. If the Regents want to say UCLA can keep all of the money but we (the Regents) are going to give Cal an equivalent amount then that's fine. Super unlikely, but fine. If the Regents want to say UCLA can keep all the money from the Big 10 but we are going to cut how much money we (the Regents) allocate to UCLA by a set amount and allocate those funds to Cal, then that's fine too. Cash is fungible and I'm not arguing that both UCLA and Cal should be starved of the revenue required to successfully run their programs in competitive conferences. What I'm arguing is that UCLA can't cause harm to Cal and keep all the benefits while Cal suffers all the harm.

Do I think this will happen? Not really. It would be a pretty gutsy move and pretty out of keeping with what the Regents have done in this sphere to date. But I think it would be just and put both campuses of the system on an even footing. And then they both can figure out how to make up their funding shortfalls and make the needed investments. But at a minimum I think Cal should get the $10m annual Calimony payments the Regents specified. If anything, the financial situation with the media payments for Cal compared to UCLA are much, much worse than what we all thought possible when they specified that range. So if Cal getting $15m annually in media money and UCLA getting $65m annually doesn't call for the full subsidy, then I can't imagine what would. But even at $10m that's nowhere near making up for the $45m annual gap I outlined above. We need more. And on that note . . .

2. Major Donors. I don't realistically think Cal can find a way out of this fiscal hole without getting some serious help from major donors. And here I'm not talking about five or six figure checks. SMU just raised $100m from 30 donors to make up for their 0% Tier 1 revenue share (compared to Cal and Stanford's 30%) from the ACC over the next nine years. It's super impressive and we need a similar commitment from our donor base who frankly has many multiples of the wealth of SMU's. Back of the envelope, I think Cal should aim for $20m annually (more on whether that's realistic below). If they could get more, great. But this probably requires multiple people writing $5m + checks. Will they? Well they absolutely can but I'll say at the outset I am loathe to tell anyone how to spend their own money. These folks are some of the wealthiest people on the planet and they have constant demands on their time and money. And many of them could care less about athletics. But some of them care deeply about athletics and have invested $10's of millions in Cal athletics already (to say nothing of what they've done for the University). And unlike many other schools, at Cal these folks have not been involved in funding our NIL to date for a variety of personal reasons. That's totally their call and I don't begrudge them for making that decision for a second. But I would hope that a few of these folks who deeply love Cal athletics and have the means would be willing to join in this fight to make sure Cal athletics not only survives but thrives. And that all of their prior donations won't have been wasted.

Here I take some comfort from the fact that Carol Christ and Jim Knowlton have both proven to be excellent fundraisers and we are raising more money for the University in general and athletics in particular than ever. But we're not talking here about naming a stadium or a plaza. We are talking about getting people to write $5m checks to pay for OPERATING expenses. Something we've never fundraised for at these levels. And we are asking them to do this while our football team finds new and incredibly frustrating ways to lose every week and our trajectory in football is (kindly) "uncertain." To say it's a tall order would be to dramatically undersell the challenge. So Cal can and should aim for $20m. But realistically? I'd expect $10m to be a stretch and delighted if we could raise $15m annually for the next several years. Obviously if they knock the cover off the ball and raise like $50m annually we can ignore the next section, but I have no reason to believe that is how this is going to go down.

3. Get endowments, cut sports or increase central campus support. So let's recap where we are. By my calculations we have a $45m (minimum) shortfall in athletic funding without talking about buy-outs or any other one time costs if we want our athletic department to survive beyond the next few years. We can (optimistically) expect to get $10m in Calimony from the Regents annually. We can (super optimistically) find a way to fundraise $15m annually for operating costs. So that leaves a minimum of a $20m shortfall. $20m is not a small number. It's 1/6 of our entire current budget. And, again, totally ignores the need for major capital improvements or buy-outs. So what else do we need to do?

Cal runs 30 sports. No other public school in our (soon to be defunct) conference runs 30 sports. Our sister school UCLA has 25. University of Washington has 21. Oregon has 20. Arizona has 20. Utah has 19. Colorado has 17. Even USC with their almost infinite endowment only runs 23. Stanford has a lot but they just tried to cut sports and suffer from the same under-investment and under-performance issues in football as we do. You see a pattern here? Why is this? BECAUSE NO ONE CAN AFFORD IT!!!! You have to look at "athletics first" schools like Michigan and Ohio State with their massive budgets to see any public school running something the size of our athletic department and even Michigan with 2x our budget and revenue only fields 29 sports. What we are doing is simply unaffordable and the root of so many of our myriad woes. We are trying to compete in Formula One with a budget equivalent to the local Go Kart racers. Want more? Washington had $145m in revenue where we had $118m. Washington has 21 sports to fund and we have 30. Washington's football team will likely play in the CFP, because they have invested in football, they received an invitation to join the Big 10 and we . . . won't and didn't. Is any of this a mystery? Hard to understand? Well it shouldn't be. Our competitors have higher revenue (soon to be dramatically higher) and dramatically lower overhead expenses than us. And they have as a result created a quality product that consumers want to buy and we haven't. What we are doing is unaffordable and our insistence on following this trajectory has almost destroyed our entire athletic program, and very soon may do exactly that if we don't change.

So absent additional campus support, a number of our non-revenue sports need to either get fully endowed or demoted to club status. Will say at the outset that the entire prospect of cutting multiple sports is a gut punch to me personally. I am proud that Cal has 30 sports. I love that we are able to give some form of scholarship to 900 athletes, what that means for the diversity of the university and how many students have an opportunity at a world-class education and a better life because of our athletic department. I only agreed to create this NIL gig for Cal with the explicit understanding that it would be a big tent and for all of our student athletes. But at some point folks we need to wake up and smell the napalm. As mentioned above there are no P5/P4 public schools (excepting Ohio State which has a budget more than 2x ours) who tries to operate 30 varsity teams. I love our sports program but I can read an income statement and what we have done does not work and our efforts to do so have almost destroyed us. And if we continue on this path instead of having 20 sports (or whatever) we will wind up with zero. This is triage and sometimes hard decisions have to be made to save the patient. This is one of them.

Despite what I just wrote, I should note that there are a few Deus Ex Machina solutions that don't involve cutting sports. They involve getting a bunch of money from donors (above the $15m in donations for football I said we need) to endow sports or Central Campus (which already is strained and has a large structural deficit) increasing its annual subsidy. These are very tough and seem to me the least likely of all the aggressive and difficult moves outlined above. But the time has come to take tough actions and if we want to preserve these programs these options are at least on the table.

On endowments, most of you recall that Cal tried to cut a bunch of sports over a decade ago and it was a trainwreck. All of those sports were preserved because of the hue and cry raised by certain influential donors and efforts commenced to raise funds to get them endowed. But my understanding is that none of these teams has yet hit this objective although a few have gotten close. But I am also uncertain for the men's sports in particular that Cal has correctly applied the right endowment filter. Fully endowed going forward has to mean for the non-revenue men's teams that they raise enough to pay for 100% of their operating expenses annually (including scholarships and whatever it takes to operate their facilities), to pay for an equivalent number of women's scholarships and that team's operating expenses to comply with Title IX, and to pay their pro rata share of the administrative expenses in operating our slimmed-down athletic department.

