I see at least three:

Balancing revenue vs. non-revenue sportsIMHO there is no chance of any non-revenue sports being cut under a new AD, at least in the first two or three years. As I've noted previously, many of the major donors, including the named supporters of the SAHPC, are people whose ties are as great or greater to non-revenue sports as to football and hoops. I can't imagine Barbour would have been removed without their agreement, and I assume one of the preconditions was that a new AD would maintain the current list of sports, at least for a period. That probably rules out eliminating or reducing the budgets for other sports in order to shift more money to the major sports, especially since Title IX would require most cuts to be in men's sports. I believe that also rules out getting a new AD from anywhere in the SEC, where everything other than football is an afterthought.

Academics co-existing with athleticsThe new AD will need to try to figure out a way to get the faculty to be more supportive of athletes, not by being soft on them in terms of grades, but by being accommodating to athletic schedules, for example, as long as the players get the work done, and by working with whatever tutoring support the athletic department provides. I believe the AD will have helpful support from Dirks in approaching faculty. Having now looked at the finances, I'm sure Dirks has realized that any attempt by Cal to go Ivy League/University of Chicago left the dock when the decision to upgrade the stadium was made. Therefore, we have to figure out how to help players be successful in the classroom and on the field.

Balancing tradition with revenueWe've all bemoaned the decline in the game-day experience for football and basketball. A new AD will need to fix that. I'm guessing that Dirks, given his background having worked there, is aware of the problems they're now having in this regard at Michigan, and wants to stop the similar slide that may be occurring at Cal. Unfortunately, fixing it is a bit circumscribed by the TV contract, which gives the school very little control over game times. My approach would be to be upfront, and to raise ticket prices and/or contribution limits to make up for the revenue that would be lost by eliminating game day promotions. Facility naming can continue, because that doesn't necessarily hurt the game-day experience.

These are not easy problems to fix, in light of the stadium debt. I would guess the best candidate is one from another Pac-12 school, or maybe another school that combines academics with Division I sports (tOSU, Michigan, North Carolina?).

Jeff82;842328742 said:

---

I see at least three:

I believe that also rules out getting a new AD from anywhere in the SEC, where everything other than football is an afterthought.

---

The SEC just won National Championships in:
College World Series
Women's College World Series
Men's Golf
Women's Swimming
Women's T&F
Women's Gym

In other words, they excel in Olympic sports. And just about every olympic sport event can outdraw it's West Coast (certainly California) counterpart in fans.

socaliganbear;842328763 said:

---

The SEC just won National Championships in:
College World Series
Women's College World Series
Men's Golf
Women's Swimming
Women's T&F
Women's Gym

In other words, they excel in Olympic sports. And just about every olympic sport even can outdraw it's West Coast (certainly California) counterpart in fans.

---

Yep, it's called spending the football surplus on non rev sports. Some sec schools have $40-50 million surpluses. Now can a school like Cal compete? Not monetarily. And we shouldn't. However, since a lot of these sports have no pro leagues, the value of a degree is more important.

Next AD should push more non rev sports to FULLY endow. Football money will dry up when the cable bubble bursts. L

ColoradoBear1;842328771 said:

---

Yep, it's called spending the football surplus on non rev sports. Some sec schools have $40-50 million surpluses. Now can a school like Cal compete? Not monetarily. And we shouldn't. However, since a lot of these sports have no pro leagues, the value of a degree is more important.

Next AD should push more non rev sports to FULLY endow. Football money will dry up when the cable bubble bursts. L

---

Competent (not baseball mediocre) coaching, our degree, and CA recruiting base should be enough to be decent in every single olympic sport. That we are not (in some cases) is because we tolerate it.

ColoradoBear1;842328771 said:

---

Yep, it's called spending the football surplus on non rev sports. Some sec schools have $40-50 million surpluses. Now can a school like Cal compete? Not monetarily. And we shouldn't. However, since a lot of these sports have no pro leagues, the value of a degree is more important.

Next AD should push more non rev sports to FULLY endow. Football money will dry up when the cable bubble bursts. L

---

Alabama only has 17 intercollegiate sports-10 for women, seven for men. The only solo-men sports are football, baseball, basketball, tennis and golf. There are co-ed swimming and diving and track and field teams. Solo women's sports are volleyball, soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, softball, crew and gymnastics.

Without a count, I would guess Alabama is essentially running most of its women's sports primarily for title IX compliance vis-a-vis football.

By contrast, Cal is running 26 sports, counting track and cross-country as a combined program. I agree the AD should be pushing non-revenue sports to fully endow, as men's golf and rugby do. But my point remains that there's no chance the existing revenue pie will be shifted to football and away from non-revenues. I don't think the Alabama AD could possibly be successful at Cal, with our current finances.

