Big C_Cal;842864005 said:
When you say "the crap way they handled the stadium", the implication is that, even with what they knew ten years ago, they should've done it differently. To what extent were we the victims of bad luck (double whammy of economic + football downturn) and to what extent was it poor decision-making?
With projects like this, I firmly believe in "thinking big". Okay, so it looks like we thought too big. If the economy doesn't go back into the dumper and we start to challenge for conference championships fairly soon, will that go a long ways towards turning the situation around?
Big C - you appear to me to be taking he position that we HAD to spend $450M on a stadium so the only question is whether the way we did it was okay. We didn't have to do that. The university could not afford this expenditure. It certainly can't afford to make $450M decisions without asking if there are cheaper alternatives.
The info Wags posted has good detail but generally:
1. They originally said the project would be fully funded by donations. That was the big argument repeated over and over. When the anti-football faculty argued against the project, the counter over and over was "why do they care? It isn't costing the university a dime." That was either 1) a lie; 2. bullshyte; 3. Just plain incompetently wrong; or 4 all of the above. I supported the stadium on the basis of it not costing the academic side a dime because they said they had he donations. Not that they could get them. They had them. To be clear, I might have supported the university providing some funding. I might have supported the new stadium even it it was the most expensive option as I think it is worth spending SOME more than other options. But because this was supposed to be paid by private sources, no other options were seriously analyzed. They should have been.
2. When they couldn't make claim number 1 anymore, they claimed that it would be paid back through football revenue. How was that supposed to work? Cal's athletic department has never made anything close to the money to pay for the stadium. Frankly, they've rarely made any money at all. Football makes money. And if you were planning to cut every other sport but men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball, the athletic department might have been able to pay a substantial amount toward the debt, but almost assuredly not all of it. That was bullshyte on its face and they knew it.
3. Cal football sucking? Wow, that's never happened before. No way it is reasonable to expect that their plan wouldn't be totally dependent on Cal remaining a top 20 program.
4. Recessions happen.
5. They then went with the ESP boondoggle. ESP is just PSL, but worse. They had all the same issues that Oakland had with PSL's. Treating pledges as commitments and vastly overestimating the amount of actual dollars that would come in. Then exaggerating those numbers. But ESP's were worse than PSL's because Cal fan's were ALREADY paying for ESP's in the form of a donor program that ALREADY gave seating priority based in large part on the amount of donations you gave. So now, they renamed the program ESP and acted like the money that alums paid for ESP's was in no way being diverted from their previous Bear Backer donations. It was all new money instead of a significant portion being existing money recategorized.
6. I'm not going to attempt to explain the financing that I don't fully understand myself, but what I do understand was that they by their own admission came up with "creative" financing that blew up in their faces rather than using standard methods.
The academic side of the house absolutely has a right to be pissed off (just like they would have a right to be pissed off if any other disciplined promised a revenue neutral project and it turned out to cost a billion dollars). Here's the thing. I don't know how capital improvements are treated for other disciplines. However, I know this. Business schools and engineering schools go out and raise money and get lavish new buildings. Anthropology, Art, Sociology, etc. can't raise the money and they stay in their dilapidated buildings or they move into the buildings that the better funded disciplines vacate for their lovely new digs. However they are funded, I think the stadium should be funded in similar fashion. Now if the school wants to build a new science lab or a new stadium, that project should be brought to the school community with a price tag and it should be decided whether that price tag is worth it. Personally, I think general funds should have been allocated to at least some of the stadium (or other alternative). But that wasn't the deal. The deal was that athletics would pay for it. Whether I think that should have been the deal or not, that was the deal. So from a faculty member's perspective, this is an up to $1B reneg. And from the perspective of those that fought the project, it is a $1B reneg that they said all along would happen. I believe the school should have paid the cost of a reasonable retrofit or for a reasonable, earthquake safe alternative. But that wasn't the deal. I think at this point, the campus has to bail out the athletic department, but I don't blame anyone for being pissed.
Imagine my wife comes to me and says "the 1995 Hyundai gave up the ghost. We need a new car. I have my eye on this fully loaded $80K Porsche" I say "geez. we can't afford ANY car right now. I understand you need transportation, but we are going to have to look at how much it would cost to take the bus, or whether we can get a used car, or maybe a cheaper new car, or even a Porsche that isn't fully loaded". And she says "you don't need to do ANY of that analysis. I've researched and there is this thing called selling Amway products. I just work 5 hours a week and it will pay for the whole Porsche. No money from you at all!" "Wow that is great!" Two years later and it's "I'm working 40 hours a week and it isn't paying for half the car. You know, occasionally you drive it too. And even when I drive it, a lot of the time I'm running errands that benefit you or driving the kids. You really should have bought me a car in the first place! I'm using the kids' college fund to pay off the car and I'm quitting." "Well, yes, as I said back then. You need transportation and I was willing to provide it. But you stopped me from finding a reasonable alternative because you wanted the Porsche. What you are doing isn't sustainable, so we will pay it off."
That is basically the athletic department's position.