I know that sounds daunting and harsh. That sounds like a huge burden to put on these teams (which as far as I understand it none has yet hit). But the point, as I've spent the last several pages outlining, has to be that these sports have to stop taking money earned by football to fund themselves. Football money needs to be spent on football and on enough women's teams to comply with Title IX. We can no longer afford for football money to be diverted to men's teams or to anything else. If we continue to do that, I firmly believe we will lose it all. Both football and all our men's teams and all our women's teams. Again, this is a bitter pill but we need to make a cold-eyed assessment of the world we live in and follow the path every other university has already taken. We can no longer afford to be an outlier. Unless . . .

Our Chancellor could decide that the value of our broad-based athletic department is worth the cost. We want to have 30 sports. We want all of these sports to survive. We think this is part of our DNA and we will stop robbing Peter (football) to pay Paul (everyone else) to make that happen. In that case, the Chancellor could decide to actually INCREASE the direct support to athletics out of the Central Campus fund. I mentioned above that the current amount the Chancellor is subsidizing athletics hovers in the $20m-$30m range right now (with a long-term goal of reducing it to $13m). What if the Chancellor decides that number should be $40m? $50m? Then this final gap can be closed. I'm not necessarily advocating for this approach and I know there are many demands on the campus' money. But we don't ask the history department to raise money for the geology department. We think having a geology department is good. It's part of our mission. So we pay for that. Similarly, we can pay for track and field and men's gymnastics rather than asking football to fund them. There's no inescapable logic of making football pay for all these other sports (other than what is strictly needed under Title IX). It's time to stop doing that.


If any of you actually made it to the end of this, I salute you. I wrote all of this to share with certain members of our administration as part of my Quixotic quest to have Cal change its approach to athletics. I hope those who read it found at least some of it illuminating. Bottom line, we need to invest more in football. Hopefully recent events have conclusively demonstrated the risks to our entire athletic department in not doing so. But if we can make these changes and embrace these opportunities I don't believe there's anything we can't do together. Cal should be excellent at everything it does. And that should include sports.

Sebastabear said:

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We are talking about getting people to write $5m checks to pay for OPERATING expenses. Something we've never fundraised for at these levels. And we are asking them to do this while our football team finds new and incredibly frustrating ways to lose every week and our trajectory in football is (kindly) "uncertain." To say it's a tall order would be to dramatically undersell the challenge. So Cal can and should aim for $20m. But realistically? I'd expect $10m to be a stretch and delighted if we could raise $15m annually for the next several years.

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I commented on your whole post on the Insider board so I'm not going to do that here, but one thing I did not comment on is this and I really want to stress this. I have had many conversations with people on this board regarding realistic expectations of donors to sports and they have hugely out of whack expectations about what they are, what they can be, and the impact compared to billions of dollars that is raised for the general university.

The contributions toward OPERATING expenses in 2022 was roughly $15M. It has been about $12M-$15M for a number of years. There is a pretty consistent $5M specifically earmarked for sports not named football. In 2022, $3M was earmarked for football and $7M for general fund (I do tend to think the bulk of the $7M is raised due to football, but I don't know) The norm has been that football + general fund operating expenses (so the max that has been raised for or because of football) has been about $8M-$10M. So of course, not projects where a donor gets his name on a building. And for people think that winning is the issue, in 2006 we raised about $12M toward operating expenses and again $5M was earmarked for sports other than football.

And I've been met with "the financial statements are bullshyte" and then just numbers picked out of the air that go on the order of $50M or $100M with no evidence whatsoever. (and by the way, I do think some numbers on the financial statements are shall we say open to interpretation, they can't put contributions in another category. I think these are pretty accurate) And people think we can just pull a lever and start pulling in like $50M. That isn't realistic. So now, I think that Sebasta has earned credibility on this issue and if you don't believe the financial statements, (and my citing them), that you will believe him to determine credible goals. (I assume Sebasta that what you are talking about above is new money - otherwise I'd say, yeah, you should get $15M with a little effort because Cal usually does).

Other than that, I will repeat that this is awesome in that it lays out the reality of what I think is a pretty daunting undertaking, but you need to know what the undertaking is if you have any hope of accomplishing it.

Sebastabear said:

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As our recent near-death experience with the end of the Pac-12 fades into the rearview mirror, I believe one of our greatest risks is that we continue trying to do the same things in more or less the same way, which will create the exact same problem in three or four years. I'm already sensing less urgency around issues like the need to restructure the athletic department that were almost a given as we came within a North Carolina State vote of oblivion.

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Appreciate everything you do for the program Sebastabear, but I think this is the most realistic future of our program. Like a frog that just got moved to a new pot on low heat, the administration will continue to juggle conflicting priorities until we are once again at a crisis. And this time there won't be a last minute hail mary to save the program.

Quote:

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Funny org chart: VP of no #cmo #marketing http://t.co/302bzfI2ET pic.twitter.com/Z8tfggQfA0

— Thomas Barta (@ThomasBarta) June 24, 2015

monster berkeley organizational chart:

chancellor carol christ: 78 year old is retiring in july of 2024 (successor will be recommended to the board of regents for affirmation in may of 2024)...the benevolent christ forgave the memorial stadium debt (the greatest gift to athletics of any berkeley chancellor during the last century)...only major mistake wuz hiring & then believing the lies of the athletic director re: the northwestern ad opening

james arthur knowlton: the con artist is an absentee bureaucrat living in colorado springs, the only athletic director in the nation that refuses all interview requests...currently under investigation by the chancellor's office as a result of the munger report

jennifer simon-o'neil: jenny is the con artist's #2 in charge confidante, her involvement with the mckeever female suicidal swimmers reveals someone who is evil as ****

markeisha everett: pompous & unqualified for selling tickets/building a future pipeline of future donors, oversees a bloated 11 person communications department...the primary obstructionist to the offering of FREE football & basketball tixs to all students for all games...will be demoted by the next ad

vasileios iliopoulos: should be selling knock off watches at the concord mall, not cal football & basketball season tixs

shrill voiced gameday promotion announcer: would rather listen to sorry azz adele or dishes crashing on my kitchen floor than her annoying voice...80% less words out of her mouth would be a good thing

dustin coder: the highly organized & professional director of ticket operations who goes the extra mile in customer service

thomas lowry: cfo handpicked by the con artist from the air force, wuz directed to hide from me the secret $11,000,000 loan from the central campus that wuz finally discovered thru the monster's relentless public information requests

dr adela de la torre: the current prez at san diego state is the frontrunner to be the next berkeley chancellor...the bay area native got 3 berkeley degrees & luvs sports as a key catalyst of student spirit & alum engagement...she is vibrant & gets it

andrew mcgraw: the current director of football operations (and former walk on quarterback & band member) & longtime cal athletic department employee should be named as the interim athletic director, we don't got the luxury of hiring another outsider who don't get/like berkeley...reducing costs/cutting sports is the #1 priority to steer the course away from the current cliff of bankruptcy in emerging with a rightsized, more streamlined with better talent athletic department

beth tafolla-voetsch: should be promoted to the #2 position responsible for all women's sports & title ix compliance

