stu said:
wifeisafurd said:
So someone, make the argument for investing in Cal men's basketball.
I have two arguments:
1) If you're going to do something then do it right. I'd rather have no men's basketball team than the embarrassments we had under Jones and Fox.
2) Not everything needs to make money. For example, I doubt the undergrad Physics program makes money but the University would be much worse without it.
#2 is an argument that has to stop. The point of the UC system is to provide a college education to the young adults of California. Your argument is like saying I went to the barber shop and paid $20 for a hair cut and I didn't get a haircut plus my money back so I lost $20. Academic programs are what the state, and student tuition pay for, supplemented by donors. Sports is not the core product so it needs to either make money or it needs to provide value to the university commensurate with the amount the university spends.
But true, it doesn't need to necessarily need to make money if it provides some value for the money spent. Here are some issues I see:
The student community doesn't appear to see the value to them in that they won't vote to add a fee to their tuition in support of athletics as some other schools have done.
The donor community doesn't appear to see ENOUGH value in that they don't provide enough donations to cover the loss.
The market doesn't appear to see ENOUGH value in that ticket sales even in the time of success do not cover the cost of success. This has always been an issue with basketball. If you look at what our ticket sales have been at peak, they do not pay for what it would take in added coaches salary, NIL, and other support to be competitive at that level.
So, paying for the program means the chancellor taking money from all of those buckets that those people chose not to give and use his discretion to divert the money from what they did pay for because we agree that the chancellor should have the ability to use discretionary funds for things he thinks benefit the university.
When it comes to athletics in general, the last financial statement we have is fiscal year 2024 which is the last year in the Pac-12. So now we have less money coming in and higher expenses. That year, we lost $67M in operating expenses. That bakes in all the revenue including donations. Is the athletic department worth that? I don't think so. The bulk of that is not providing good PR and is essentially benefitting a handful of students and their families and friends because no one else cares.
Basketball lost $4.6M that year, but let's be honest, it's more than that. $23M in athletic department losses are non-program specific and obviously a portion of that goes to support each sport. But let's say it is $5M. Let's be honest, Cal needs to net spend $10M more to have "if you are going to do something do it right" result.
So WIAF - I really can't argue to invest in basketball as I've been saying for years that it is a money loser and I don't think the value adds up. That being said, I'd argue that basketball brings more value than everything else (other than football) that we are probably spending at least $45M on, so my best argument is that we should cut everything else other than swimming and chuck the investment on football and basketball before we think of restricting basketball's investment. It's sort of like saying I don't want to spend $1,000 for one fancy watch that works because I don't need to know the time that badly, but I'd rather do that then spend $5,000 on 20 cheap ass watches that don't work.
