I've never envied Arizona alums until now.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39365442/arizona-ad-dave-heeke-seven-years-wildcats

On a related note, I wonder if UA would be interested in hiring Knowlton.

01Bear said:

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I've never envied Arizona alums until now.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39365442/arizona-ad-dave-heeke-seven-years-wildcats

On a related note, I wonder if UA would be interested in hiring Knowlton.

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He's a top-30 AD. They'd be fools not to!

01Bear said:

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I've never envied Arizona alums until now.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39365442/arizona-ad-dave-heeke-seven-years-wildcats

On a related note, I wonder if UA would be interested in hiring Knowlton.

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Heeke was making about $650,000. Why would Knowlton give up $1.3 million guaranteed to work someplace where he might be held accountable?

Fisch and Lloyd were brilliant hires. Heeke runs laps around Knowlton in prioritizing the right sports and making good bets. When is the McKeever report going to be finished because I'd love for us to double Heeke's salary and give someone like him a shot

TedfordTheGreat said:

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Fisch and Lloyd were brilliant hires. Heeke runs laps around Knowlton in prioritizing the right sports and making good bets. When is the McKeever report going to be finished because I'd love for us to double Heeke's salary and give someone like him a shot

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Heeke is unemployed. Fire Knowlton and offer Heeke the $500,000 he was making when he took the UA job (what the Cal chancellor makes). We are running a huge deficit that is about to more than double and need to start making good financial decisions.

Similarly, UA just hired Brennen as HC for $2 million a year. If we were paying Wilcox that we would have saved almost $30 million over the life of his contract and even if 100% guaranteed his buyout would be only $8 million right now.

Supposedly UA's athletic department finances were recently audited, the results were ugly, and so the AD is out.

The UC regents are meeting this week to discuss a possible audit of Cal's athletic department.

Hmmm.

Arizona has a $240 million hole, Knowlton is a clown but Arizona is a damn circus.

Strykur said:

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Arizona has a $240 million hole, Knowlton is a clown but Arizona is a damn circus.

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The $240 million hole is campus wide. Their total athletics budget is only $100 million while Cal's is over $120 million.

One issue is the UA AD borrowed $50 million in 2020 to get past COVID and is stil paying it back. Knowlton has received over $100 million from the central campus since 2020 and has no plans to ever pay it back.

The world is not upside down, Knowlton is far, far worse. Cal as a whole is just in a better position than Arizona, but I think the days of massive subsidies for the Cal AD will come to an end soon.

Arizona's president knew his athletic department probably wasn't going to repay the "loan" from UA's general fund. Their athletic department finances must be a dumpster fire for the AD to be ousted so abruptly. That $50 million "loan" is either not the reason the AD was canned, or it's just the tip of the iceberg.

An athletic department audit might identify some "interesting" issues at Cal, but that's not a reason to minimize Arizona's mess.

calumnus said:

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01Bear said:

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I've never envied Arizona alums until now.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39365442/arizona-ad-dave-heeke-seven-years-wildcats

On a related note, I wonder if UA would be interested in hiring Knowlton.

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Heeke was making about $650,000. Why would Knowlton give up $1.3 million guaranteed to work someplace where he might be held accountable?

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Tuscon is 500 miles closer to home for JK. Another win for this no-brainer move!

calumnus said:

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Strykur said:

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Arizona has a $240 million hole, Knowlton is a clown but Arizona is a damn circus.

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The world is not upside down, Knowlton is far, far worse. Cal as a whole is just in a better position than Arizona, but I think the days of massive subsidies for the Cal AD will come to an end soon.

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We also run many more sports than Arizona and like you said have much more money, plus a stadium to pay off.

I have been semi-following but near as I can tell a big chunk of the deficit is attributable to 2 factors (both which are not "bad" decisions but are interesting from a higher ed economics perspective)

1) UofA's decisions around undergrad merit and tuition.

There is a reason why UofA is being called UC Tuson. Over the past decade or so UofA decided to vastly increase the amount of undergrad merit aid to high achieving students. A bunch of these were Californians. I am not sure on the cash flow side of why they thought this was sustainable but they did go all in on it. From a ranking and perception standpoint it provided tangible positive results. But it seems that it was not sustainable and they are reversing course next year. They also promised undergrads a 4 year tuition "freeze" (aka what we say it will cost in year one is the same as year 4). This was a problem with inflation running at 6% and even higher for labor intensive industries like higher ed.

2) UofA global.

Undergrad demographics nationwide SUCK. We are going through a great dip of the number of traditionally aged college kids and thus even while selective schools have never been MORE selective the paradox is that lots of other schools are begging for admissions. UofA also faces this. But the demographic Poorly served is "adult learners" that either never got their degree or now need one in the face of "credential Creep" (anecdote - whereas most detectives in Police departments 25 years ago didn't need a 4 year degree now advancement near requires a BA and in some cases an MA...not because they are learning that much but because of credential creep). UofA Global was way of trying to meet that demographic and so UofA acquired Bridgepoint, one of the fairly worst actors in the whole for profit space. It was pretty clear that it wasn't a good acquisition, with lots of legacy costs and poor reputation. There were legacy liabilities that UofA got left holding. But as Western Governors and Southern New Hampshire show there is both demand for this service still and that it is really really hard to get right given our models of higher ed. I don't think it was a DUMB decision to do but I think that there were better targets than Bridgepoint and it almost could have been better to "build from scratch".