jay john: the braintrusts right arm of hall of famers lute olson & mike montgomery wuz inexplicably pulled away from men's basketball by knowlton but is now back working with mbb which is a huge boost to coach madsen...should be tasked with hiring the next women's basketball coach after the upcoming probable winless pac 12 season

oski: drunk azz & unreliable mascot recently released from the silverado rehab & wellness institute

https://instagr.am/p/CxYQ4owMdEW

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absolutely everybody who reads this board should read (and reread like me) sebastopol's analysis of the cal athletic department & specifically its financials

honestly if kevin decides to walk away (or heaven forbid strokes out) there realistically isn't college football in berkeley anymore so his thoughts are important

we are 100% in agreement that sport teams need to be cut, there's zero chance these programs are gonna fundraise enough money to be self sufficient or that the next chancellor is gonna increase the athletic department subsidy (in fact it will likely be reduced)

so there's an approximately $50,000,000+ annual deficit

with that in mind her are 10 fun facts re: james arthur knowlton

1) knowlton lives in colorado springs & rents in lafayette, it's well known within the athletic department that he is an absentee bureaucrat whose primary focus is the family house flipping biz in the rocky mountains

2) despite being a grown azz man, knowlton had never been to california before the athletic director interview

3) knowlton lied to chancellor christ re: the northwestern ad opening which resulted in him receiving an annual salary of $1,300,000 thru 2029...my source is a chicago golf club member who has served as a northwestern trustee

4) the con artist has rerouted past donations earmarked for football & basketball to his olympic sports, he wuz caught & changes are being made but the vast majority of donors are not gonna donate any more money to the cal athletic dept until there is a new ad...hoping guys like jaylen brown (new $306,000,000 nba contract) are gonna donate is a fairy tale until knowlton is gone

5) knowlton is not an effective fundraiser for either football or basketball, he is intensely disliked by most donors and his lies (which resulted in coach madsen incorrectly stating it's close to happening, in actuality it hasn't even started) about the progress of the basketball practice facility are beyond breaking bad

6) our inept athletic director's #2 in charge confidante jennifer simon-o'neil is the enabler of the mckeever women's suicidal swimmers...knowlton hired the unqualified & pompous markeisha everrett who is the dumbest person in the room & cfo tom lowry (who anti football agenda wuz clear to me within speaking with him for 5 minutes) from the air force

7) the gameday football experience is not getting better & the band is not actually playing more according to students in the band...this is knowlton's responsibility (as is the shrill voiced gameday promotional announcer) but he's more focused on esp food services

8) knowlton told me to my face that billy m wuz "a genius" and unilaterally extended mark fox for another $4,000,000+ (including staff costs) only to be forced to fire him a year later

9) james arthur knowlton is the only athletic director in the united states of america to not have an active social media presence & also turn down every interview request

10) knowlton has neither the skills nor the inclination to run a balanced budget which would require cutting sports programs which will not happen on his watch & winning the future lawsuits against the department...in fact the above math fails to include the covert $11,000,000 loan knowlton directed his cfo to take from the central campus which only came to light after my relentless public information requests & stalling tactics by lowry

andrew mcgraw for athletic director & dr adela de la torre for chancellor (is the only realistic path forward)#

Sebastabear said:

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THE PROBLEM

So why did we underfund our revenue sports? Well to be fair, I think our administration would dispute that's what has happened. They would note that Cal has devoted significant financial resources toward sports in general. And that is objectively true. The $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the Chancellor, taking half of the stadium debt off the department's books, etc. are all meaningful and significant and appreciated. But I would note that these were investments in athletics in general, not just in football in particular. I'd also note we aren't operating in a vacuum. That the $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the university is not out of line with what other public flagships are doing. Cal is not doing something outsized there. From everything I've been able to uncover it actually seems we may even be on the low side. Is it good for universities to do this? Well across America schools have decided it is a good thing in terms of engagement and donations and the other factors I mentioned above. But again, that's a discussion for another post. The bottom line is we have maintained a larger number of teams and a larger number of athletic scholarships than virtually any other public school in the country. Instead of having as broad an athletic program our conference peers chose to invest their resources in their football programs, specifically. It's as simple as that. Too much of the football revenue we have generated at Cal has gone to fund the athletic department and too little has gone to football itself and the results speak for themselves.

---

Here is how I see it.

This is an old problem (40 plus years in the making) currently on hyper-drive because, in it's current configuration, the administration is woefully out of touch with it's own business reality, When you couple that with major gift giving alums who rarely require a scintilla of accountability you get exactly what Cal's IAD became - bloated and unaccountable to the bottom line - winning revenue sports.

Another problem with the administration, as you pointed out, is that it loves to play the role of Robinhood with it's own IAD. It's also doesn't seem to have a problem making promises to certain sports then pilfering from endowment funds raised to keep those sports afloat. See the baseball program on that issue.

The last problem with the administration is that it lacks business talent and vision. It's reactive not proactive. It's myopic and unresponsive to it's own fan base. And it's a marketing and gameday disaster. In other words, it needs to be replaced.

At the very least Cal used to have traditions and a certain gameday charm that was uniquely who they are. How that was allowed to be run over by progressive myopic marketing ideas blows my mind.

That said, Chancellors beget Athletic Directors beget Head Football & Basketball coaches.

I think it's pure fantasyland to think that Cal alums can buy their way out of the majority of these issues without leveraging those same donor dollars against the current administrative landscape that Cal resides in. In other words, Cal alums need to demand a seat at the administrative table. If not, you are just entrusting your money to the whims of people who have demonstrated time and again they do not understand business principles of a financially competitive IAD.

Justin Wilcox is a perfect example of this. He doesn't win and is a poor decision maker despite having more resources at his fingertips than any other coach in Cal's history. Yet here we are watching an alumni supported, contract extended, 5.1M per head coach flail away with Cal football as the University, the players, and the patrons who still care enough to pay attention, bare the cost of a losing program.

Seven years running and the program is trending the wrong way.

So to me the only real solution to all this is whether alums have the fortitude to demand the structural changes needed to the IAD so things like NIL, endowments, athletic directors, head coaches, and the overall health of the IAD going forward can have a chance to thrive instead of just trying to survive.

And yes, there is going to be another round of realignment roulette in the near future. I hope all the things that make up the University of California, the flagship UC, not ****ing Berkeley (who wouldn't piss on Cal if it was on fire) will think long and hard about what it really wants to be athletically.

This is Cal's last chance to get it right.

Outstanding summary of our situation and what it will take to be successful going forward! Thank you for all you do for our athletics program.

I agree with most of this. I still think the most significant issue is lack of support from campus leadership and faculty, and to a lesser extent undermining by COB. That said, control what you can control.

To me the one item not mentioned is fan attendance. How do leaders of the program focus on averaging 50,000 people per game?

That doubles attendance, and at ~$100/attendee over 6 games represents 15m to football coffers. Incentivize Wilcox on this number. There will be ripple affects to donors, media, swag sales and more. Money problem solved.

How do you get 50,000 people into memorial ever game? There's the strategic question. To me all actions need to be based on whether they help or hurt bringing fans to the game.

