Cal is supporting 30 teams in their athletic dept and running up big debt while a task force set up to address the issues kicks the can down the road. Maybe some tough decisions for the new chancellor.

Cal article

I like that the task force may not make recommendations. The easy outs are the non-revenue sports, but, let's face it...football racks up the bills worse than any of these ones who would likely be cut. Good luck with that one. And that's why I like them punting on this.

You look at the crew, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, golf, and water polo...those look easy to ax. They offer them for a reason, and probably because it brings in a different donor than what football and basketball bring in. Track and field (in or outdoor) and cross country are just lazy cuts...scholarship costs are about the only cost savings. Really only the pool sports are the ones with high costs due to facility items; Cal isn't going to just abandon its pools and not have any on-site.

Cal is precisely the kind of school where the trial for college football's life should happen, imo. Football should be standing trial...it simply costs too much to sustain it, and hardly anywhere does it truly prop up the rest of an athletic department. In the game of amateur athletics. Conducted by institutions, not businesses. So, it shouldn't be making money anyway.

this will be a great time for the economically and financially challenged students of Berkeley to step forward and demand that football be scaled back because of the massive cost related to football and possibly even have it drop down to D1-AA

all the while ignorant of the fact that it is football that pays for itself and that pays the freight for most of the other 29 sports as well

then when they destroy the football program and wake up to the fact that without football and football revenues they are in even worse financial shape they can throw their hands up and march into the chancellors office and start urinating and defecating all over the place to show their displeasure with the results of the decisions they demanded be made

My idea is that the P5 have been shooting themselves in the foot with all these rules changes, and split of divisions. Schools that are not blessed by the P5 California schools wind up dropping football, or are scaled down. Same issues are going on at Michigan. Continuing down this path of division could kill football even at the P5 level.

Cal is in trouble because they overspend on the stadium rebuild. Earthquake retrofit was required, but most of the other upgrades added little except $200M in debt.

In general all P5 schools should be in the black. A Nebraska rule of no institutional transfers should be in place. Tennessee is an example of a school withe even more income than Cal (about 25% more) and runs the same level of annual debt, simply because they don't have any oversight. You cannot look anyone in the eye and tell them that the Volunteers wont be able to compete in the SEC on a $125M budget instead of a $135M budget. It's BS, they can. They simply are allowed to transfer $10M from the institution, so they grew the budget to get that money.

Football pays the bills at Cal. That $37M they get in P12 revenue is because of Football. Cal's problem is spending. And it's every sport, every coach.

Spending is the problem everywhere. All schools throw up their hands and say it's an arms race. Then take $10M of monies intended for Chemistry, Math, and other classes and redirect at Sports. Why? Because they are allowe dto get away with it. If every state had a University of Nebraska clause on no involuntary fees and no transfers, then you'd see 80 D-I schools cutting $10M from the budget. Coach salaries would drop from $3.5M average to $2M, and at G5 from $1M to $600K. This would be for everyone, the salaries would start to come in line. You'd see an increase in bus use, and fewer charter flights (may anyway). You'd see the number of paid staff reduced 10%. You might even see the number of FB scholarships cut by 10 to 75.

Schools and the NCAA would adapt to the environment quickly. Right now they throw extra money at coaches, staff, and extras, because they can, because most states are scared stiff to stop the transfers of education dollars or block the hidden rise in tuition to cover it.

Barber was an incompetent AD for Cal, who did not worry about the debt he was wracking up for his successor. This can happen with a lack of oversight. But it's not like there were not press reports and alarm bells going off at the time. It was known they were digging a hole. But Cal is wealthy enough that they can probably dig their way out. Many schools in G5 are commuter types and can only use public tax money, since their donor base is small. Cal will get through this, but it will be an ugly decade until it looks better.

(06-01-2017 01:24 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  I like that the task force may not make recommendations. The easy outs are the non-revenue sports, but, let's face it...football racks up the bills worse than any of these ones who would likely be cut. Good luck with that one. And that's why I like them punting on this.

You look at the crew, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, golf, and water polo...those look easy to ax. They offer them for a reason, and probably because it brings in a different donor than what football and basketball bring in. Track and field (in or outdoor) and cross country are just lazy cuts...scholarship costs are about the only cost savings. Really only the pool sports are the ones with high costs due to facility items; Cal isn't going to just abandon its pools and not have any on-site.

Cal is precisely the kind of school where the trial for college football's life should happen, imo. Football should be standing trial...it simply costs too much to sustain it, and hardly anywhere does it truly prop up the rest of an athletic department. In the game of amateur athletics. Conducted by institutions, not businesses. So, it shouldn't be making money anyway.

Football is not inherently unaffordable. Athletics in general aren't unaffordable. Most of the members of FBS (P5 and G5 BOTH) could run athletics in the black or with a rounding error of institutional support. If that was important to them.