I think they picked the perfect guy for 'interim'.
He's fully aware of all the issues based on his Cal Foundation work and experience.

SonOfCalVa;842328788 said:

---

I think they picked the perfect guy for 'interim'.
He's fully aware of all the issues based on his Cal Foundation work and experience.

---

Considering its job includes cold-calling alumni looking for money, I suspect the Foundation is one place where one gets exposed to all the conflicting stakeholder views among the alumni.

Jeff82;842328784 said:

---

Alabama only has 17 intercollegiate sports-10 for women, seven for men. The only solo-men sports are football, baseball, basketball, tennis and golf. There are co-ed swimming and diving and track and field teams. Solo women's sports are volleyball, soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, softball, crew and gymnastics.

By contrast, Cal is running 26 sports, counting track and cross-country as a combined program. I agree the AD should be pushing non-revenue sports to fully endow, as men's golf and rugby do. But my point remains that there's no chance the existing revenue pie will be shifted to football and away from non-revenues. I don't think the Alabama AD could possibly be successful at Cal, with our current finances.

---

It's amazing how few sports the SEC schools actually offer. I see vandy has 15, Florida has 18, Georgia 19, FSU (OK, that's ACC) has 19, Auburn 17, LSU 18, A&M 16. Some even offer equestrian! I see UNC has 26, Texas 17, Duke 22, UCLA 23, UW 20, Virginia 23, Michigan 27, USC 20...

The key financial concept the new AD needs to understand is that breaking even is not good enough anymore at least for the next 20 years. We need to be building an endowment. We should get over $10 million/yr more (than this year) from the CFB playoff and P12 network. Until we have a better handle on the ESP seats, that cannot go into non-rev sports or non-rev facilities. Maybe boost football coaching $$, athletic training and academic support.

ColoradoBear1;842328795 said:

---

It's amazing how few sports the SEC schools actually offer. I see vandy has 15, Florida has 18, Georgia 19, FSU (OK, that's ACC) has 19, Auburn 17, LSU 18, A&M 16. Some even offer equestrian! I see UNC has 26, Texas 17, Duke 22, UCLA 23, UW 20, Virginia 23, Michigan 27, USC 20...

The key financial concept the new AD needs to understand is that breaking even is not good enough anymore at least for the next 20 years. We need to be building an endowment. We should get over $10 million/yr more (than this year) from the CFB playoff and P12 network. Until we have a better handle on the ESP seats, that cannot go into non-rev sports or non-rev facilities. Maybe boost football coaching $$, athletic training and academic support.

---

At one point several years ago, I read something that said Cal was providing the second-largest number of sports of any public Division I school, after tOSU. That has a cost, since we're meeting Title IX under the provision where we're providing the opportunities women are requesting. That means any cuts are probably going to come almost exclusively from men's sports. Because of Title IX, the women can't really be forced to endow themselves. It's up to the men to do it, as golf and rugby have. I would probably try to endow swimming and diving next, building on the Missy Franklin phenomenon and our Olympic successes.

You missed the most obvious challenge: fix the football program.

The Duke!;842328816 said:

---

You missed the most obvious challenge: fix the football program.

---

ha, yeah. fix the football program and you solve half of the problems. you wont have to nickel and dime on 30 second advertisements during timeouts if you have sufficient ESP sales.

Jeff82;842328804 said:

---

At one point several years ago, I read something that said Cal was providing the second-largest number of sports of any public Division I school, after tOSU. That has a cost, since we're meeting Title IX under the provision where we're providing the opportunities women are requesting. That means any cuts are probably going to come almost exclusively from men's sports. Because of Title IX, the women can't really be forced to endow themselves. It's up to the men to do it, as golf and rugby have. I would probably try to endow swimming and diving next, building on the Missy Franklin phenomenon and our Olympic successes.

---

All very true. I'm not sure on the status of the swimming endowment - I think a lot of these sport are partially endowed, but they don't cover full costs (especially administrative). Back to swimming - they very well could have raised a ton of money since FYY2010, but the department's report here says:

W Swim and Diving: $900k loss (610k revenue)
M Swim and Diving: $740k loss (550k revenue)
W Water Polo: $520k loss (280k revenue)
M Water Polo: $490k loss (350k revenue)

The revenue numbers are actually really good for non-rev sports, so I'm assuming that's coming from endowments and year to year donations. But unless aquatics have increased the size of their endowment by $40 million or so, they are not fully endowed. (I apologize for singling out aquatics, and I know there is no way they ever get cut, and if supporters have raised $40 million in the past 4 years, I say incredible work).