As someone who's largely stopped going, and stopped spending money on our product, I can tell you the solution is much much deeper than the quality of play on the field.

STEAKKNIVES4LIFE said:

---

Sebastabear said:

---

THE PROBLEM

So why did we underfund our revenue sports? Well to be fair, I think our administration would dispute that's what has happened. They would note that Cal has devoted significant financial resources toward sports in general. And that is objectively true. The $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the Chancellor, taking half of the stadium debt off the department's books, etc. are all meaningful and significant and appreciated. But I would note that these were investments in athletics in general, not just in football in particular. I'd also note we aren't operating in a vacuum. That the $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the university is not out of line with what other public flagships are doing. Cal is not doing something outsized there. From everything I've been able to uncover it actually seems we may even be on the low side. Is it good for universities to do this? Well across America schools have decided it is a good thing in terms of engagement and donations and the other factors I mentioned above. But again, that's a discussion for another post. The bottom line is we have maintained a larger number of teams and a larger number of athletic scholarships than virtually any other public school in the country. Instead of having as broad an athletic program our conference peers chose to invest their resources in their football programs, specifically. It's as simple as that. Too much of the football revenue we have generated at Cal has gone to fund the athletic department and too little has gone to football itself and the results speak for themselves.

---

Here is how I see it.

This is an old problem (40 plus years in the making) currently on hyper-drive because, in it's current configuration, the administration is woefully out of touch with it's own business reality, When you couple that with major gift giving alums who rarely require a scintilla of accountability you get exactly what Cal's IAD became - bloated and unaccountable to the bottom line - winning revenue sports.

Another problem with the administration, as you pointed out, is that it loves to play the role of Robinhood with it's own IAD. It's also doesn't seem to have a problem making promises to certain sports then pilfering from endowment funds raised to keep those sports afloat. See the baseball program on that issue.

The last problem with the administration is that it lacks business talent and vision. It's reactive not proactive. It's myopic and unresponsive to it's own fan base. And it's a marketing and gameday disaster. In other words, it needs to be replaced.

At the very least Cal used to have traditions and a certain gameday charm that was uniquely who they are. How that was allowed to be run over by progressive myopic marketing ideas blows my mind.

That said, Chancellors beget Athletic Directors beget Head Football & Basketball coaches.

I think it's pure fantasyland to think that Cal alums can buy their way out of the majority of these issues without leveraging those same donor dollars against the current administrative landscape that Cal resides in. In other words, Cal alums need to demand a seat at the administrative table. If not, you are just entrusting your money to the whims of people who have demonstrated time and again they do not understand business principles of a financially competitive IAD.

Justin Wilcox is a perfect example of this. He doesn't win and is a poor decision maker despite having more resources at his fingertips than any other coach in Cal's history. Yet here we are watching an alumni supported, contract extended, 5.1M per head coach flail away with Cal football as the University, the players, and the patrons who still care enough to pay attention, bare the cost of a losing program.

Seven years running and the program is trending the wrong way.

So to me the only real solution to all this is whether alums have the fortitude to demand the structural changes needed to the IAD so things like NIL, endowments, athletic directors, head coaches, and the overall health of the IAD going forward can have a chance to thrive instead of just trying to survive.

And yes, there is going to be another round of realignment roulette in the near future. I hope all the things that make up the University of California, the flagship UC, not ****ing Berkeley (who wouldn't piss on Cal if it was on fire) will think long and hard about what it really wants to be athletically.

This is Cal's last chance to get it right.

---

Yes, I've been pounding on this for years, Knowlton, Wilcox and Fox just brought it to a head. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way our athletics department is run. The chancellor is chosen for academic administration and that is rightfully the primary consideration. Carol Christ ran Smith college before UC Berkeley. Her academic expertise is Victorian literature. The chances she would be well/versed in big time P5 football and hiring an AD with a vision to guide us through the rapidly changing and professionalizing landscape of D1 football and men's basketball is almost nil and that was confirmed when she hired Jim Knowlton, a man who spent his career in the Army and then Federally funded military academies after retirement. His expertise is civil engineering and ice hockey.

College football is big business and needs to be treated like a business. Additionally, what sets college apart from the NFL is the traditions and pageantry, bands and fight songs especially. The core market is students and alumni. The people who best understand that market and our traditions, the people who care enough to donate their own money to the cause are alumni, not a graduate of Army who had never even been to California before he took the job, hates Berkeley and lives in Colorado. He was the worst possibly fit. It is not surprising that he makes bad decision after bad decision for us which will cost us many tens of $millions and almost killed our athletics program and still might.

The next AD needs to be chosen for their experience in professional sports management, marketing and political fit for Berkeley. An alum would be best and there are many with that experience to choose from: Amy Trask, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Larry Baer, Cynt Marshall, Paraag Marathe….

The AD needs to be answerable to a board of alums, which can include some of the above and big money donors. The structure could be a chancellor's "Athletics Advisory Board" under the current system (with the AD officially under the chancellor but for all intents and purposes, the board) or more radically, the revenue sports or even the entire athletics department could be outsourced to an alumni-run organization with an elected board and president with voting shares based on contributions. I believe this later format would generate more contributions because it would come with a vote and a say, instead of donating and "trusting" someone like Knowlton who has a long term guaranteed contract and effectively answers to no one will spend it wisely. Also, if it comes to it, having a separate organization for the revenue sports would be a way to make the players employees of that organization instead of employees of the university.

I would vote for Sebastabear for chairman of the board. He gets it. Thanks for your post and all you do.

calumnus said:

---

STEAKKNIVES4LIFE said:

---

Sebastabear said:

---

THE PROBLEM

So why did we underfund our revenue sports? Well to be fair, I think our administration would dispute that's what has happened. They would note that Cal has devoted significant financial resources toward sports in general. And that is objectively true. The $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the Chancellor, taking half of the stadium debt off the department's books, etc. are all meaningful and significant and appreciated. But I would note that these were investments in athletics in general, not just in football in particular. I'd also note we aren't operating in a vacuum. That the $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the university is not out of line with what other public flagships are doing. Cal is not doing something outsized there. From everything I've been able to uncover it actually seems we may even be on the low side. Is it good for universities to do this? Well across America schools have decided it is a good thing in terms of engagement and donations and the other factors I mentioned above. But again, that's a discussion for another post. The bottom line is we have maintained a larger number of teams and a larger number of athletic scholarships than virtually any other public school in the country. Instead of having as broad an athletic program our conference peers chose to invest their resources in their football programs, specifically. It's as simple as that. Too much of the football revenue we have generated at Cal has gone to fund the athletic department and too little has gone to football itself and the results speak for themselves.

---

Here is how I see it.

This is an old problem (40 plus years in the making) currently on hyper-drive because, in it's current configuration, the administration is woefully out of touch with it's own business reality, When you couple that with major gift giving alums who rarely require a scintilla of accountability you get exactly what Cal's IAD became - bloated and unaccountable to the bottom line - winning revenue sports.

Another problem with the administration, as you pointed out, is that it loves to play the role of Robinhood with it's own IAD. It's also doesn't seem to have a problem making promises to certain sports then pilfering from endowment funds raised to keep those sports afloat. See the baseball program on that issue.