A P5 could hire a head coach in football for $750,000 if keeping costs down mattered. Now they might only keep him a year and they might not like the pool of candidates as well as the pool when offering $3 million but there are already guys taking pay cuts to become head coaches, if you think a school could be a launch pad, you forego dollars today for lots and lots more tomorrow.

one can look at the Cal financials right here

http://www.calbears.com/documents/2017/1...df?id=8467

so even with football carrying $10.5 million of the debt service they still have an $9 million dollar net in revenues

if you transferred 100%% of the not sport specific athletics debt service to football they would still have a $1 million net in revenues

this as opposed to mens BB negative $368K, womens BB negative $2.855 million, other mens negative $3.552 million, other womens negaitive $11.612 million and non program specific negative $12.285 million and of course that non program specific would move to negative $4.353 if you had moved the debt service to football

so again football is paying the freight and football is responsible for over half the total athletics revenue

(06-01-2017 02:47 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Football is not inherently unaffordable. Athletics in general aren't unaffordable. Most of the members of FBS (P5 and G5 BOTH) could run athletics in the black or with a rounding error of institutional support. If that was important to them.

A P5 could hire a head coach in football for $750,000 if keeping costs down mattered. Now they might only keep him a year and they might not like the pool of candidates as well as the pool when offering $3 million but there are already guys taking pay cuts to become head coaches, if you think a school could be a launch pad, you forego dollars today for lots and lots more tomorrow.

Yes, it isn't inherently unaffordable. And, athletics can definitely sustain themselves. Purdue comes to mind as one of the frugal athletic departments around D1. It runs football at a fraction of its peers in the Big Ten, but, you can spot the difference.

I don't disagree with the institutional concern issue. In Cal, it's not Berkeley, it's with their state handlers. It's a different world out there, but this is one of those issues I hope the rest of the country watches where it is an issue. California is doing what everybody else should be doing with their institutions and their athletic departments. And, even if for nothing else, it's good that this matter is being put under the microscope. At Cal, all of athletics will be looked at; operations getting the full audit. It's possible the conference gets some flack for this, or how the school allowed the conference to negotiate its current deal; pay-dirt was projected/promised, but it was way overstated.

Quote:all the while ignorant of the fact that it is football that pays for itself and that pays the freight for most of the other 29 sports as well

People want it to, oh so badly. It doesn't, really. I know what it can do; what it has the potential of doing (this article explores beer sales). It doesn't in most places. And how.

And Cal exemplifies this. The stadium is built for football. That's a football-driven expense, and until networks can pay multiple times what schools already make now, how in the ever-loving flip can anyone say "football pays for itself?" At Cal, or any place that has to handle stadium issues, it's the other sports who have to bear the cross of football and the convoluted schemes schools pull to transfer the costs across all of operations. It's a shell-game.

Saying "hey, look at all this money football's bringing in, supporting all of our athletics" is disingenuous. Saying $37 million pays the others' bills is simply false, because football's bills alone aren't covered by that sum. And, clearly, when there are deficits, schools circle their wagons on the other sports for football. No, the failure is football. The other sports and Title IX just become the scapegoats.

(06-01-2017 03:59 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(06-01-2017 02:47 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Football is not inherently unaffordable. Athletics in general aren't unaffordable. Most of the members of FBS (P5 and G5 BOTH) could run athletics in the black or with a rounding error of institutional support. If that was important to them.

A P5 could hire a head coach in football for $750,000 if keeping costs down mattered. Now they might only keep him a year and they might not like the pool of candidates as well as the pool when offering $3 million but there are already guys taking pay cuts to become head coaches, if you think a school could be a launch pad, you forego dollars today for lots and lots more tomorrow.

Yes, it isn't inherently unaffordable. And, athletics can definitely sustain themselves. Purdue comes to mind as one of the frugal athletic departments around D1. It runs football at a fraction of its peers in the Big Ten, but, you can spot the difference.

I don't disagree with the institutional concern issue. In Cal, it's not Berkeley, it's with their state handlers. It's a different world out there, but this is one of those issues I hope the rest of the country watches where it is an issue. California is doing what everybody else should be doing with their institutions and their athletic departments. And, even if for nothing else, it's good that this matter is being put under the microscope. At Cal, all of athletics will be looked at; operations getting the full audit. It's possible the conference gets some flack for this, or how the school allowed the conference to negotiate its current deal; pay-dirt was projected/promised, but it was way overstated.

Quote:all the while ignorant of the fact that it is football that pays for itself and that pays the freight for most of the other 29 sports as well

People want it to, oh so badly. It doesn't, really. I know what it can do; what it has the potential of doing (this article explores beer sales). It doesn't in most places. And how.

And Cal exemplifies this. The stadium is built for football. That's a football-driven expense, and until networks can pay multiple times what schools already make now, how in the ever-loving flip can anyone say "football pays for itself?" At Cal, or any place that has to handle stadium issues, it's the other sports who have to bear the cross of football and the convoluted schemes schools pull to transfer the costs across all of operations. It's a shell-game.

Saying "hey, look at all this money football's bringing in, supporting all of our athletics" is disingenuous. Saying $37 million pays the others' bills is simply false, because football's bills alone aren't covered by that sum. And, clearly, when there are deficits, schools circle their wagons on the other sports for football. No, the failure is football. The other sports and Title IX just become the scapegoats.