Again, if that money is there, I am off base on aquatics, but this next point could also apply to facilities for other sports losing money - Aquatics is getting a new facility, and on prime university land too. I think it's $15million-$20 million. All funded by donations, yes. Nice right? But this will only increase the cost of aquatics (gotta maintain the place, right?) without doing anything to close that gap. So by accepting a donation, we are committing ourselves to lose a lot of money down the road, unless further donations are made to cover the yearly shortfall. And yes I am questioning wether accepting $15-20 million in donations is prudent if it ensures we will have a yearly deficit of $2-2.5 million per year for many many years.

Maybe saying no new facilities until fully endowed is too hard of a line, but then go with requiring donations above and beyond the facility cost to significantly increase the endowment. And if aquatics does indeed now have a $60+ million endowment, we should look at how that happened and how it can be replicated.

So to the question of how do you get all sports endowed? I would think a necessary policy would be that non-endowed sports just cannot have really nice things. That means on the facilities end, no overseas bonding trips, reduced travel, etc, etc. Works for womens sports too. Why is WBB taking trips to china when they run a humongous deficit? Why does women's lax play a series of games on the east coast, and a series of games in michigan when they have no revenue? Why does field hockey have separate trips to North Carolina, Boston and Chicago?

And yes it will be hard to fully fund womens sports - so the next question is whether a men's sport is at risk until they fund not just their own but offesting women's scholarships? Is that even fair? Maybe not, but it may be fiscally necessary. A men's sport that is only partially endowed, but whose existence then necessitates 2x scholarship is going to be cheaper to eliminate in the long run. From what I understand, rugby money is funding a good bit of the cost of womens lax and gym. Am I wrong? Rugby did this to get its varsity status back when it was stated it that Cal would violate Title IX by bringing only mens sports back.

And yes getting football revenue up will help, but with the siege big time college sports is under, it is a very fair question to ask whether football revenue - from players risking concussions and other lifelong injuries - be used to fund other sports? And it's especially important for Cal to look whether CMS getting paid off over 40 years is going to happen if football's popularity declines due to injury concerns. 40 years is a long time.....

ColoradoBear1;842328829 said:

---

All very true. I'm not sure on the status of the swimming endowment - I think a lot of these sport are partially endowed, but they don't cover full costs (especially administrative). Back to swimming - they very well could have raised a ton of money since FYY2010, but the department's report here says:

W Swim and Diving: $900k loss (610k revenue)
M Swim and Diving: $740k loss (550k revenue)
W Water Polo: $520k loss (280k revenue)
M Water Polo: $490k loss (350k revenue)

The revenue numbers are actually really good for non-rev sports, so I'm assuming that's coming from endowments and year to year donations. But unless aquatics have increased the size of their endowment by $40 million or so, they are not fully endowed. (I apologize for singling out aquatics, and I know there is no way they ever get cut, and if supporters have raised $40 million in the past 4 years, I say incredible work).

Again, if that money is there, I am off base on aquatics, but this next point could also apply to facilities for other sports losing money - Aquatics is getting a new facility, and on prime university land too. I think it's $15million-$20 million. All funded by donations, yes. Nice right? But this will only increase the cost of aquatics (gotta maintain the place, right?) without doing anything to close that gap. So by accepting a donation, we are committing ourselves to lose a lot of money down the road, unless further donations are made to cover the yearly shortfall. And yes I am questioning wether accepting $15-20 million in donations is prudent if it ensures we will have a yearly deficit of $2-2.5 million per year for many many years.

Maybe saying no new facilities until fully endowed is too hard of a line, but then go with requiring donations above and beyond the facility cost to significantly increase the endowment. And if aquatics does indeed now have a $60+ million endowment, we should look at how that happened and how it can be replicated.

So to the question of how do you get all sports endowed? I would think a necessary policy would be that non-endowed sports just cannot have really nice things. That means on the facilities end, no overseas bonding trips, reduced travel, etc, etc. Works for womens sports too. Why is WBB taking trips to china when they run a humongous deficit? Why does women's lax play a series of games on the east coast, and a series of games in michigan when they have no revenue? Why does field hockey have separate trips to North Carolina, Boston and Chicago?

And yes it will be hard to fully fund womens sports - so the next question is whether a men's sport is at risk until they fund not just their own but offesting women's scholarships? Is that even fair? Maybe not, but it may be fiscally necessary. A men's sport that is only partially endowed, but whose existence then necessitates 2x scholarship is going to be cheaper to eliminate in the long run. From what I understand, rugby money is funding a good bit of the cost of womens lax and gym. Am I wrong? Rugby did this to get its varsity status back when it was stated it that Cal would violate Title IX by bringing only mens sports back.

And yes getting football revenue up will help, but with the siege big time college sports is under, it is a very fair question to ask whether football revenue - from players risking concussions and other lifelong injuries - be used to fund other sports? And it's especially important for Cal to look whether CMS getting paid off over 40 years is going to happen if football's popularity declines due to injury concerns. 40 years is a long time.....