The last problem with the administration is that it lacks business talent and vision. It's reactive not proactive. It's myopic and unresponsive to it's own fan base. And it's a marketing and gameday disaster. In other words, it needs to be replaced.

At the very least Cal used to have traditions and a certain gameday charm that was uniquely who they are. How that was allowed to be run over by progressive myopic marketing ideas blows my mind.

That said, Chancellors beget Athletic Directors beget Head Football & Basketball coaches.

I think it's pure fantasyland to think that Cal alums can buy their way out of the majority of these issues without leveraging those same donor dollars against the current administrative landscape that Cal resides in. In other words, Cal alums need to demand a seat at the administrative table. If not, you are just entrusting your money to the whims of people who have demonstrated time and again they do not understand business principles of a financially competitive IAD.

Justin Wilcox is a perfect example of this. He doesn't win and is a poor decision maker despite having more resources at his fingertips than any other coach in Cal's history. Yet here we are watching an alumni supported, contract extended, 5.1M per head coach flail away with Cal football as the University, the players, and the patrons who still care enough to pay attention, bare the cost of a losing program.

Seven years running and the program is trending the wrong way.

So to me the only real solution to all this is whether alums have the fortitude to demand the structural changes needed to the IAD so things like NIL, endowments, athletic directors, head coaches, and the overall health of the IAD going forward can have a chance to thrive instead of just trying to survive.

And yes, there is going to be another round of realignment roulette in the near future. I hope all the things that make up the University of California, the flagship UC, not ****ing Berkeley (who wouldn't piss on Cal if it was on fire) will think long and hard about what it really wants to be athletically.

This is Cal's last chance to get it right.

---

Yes, I've been pounding on this for years, Knowlton, Wilcox and Fox just brought it to a head. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way our athletics department is run. The chancellor is chosen for academic administration and that is rightfully the primary consideration. Carol Christ ran Smith college before UC Berkeley. Her academic expertise is Victorian literature. The chances she would be well/versed in big time P5 football and hiring an AD with a vision to guide us through the rapidly changing and professionalizing landscape of D1 football and men's basketball is almost nil and that was confirmed when she hired Jim Knowlton, a man who spent his career in the Army and then Federally funded military academies after retirement. His expertise is civil engineering and ice hockey.

College football is big business and needs to be treated like a business. Additionally, what sets college apart from the NFL is the traditions and pageantry, bands and fight songs especially. The core market is students and alumni. The people who best understand that market and our traditions, the people who care enough to donate their own money to the cause are alumni, not a graduate of Army who had never even been to California before he took the job, hates Berkeley and lives in Colorado. He was the worst possibly fit. It is not surprising that he makes bad decision after bad decision for us which will cost us many tens of $millions and almost killed our athletics program and still might.

The next AD needs to be chosen for their experience in professional sports management, marketing and political fit for Berkeley. An alum would be best and there are many with that experience to choose from: Amy Trask, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Larry Baer, Cynt Marshall, Paraag Marathe….

The AD needs to be answerable to a board of alums, which can include some of the above and big money donors. The structure could be a chancellor's "Athletics Advisory Board" under the current system (with the AD officially under the chancellor but for all intents and purposes, the board) or more radically, the revenue sports or even the entire athletics department could be outsourced to an alumni-run organization with an elected board and president with voting shares based on contributions.

---

Off topic, but personally, I think where college sports has arrived and where it is heading, I think colleges should just license their name to a professional business who runs football and basketball. I don't think it even matters anymore if the players are students. Offer an education if you want. Don't if you don't. Just pay them to wear the laundry and let's stop pretending this has anything to do with student athletics.

Do I really mean this? Probably not. But sometimes I do.

Sebasta, I want to thank you for this great summary and will say that it echoes many of my thoughts: Cal Athletics needs to get much leaner and focus heavily on supporting the revenue sports (which is mostly football, let's be honest). My major concern is that the administration always seems to be too slow to recognize realities and we have entered a period of time where you can't afford to be slow.

So how to get them to recognize this? Could some of the major donors be reached and convinced to offer additional cash contingent upon major changes being made to the AD's operations? Could you or other influencers do a kind of end-around and contact people in the press who know what's up and can maybe raise some hue and cry about this? Jon Wilner, MIchael Silver types?

No Chancellor wants to be responsible for the mismanagement and ultimate destruction of a major athletic program, but they have to be made to see the situation for what it is.

BearlyCareAnymore said:

---

calumnus said:

---

STEAKKNIVES4LIFE said:

---

Sebastabear said:

---

THE PROBLEM

So why did we underfund our revenue sports? Well to be fair, I think our administration would dispute that's what has happened. They would note that Cal has devoted significant financial resources toward sports in general. And that is objectively true. The $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the Chancellor, taking half of the stadium debt off the department's books, etc. are all meaningful and significant and appreciated. But I would note that these were investments in athletics in general, not just in football in particular. I'd also note we aren't operating in a vacuum. That the $20m - $30m annual subsidy from the university is not out of line with what other public flagships are doing. Cal is not doing something outsized there. From everything I've been able to uncover it actually seems we may even be on the low side. Is it good for universities to do this? Well across America schools have decided it is a good thing in terms of engagement and donations and the other factors I mentioned above. But again, that's a discussion for another post. The bottom line is we have maintained a larger number of teams and a larger number of athletic scholarships than virtually any other public school in the country. Instead of having as broad an athletic program our conference peers chose to invest their resources in their football programs, specifically. It's as simple as that. Too much of the football revenue we have generated at Cal has gone to fund the athletic department and too little has gone to football itself and the results speak for themselves.

---

Here is how I see it.

This is an old problem (40 plus years in the making) currently on hyper-drive because, in it's current configuration, the administration is woefully out of touch with it's own business reality, When you couple that with major gift giving alums who rarely require a scintilla of accountability you get exactly what Cal's IAD became - bloated and unaccountable to the bottom line - winning revenue sports.

Another problem with the administration, as you pointed out, is that it loves to play the role of Robinhood with it's own IAD. It's also doesn't seem to have a problem making promises to certain sports then pilfering from endowment funds raised to keep those sports afloat. See the baseball program on that issue.

The last problem with the administration is that it lacks business talent and vision. It's reactive not proactive. It's myopic and unresponsive to it's own fan base. And it's a marketing and gameday disaster. In other words, it needs to be replaced.

At the very least Cal used to have traditions and a certain gameday charm that was uniquely who they are. How that was allowed to be run over by progressive myopic marketing ideas blows my mind.

That said, Chancellors beget Athletic Directors beget Head Football & Basketball coaches.

I think it's pure fantasyland to think that Cal alums can buy their way out of the majority of these issues without leveraging those same donor dollars against the current administrative landscape that Cal resides in. In other words, Cal alums need to demand a seat at the administrative table. If not, you are just entrusting your money to the whims of people who have demonstrated time and again they do not understand business principles of a financially competitive IAD.

Justin Wilcox is a perfect example of this. He doesn't win and is a poor decision maker despite having more resources at his fingertips than any other coach in Cal's history. Yet here we are watching an alumni supported, contract extended, 5.1M per head coach flail away with Cal football as the University, the players, and the patrons who still care enough to pay attention, bare the cost of a losing program.

Seven years running and the program is trending the wrong way.

So to me the only real solution to all this is whether alums have the fortitude to demand the structural changes needed to the IAD so things like NIL, endowments, athletic directors, head coaches, and the overall health of the IAD going forward can have a chance to thrive instead of just trying to survive.

And yes, there is going to be another round of realignment roulette in the near future. I hope all the things that make up the University of California, the flagship UC, not ****ing Berkeley (who wouldn't piss on Cal if it was on fire) will think long and hard about what it really wants to be athletically.

This is Cal's last chance to get it right.

---

Yes, I've been pounding on this for years, Knowlton, Wilcox and Fox just brought it to a head. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way our athletics department is run. The chancellor is chosen for academic administration and that is rightfully the primary consideration. Carol Christ ran Smith college before UC Berkeley. Her academic expertise is Victorian literature. The chances she would be well/versed in big time P5 football and hiring an AD with a vision to guide us through the rapidly changing and professionalizing landscape of D1 football and men's basketball is almost nil and that was confirmed when she hired Jim Knowlton, a man who spent his career in the Army and then Federally funded military academies after retirement. His expertise is civil engineering and ice hockey.

College football is big business and needs to be treated like a business. Additionally, what sets college apart from the NFL is the traditions and pageantry, bands and fight songs especially. The core market is students and alumni. The people who best understand that market and our traditions, the people who care enough to donate their own money to the cause are alumni, not a graduate of Army who had never even been to California before he took the job, hates Berkeley and lives in Colorado. He was the worst possibly fit. It is not surprising that he makes bad decision after bad decision for us which will cost us many tens of $millions and almost killed our athletics program and still might.

The next AD needs to be chosen for their experience in professional sports management, marketing and political fit for Berkeley. An alum would be best and there are many with that experience to choose from: Amy Trask, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Larry Baer, Cynt Marshall, Paraag Marathe….

The AD needs to be answerable to a board of alums, which can include some of the above and big money donors. The structure could be a chancellor's "Athletics Advisory Board" under the current system (with the AD officially under the chancellor but for all intents and purposes, the board) or more radically, the revenue sports or even the entire athletics department could be outsourced to an alumni-run organization with an elected board and president with voting shares based on contributions.

---

Off topic, but personally, I think where college sports has arrived and where it is heading, I think colleges should just license their name to a professional business who runs football and basketball. I don't think it even matters anymore if the players are students. Offer an education if you want. Don't if you don't. Just pay them to wear the laundry and let's stop pretending this has anything to do with student athletics.

Do I really mean this? Probably not. But sometimes I do.

---

Lol. A step too far. There needs to be a connection to the university, the students need to see players on campus. I liked it when players lived in the dorms. It can't go complete pro farm team.

However, one business idea is to have a professional alumni team wear the laundry and compete against other alumni teams in CMS and Haas in the off-season. As the teams would be made up of guys that didn't make the NFL, that would be an equalizer and a platform for them to earn money, train and display their talents for the NFL as free agents.

Or even have alumni games or a tournament that include NFL and NBA players like the World Cup? A football tournament for California would be Cal vs UCLA and USC vs Stanford with the winners meeting in a game played at the Rose Bowl.

In business you'd slash the worst financially responsible sports.

Great job with the round numbers, Sebasta. So, by your estimate, we've got a shortfall of about $45 million annually ($20 million reduced media rights payments, $15 million additional for football and $10 million for increase travel costs), plus the need to hit up donors each year for more NIL money. And that ignores money needed for any personnel changes.
One additional estimate I would like to see is how much we might save by cutting ten or more non-revenue sports. Would this save $5 million a year, $10 million a year? Could this savings be entirely diverted to increased football football expenditures?
With respect to increased donor funding, I'm a little pessimistic. Do we really have that many major donors who care about Cal IA? Sadly,I kind of doubt it. If they were out there, I think we would have already heard from them. And we also need NIL money from them.
I'm also pessimistic about the Calimony funding. This will be a highly politicized decision by the BOR and let's not forget that UCLA also has quite a bit of influence on the BOR. I see, at best, $5 million a year, and most of that might come from the UC System, not UCLA itself. Hope I'm wrong.
So let's get back to the $45 million shortfall, which, again, was composed of a $20 million reduction in media rights payments, an additional $15 million needed for football and an additional $10 million in ACC-related travel costs.
Say we cut a minimum of 10 non-revenue and that saves $7.5 million, which is diverted entirely to football. Say we get $5.0 million a year from the UCLA debacle. That leaves an additional $32.5 million to come from somewhere. I say it comes largely from "direct institutional support." That's right; the central campus contribution would more than double. Some money might come from donors, but I'm assuming most donor money would go to increased NIL funding and not to operating costs. The UCLA departure payment might be somewhat greater than $5 million per year, which would reduce the needed amount of direct institutional funding.
These are just my guessimates. Further work definitely needed.

PaulCali said:

---

Great job with the round numbers, Sebasta. So, by your estimate, we've got a shortfall of about $45 million annually ($20 million reduced media rights payments, $15 million additional for football and $10 million for increase travel costs), plus the need to hit up donors each year for more NIL money. And that ignores money needed for any personnel changes.
One additional estimate I would like to see is how much we might save by cutting ten or more non-revenue sports. Would this save $5 million a year, $10 million a year? Could this savings be entirely diverted to increased football football expenditures?
With respect to increased donor funding, I'm a little pessimistic. Do we really have that many major donors who care about Cal IA? Sadly,I kind of doubt it. If they were out there, I think we would have already heard from them. And we also need NIL money from them.
I'm also pessimistic about the Calimony funding. This will be a highly politicized decision by the BOR and let's not forget that UCLA also has quite a bit of influence on the BOR. I see, at best, $5 million a year, and most of that might come from the UC System, not UCLA itself. Hope I'm wrong.
So let's get back to the $45 million shortfall, which, again, was composed of a $20 million reduction in media rights payments, an additional $15 million needed for football and an additional $10 million in ACC-related travel costs.
Say we cut a minimum of 10 non-revenue and that saves $7.5 million, which is diverted entirely to football. Say we get $5.0 million a year from the UCLA debacle. That leaves an additional $32.5 million to come from somewhere. I say it comes largely from "direct institutional support." That's right; the central campus contribution would more than double. Some money might come from donors, but I'm assuming most donor money would go to increased NIL funding and not to operating costs. The UCLA departure payment might be somewhat greater than $5 million per year, which would reduce the needed amount of direct institutional funding.
These are just my guessimates. Further work definitely needed.

---

That's $45M of ADDITIONAL shortfall. You are not including the existing $20M-$30M shortfall.

That's considered, but perhaps not too clearly It's why I say that institutional support would have to more than double, Sebasta's shortfall estimate assumes that the existing institutional funding stays in place. I'm trying to say that in addition to the existing institutional funding of, say, $25 to $30 million, we would need additional funding of say $30 million to close the shortfall. So the total institutional funding would increase to about $60 million.