---

Spot on. I don't think opportunities for women translates to more sports or free rides-that is just patronizing. They have to have some basis in economic reality. A womens beach volleyball team makes more sense than a womens lacrosse team which is an east coast centered game. Plus they might actually draw fans.

Your post touched on one of the biggest differences between us and the Furds. As I understand it from people who have knowledge of the Stanford athletic program, John Arrillaga has not only paid for a ton of their facilities, he also regularly writes large checks to underwrite operating costs of the athletic program. My understanding is that's how they can continue to operate their program, even with an undersized football stadium that is only partly full a lot of the time, even under the current winning regime.

By contrast, a lot of Cal's major donations have been expressly for facilities, not for operating costs. As you observed, the new facilities can end up raising operating costs, not to mention the fact that the payments on borrowed money used to build the facilities, in absence of the planned-for ESP revenue, are a potential drain on the operating budget.

gobears725;842328822 said:

---

ha, yeah. fix the football program and you solve half of the problems. you wont have to nickel and dime on 30 second advertisements during timeouts if you have sufficient ESP sales.

---

You and the Duke are implicitly assuming that we can just swap out a new set of coaches for Dykes and his staff, leave everything else the same, resume winning football, and solve all of our problems. I'm not sure that is true, given the three challenges I listed. In fact, my suspicion is that the AD's job won't be that easy to fill, given the constraints the new person will be facing.

We need to eliminate sports. I won't say which because I don't feel like fighting today!

Jeff82;842328902 said:

---

Your post touched on one of the biggest differences between us and the Furds. As I understand it from people who have knowledge of the Stanford athletic program, John Arrillaga has not only paid for a ton of their facilities, he also regularly writes large checks to underwrite operating costs of the athletic program. My understanding is that's how they can continue to operate their program, even with an undersized football stadium that is only partly full a lot of the time, even under the current winning regime.

By contrast, a lot of Cal's major donations have been expressly for facilities, not for operating costs. As you observed, the new facilities can end up raising operating costs, not to mention the fact that the payments on borrowed money used to build the facilities, in absence of the planned-for ESP revenue, are a potential drain on the operating budget.

---

Stanford athletics has a $500 million endowment generating 5.5% returns, plus gets the revenue from the golf course and part of the shopping center. Here is a WSJ article on Stanford athletics: LINK

barabbas;842328906 said:

---

We need to eliminate sports. I won't say which because I don't feel like fighting today!

---

Maybe. However, I'd rather keep the teams and see non-revenue sports reduce their individual deficits.
1. Greatly reduce the number of non-Californians on scholarship (reduces scholarship and recruiting expenses).
2. Limit the amount of team travel.
3. Tie coaches' total compensation to teams' net.
4. If we do have a "sports management" grad program, I'd like to see the the students be assigned teams to "manage"--including marketing and promotion, cost reduction, etc.
5. A team like women's swimming, with Missy Franklin, should be heavily promoted.

calumnus;842328910 said:

---

Stanford athletics has a $500 million endowment generating 5.5% returns, plus gets the revenue from the golf course and part of the shopping center. Here is a WSJ article on Stanford athletics: LINK

---

It's a downward spiral problem. Lack of donor support for athletic operations requires other source of revenue (TV, promotions) which deteriorates the game-day experience, which drives away hard-core fans who should be the primary donor base. The truth is, Cal, up until the hiring of Tedford, basically did everything athletically on the cheap. I'm not sure the fan base is willing to face up to the sports arms race, which is one of the reasons I think finding a new AD won't be that easy.

Jeff82;842328742 said:

---

I see at least three:




"My approach would be to be upfront, and to raise ticket prices and/or contribution limits to make up for the revenue that would be lost by eliminating game day promotions."

You can't raise ticket prices high enough to offset television revenue.

AirOski;842328923 said:

---

Jeff82;842328742 said:

---

I see at least three:




"My approach would be to be upfront, and to raise ticket prices and/or contribution limits to make up for the revenue that would be lost by eliminating game day promotions."

You can't raise ticket prices high enough to offset television revenue.

---

To the extent that complainers about the game-day experience are upset that most games don't start at 12:30 p.m., that's not fixable under the TV contract. All you can do is make the experience better once we get in the stadium, by eliminating the commercials and promotions during timeouts in favor of more band, cheers, etc.

Hiring a new AD will be easy; hiring a 'better' AD that is the hard part.

Jeff82;842328920 said:

---

It's a downward spiral problem. Lack of donor support for athletic operations requires other source of revenue (TV, promotions) which deteriorates the game-day experience, which drives away hard-core fans who should be the primary donor base. The truth is, Cal, up until the hiring of Tedford, basically did everything athletically on the cheap. I'm not sure the fan base is willing to face up to the sports arms race, which is one of the reasons I think finding a new AD won't be that easy.

---