What is the situation at UC Davis, UCSD, UCSB, etc? Plus Cal Poly, San Jose State, San Diego State, Long Beach State? How much institutional support does athletics receive at other California state universities? I don't see any reason institutional support shouldn't be comparable at Cal.

calumnus said:

---

What is the situation at UC Davis, UCSD, UCSB, etc? Plus Cal Poly, San Jose State, San Diego State, Long Beach State? How much institutional support does athletics receive at other California state universities? I don't see any reason institutional support shouldn't be comparable at Cal.

---

I know that UC Davis students voted to add a fee to their tuition to support athletics

There a lot of good and interesting points in Sebastabear's post to which Cal Strong could add a hearty "AMEN."

But he disagree that we have over-invested in revenue sports. Cal Strong thinks we have dramatically over-invested . . . in the wrong people.

We spent nearly half a billion dollars on the SAHPC and football stadium renovation. And we are paying a terrible coach nearly $5m/year. This is way too much money for 4-5 wins most years. The administration either needs to clean house and hire the right people, or dramatically reduce costs to align with performance.

As a HC, Justin Wilcox is worth $60-80k a year at best. And the way we have been performing since 2011 is not worthy of a SAHPC or the Memorial retrofit. Given what our coaches (late-tenure Tedford, Dykes, Wilcox) have put out there, we should be playing our games at Edwards stadium, with occasional outings at Kezar. The players could lift at the rec center like every other student at Cal.

The tragic thing is that, if we could have seen into the future, it might have been better to just take over Raider stadium.

As for raising money, it is difficult to seek significant commitments when Jim Knowlton is our AD and Justin Wilcox is our HC.

Successful people typically do not invest in enterprises led by manifestly incompetent individuals.

I'm certain that Chancellor Christ has done an admirable job managing and enhancing Cal's academic standing. However, she needs to fix her mistake with Knowlton before any "Major Donors" will have any confidence handing over the sums of money you mentioned. I would guess that anyone capable of making a $5M donation isn't used to squandering their money, no matter how much they love Cal.

Cal Strong! said:

---

There a lot of good and interesting points in Sebastabear's post to which Cal Strong could add a hearty "AMEN."

But he disagree that we have over-invested in revenue sports. Cal Strong thinks we have dramatically over-invested . . . in the wrong people.

We spent nearly half a billion dollars on the SAHPC and football stadium renovation. And we are paying a terrible coach nearly $5m/year. This is way too much money for 4-5 wins most years. The administration either needs to clean house and hire the right people, or dramatically reduce costs to align with performance.

As a HC, Justin Wilcox is worth $60-80k a year at best. And the way we have been performing since 2011 is not worthy of a SAHPC or the Memorial retrofit. Given what our coaches (late-tenure Tedford, Dykes, Wilcox) have put out there, we should be playing our games at Edwards stadium, with occasional outings at Kezar. The players could lift at the rec center like every other student at Cal.

The tragic thing is that, if we could have seen into the future, it might have been better to just take over Raider stadium.

As for raising money, it is difficult to seek significant commitments when Jim Knowlton is our AD and Justin Wilcox is our HC.

Successful people typically do not invest in enterprises led by manifestly incompetent individuals.

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Yes. It is not underspending that is the problem, it is misspending that is the problem. Knowlton makes $1.3 million a year destroying value and throwing away $millions with horrible extensions for Fox, McKeever and Wilcox. His own 8 year extension was gross fiscal malfeasance. I honestly believe there are high school coaches making $80k that are better head coaches than Justin Wilcox who makes $5 million.

Wilcox mismanages his budget too. As a defensive coach (which alone is not the cost effective hire) his most important and expensive hire should always be his OC. This should be obvious. Instead our three highest paid coaches even on his best teams were: 1. Wilcox, 2. DeRuyter 3. Sirmon with Wilcox hiring OCs on the cheap off the scrap pile. Now we have two DB coaches and no special teams coach? He hires mostly his friends with Oregon, Washington and Idaho ties and we wonder why our recruiting trails our peers?

So yes we need to spend more in other areas, but not necessarily more over all. We have to spend our money with intelligence, and we haven't. We make a dumb hire: Knowlton, who we pay too much and extended too long, who makes dumb hires and pays too much to Fox and stupid extensions like Wilcox, who in turn makes dumb hires and keeps them too long.

Successful people typically do not invest in enterprises led by manifestly incompetent individuals.

The above is quoted from Cal Strong! and I heartily agree.

Until heads roll, starting from the top down, there is no way I am donating any money to Cal sports until things change. Christ should never have been hired. knowlton is a joke, and it is not and has not ever been a funny joke in the least way. The rest of the AD staff, what I heard on the interview of Everett at halftime of the Idaho game told me plenty. Everything is looking up, and is unicorns, rainbows, and roses. She needs to get lost yesterday. Everything those of us say here on this board either falls on deaf ears, is ignored entirely, or is most likely not read. In any case they are clueless.

They are incompetent, and/or don't care. Fine. Then you will do without my contribution.

Get rid of these fools. Yesterday.

I will always support the players. No question there. Ever.

But I am done with worthless overpaid bureaucrats telling us what they think we want. They don't F#ng listen to US. Bring back the traditions. Start listening. Ask questions instead of just delegating. Put 50000 folks back in the seats at CMS every game. Good. Make me WANT TO RETURN. And I will. But not until then.

And I will say it again. Fire knowlton yesterday. Before it is too late. It may be already too late. Let him go play ice hockey in CO. The biggest joke is him still being employed by Cal.

Quote:

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(I assume Sebasta that what you are talking about above is new money - otherwise I'd say, yeah, you should get $15M with a little effort because Cal usually does).

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That is correct. $15m ANNUALLY in new additional money for football OPERATING expenses. Levels we've never achieved before for football operating expenses and virtually no one had really achieved before (although SMU may be coming close with what they just announced). These are big daunting numbers. Wealthy donors typically like putting their names on stuff for this kind of money. This will be far tougher sales job.

And to those just making blanket statements that "no one who can write a check like this will blankly support a losing organization" you are kind of right, but you are also (mostly) wrong. Of course no one is going to throw money like this away in a futile exercise. Of course these people are smart investors and stewards of their funds. Of course they see the flaws with Cal business as usual. That's the entire point. Their money has to be coupled with a fully structured plan involving Calimony, the Central Campus subsidy, endowments, cutting sports . . . all of it. It's not one piece in a vacuum. You don't build 90% of an airplane and expect it to fly. You need everything worked out and no one is writing a check without a comprehensive, binding and actionable plan.

The good news is that some version of these conversations have been taking place for awhile with major donors long before the ACC situation crystalized what needed to be done. Now we have a defining inflection that can fortunately bring this to a head (in the words of Mark Twain "nothing so focuses the mind like the prospect of being hanged.")

It's going to be tough but it is doable. I wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't.

Sebastabear said:

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Quote:

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(I assume Sebasta that what you are talking about above is new money - otherwise I'd say, yeah, you should get $15M with a little effort because Cal usually does).

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That is correct. $15m ANNUALLY in new additional money for football OPERATING expenses. Levels we've never achieved before for football operating expenses and virtually no one had really achieved before (although SMU may be coming close with what they just announced). These are big daunting numbers. Wealthy donors typically like putting their names on stuff for this kind of money. This will be far tougher sales job.

And to those just making blanket statements that "no one who can write a check like this will blankly support a losing organization" you are kind of right, but you are also (mostly) wrong. Of course no one is going to throw money like this away in a futile exercise. Of course these people are smart investors and stewards of their funds. Of course they see the flaws with Cal business as usual. That's the entire point. Their money has to be coupled with a fully structured plan involving Calimony, the Central Campus subsidy, endowments, cutting sports . . . all of it. It's not one piece in a vacuum. You don't build 90% of an airplane and expect it to fly. You need everything worked out and no one is writing a check without a comprehensive, binding and actionable plan.

The good news is that some version of these conversations have been taking place for awhile with major donors long before the ACC situation crystalized what needed to be done. Now we have a defining inflection that can fortunately bring this to a head (in the words of Mark Twain "nothing so focuses the mind like the prospect of being hanged.")

It's going to be tough but it is doable. I wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't.

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So, your job, Sebasta, is to find a wealthy potential donor named Cal Berkeley that we can name the football team after. If you do that, I think the complaints about rebranding will stop.

The first step seems like someone has to raise the money to fill the empty basket that is the current AD employment contracts (FB staff, AD, and his minions). I doubt JK is going to raise the money to buy himself out. Neither is the Chancellor.

Major donors despise the current athletic administration and won't donate until it's "restructured" (i.e., JK and his minions are gone). So there goes that low-hanging fruit.

I wouldn't give money for the operating budget if JK (and his minions) are going to administrate those funds.

Seems like a catch-22.

And I still don't believe "Calimony" is ever going to happen.

Thanks, Sebasta, for giving us some hope. But being a life-long Cal fan, I'm just a bit skeptical that anything will change.

Sebastabear said:

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Quote:

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(I assume Sebasta that what you are talking about above is new money - otherwise I'd say, yeah, you should get $15M with a little effort because Cal usually does).

---

That is correct. $15m ANNUALLY in new additional money for football OPERATING expenses. Levels we've never achieved before for football operating expenses and virtually no one had really achieved before (although SMU may be coming close with what they just announced). These are big daunting numbers. Wealthy donors typically like putting their names on stuff for this kind of money. This will be far tougher sales job.

And to those just making blanket statements that "no one who can write a check like this will blankly support a losing organization" you are kind of right, but you are also (mostly) wrong. Of course no one is going to throw money like this away in a futile exercise. Of course these people are smart investors and stewards of their funds. Of course they see the flaws with Cal business as usual. That's the entire point. Their money has to be coupled with a fully structured plan involving Calimony, the Central Campus subsidy, endowments, cutting sports . . . all of it. It's not one piece in a vacuum. You don't build 90% of an airplane and expect it to fly. You need everything worked out and no one is writing a check without a comprehensive, binding and actionable plan.

The good news is that some version of these conversations have been taking place for awhile with major donors long before the ACC situation crystalized what needed to be done. Now we have a defining inflection that can fortunately bring this to a head (in the words of Mark Twain "nothing so focuses the mind like the prospect of being hanged.")

It's going to be tough but it is doable. I wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't.

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Sebasta - maybe this is a question you can't or don't feel comfortable answering, so I understand. But, am I right that there are actually a large enough number of donors who not only don't see Knowlton as a problem, but who actually like him and would not support buying him out and in fact might stand in the way of buying him out. That was sort of the impression I got, so I don't know if Step 1 - fire Knowlton is a feasible start to any plan as most here, including me, would want.

Golden One said:

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Thanks, Sebasta, for giving us some hope. But being a life-long Cal fan, I'm just a bit skeptical that anything will change.

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He is fighting the good fight. At least he is trying and being really smart about it. If he is going to go down, he is going to go down swinging. It is exactly the attitude and intelligence we need more of.

For an easy forty million semolinans the AD and the football coaches are gone, half or more of the team transfers, opening plenty of slots to NIL fill for twenty million more, another twenty million more for one year for new coaches and AD, and we're off to the races, if the east coast has races.

Pretty simple.

It's really this simple.

Do the opposite of what brought Cal to it's current day athletic reality,

Me : Well here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of a names on buildings and being a doormat program, why not be more engaged with your money and demand accountability.
Cal donor : Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.
Me : If every instinct Calcostanza has is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

STEAKKNIVES4LIFE said:

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It's really this simple.

Do the opposite of what brought Cal to it's current day athletic reality,

Me : Well here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of a names on buildings and being a doormat program, why not be more engaged with your money and demand accountability.
Cal donor : Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.
Me : If every instinct Calcostanza has is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

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George doing the opposite when he introduced himself said "I'm George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents."

So Cal should go to donors and say "I'm Cal. My sports program is a total failure and I have no plan to turn it around".

and watch the money roll in.

bluehenbear said:

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Major donors despise the current athletic administration and won't donate until it's "restructured" (i.e., JK and his minions are gone). So there goes that low-hanging fruit.

I wouldn't give money for the operating budget if JK (and his minions) are going to administrate those funds.

Seems like a catch-22.

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Seem more like a chicken and egg situation than a catch-22.

Which comes first -- raising money so that we can fire JK and JW, or firing them so that we can raise the money?

There a lot of good stuff in Sebastabear's post, and Cal Strong neither want to dump on it nor appear to dump on it. So he just brought up two issues his first go round.

But another problematic claim is that that the administration needs to step up more in terms of greater financial commitments. This flows from Sebastabear's (mistaken) view that the administration has under-invested in revenue sports.

Cal Strong was in communication with Chancellor Christ's team in the early days of the conference meltdown -- shortly after Oregon and UW left -- long before the decision was made to go full speed ahead at petitioning the ACC. There were discussions of bringing Cal Strong on as a consultant.

From these meetings, Cal Strong can tell you that there were serious voices in the room about shutting football down entirely -- because it is perceived that the University invests WAAAAAYYYYYY too much in it considering the outcomes it produces.

There are important campus leaders who will not throw another cent at a sunk cost. Demanding more money is only going to hurt us. The only way forward is for Cal football to start making a ton more money on its own -- not asking for more handouts from the administration.

The only way to do this is to stop making stupid hiring decisions and start making really smart ones. There is no other path forward. If we don't win a lot of football games very quickly, Cal football will cease to exist.

Please remember this the next time Cal "needs" to extend a losing coach under threat (real or imagined) of him jumping ship.

For starters - is there any sense whether the new chancellor will be pro-Cal athletics. Even better, a Cal alum? I've heard rumors. Some good. Honestly, having Cal focused chancellor who understands the importance of a successful football program is where the change starts.

CarmelBear said:

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For starters - is there any sense whether the new chancellor will be pro-Cal athletics. Even better, a Cal alum? I've heard rumors. Some good. Honestly, having Cal focused chancellor who understands the importance of a successful football program is where the change starts.

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The Chancellor search is just getting started. You can read about the process and who is on the search committee here: https://chancellor.berkeley.edu/chancellor-search-2023-24

There is an online form at the above site asking for input into the qualities that would make for a good Chancellor. The executive search firm being used is WittKieffer.

Search firm being used are "Leadership experts in healthcare, education, life sciences, and not-for-profit" uhhh maybe somebody that's "For-Profit" lol.