I just showed the numbers including the debt service even if you put $18 million of debt service on football it would still be revenue positive

there is pretty much no way that the other sports outside of mens BB are ever going to be revenue positive

that is when people like you invent phantom expenses that are never proven and attached to football to try and say football cost way more than the Cal financials say it cost......or that it would cost more than even including the debt service that is non sport specific

My only comment for Todd is that close to 40% of "no specific team" expenses are Football. If you distribute the non specific to each sport according the the ratio of other expenses (FB it's actually greater - Golf and Tennis players don't need a weight training facility and staff for example; and film rooms seating 40+ only apply to football). This is why G5 FBS schools have $8-10M larger budgets than FCS, yet FB is said to cost only $4-5M more than FCS. We have to factor in non specific costs to all teams.

That said I completely agree with you on P5 schools and football. It drives everything. Cal basketball should be a revenue provider and not break even. That is a problem, but not Cal football's problem. Cal basically built up too much unnecessary debt. The stadium PSL fiasco put them in a bad way. But I think they can muddle through. The big thing is nobody wants to cut salaries 10% across the board for coaches and high paid staff. But that would make the biggest impact. Instead they will beg donors to shell out a bit more.

(06-02-2017 02:30 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  My only comment for Todd is that close to 40% of "no specific team" expenses are Football. If you distribute the non specific to each sport according the the ratio of other expenses (FB it's actually greater - Golf and Tennis players don't need a weight training facility and staff for example; and film rooms seating 40+ only apply to football).

Yeah, this is the stuff where my doubts center. It's the cost-sharing and burden-shifting around non-specific centers and the greater institution where the real costs are obscured. Assuming this extra 40% from the given chart, that's close to $5 million extra football isn't directly charged before the additional debt service line. Cal football can still run in the black just assuming all of the debt service for the Memorial upgrades, but it's getting a lot of help in other places, too.

But, all of the sports are. And charts like this fail to really clarify the real cost of anything because of that shared structure. I'd love to see some roll-downs on some of these lines: transfers to the institution, games expenses versus overhead, and those salary commitments. And, really, what gives with the Simpson Center?

The number is what it is, but it's flimsy. Perhaps flimsy enough that the task force just decided to skip making any recommendations because football benefits better than any other program under this share structure.

I agree about hoops. That's a dog for it not to run in the black. Looks like some salary commitments are real anchors dragging the thing down while contributions are shamefully low.

on the flip side in the Cal finances they place the Nike and the IMG sponsorship money under non program specific and even state that it used to be 80% football and 20% mens BB

no one with any common sense would think those deals would be even $1 million if Cal did not have football

also in the case of Cal they dramatically over spent on the stajium renovations because they had a bunch of vocal losers in trees trying to prevent any work from being done to the stajium especially doing the much more cost effective thing like Stanford did and tearing that old pile of trash down and building new for probably half the cost

those tree squatters did not care about the trees, the history of the stajium, construction noise or anything else other than the feigned attempt to make it too expensive renovate the existing facility in the hopes Cal would drop football and instead of Cal doing the expedient and intelligent thing and pepper spraying them and tazing them until they fell out of those trees onto their empty head Cal "taught them a lesson" by spending 2X+ what it would have cost to have a shiny new stajium that met all the new earth quake and disability codes for a much lower cost

you cannot place the direct financial consequences of stupid decisions and tree squatting morons on the football program

the football program would have been better off with a new facility for a much lower cost, but it was out of their control and in the control of idiots

so when you look at Cal specifically some of the direct cost of that stajium project should be placed outside of the football program and onto the general students and onto athletics in general

because as I have already shown as soon as football was gone you would see a massive amount of other Cal athletics programs folding as well and a large portion of the cost of that stajium project are not related to football or the needs of football, but rather the administration of athletics and the university caving to stupidity and buffoonery

and really the idea that football as a program requires an administration expense directly proportional to the $ of the budget they are responsible for is really not valid as well......it takes as much or more effort to book hotels and travel for 29 other sports than it does for football especially with the limited number of games football plays Vs most other sports

the number of players for a flight or a hotel stay does not really require a great deal more people to schedule their travelit just requires the person doing so to say "60 hotel rooms" instead of "20 hotel rooms"

and track and field, swimming and a number of other sports can use a 40 person meeting space as can all the smaller programs and academics can use them as well

and if you think that tennis and golf do not utilize weight and training facilities then you are not familiar with college sports

so with the football program still being the ONLY revenue positive program at Cal and even so if they were assigned 100% of the debt service not assigned to other sports and and even with the IMG and Nike deals being assigned to non-sport specific income it is ridiculous to try and then place massively more administrative cost on the football program because you believe that helps your argument that all of the 29 other clearly revenue negative sports would be better off without football or pretending that football requires the bulk of administrative cost for 6 away contest a year and possibly a bowl game or a CCG while 29 other sports just have some person in a broom closet handling all of the administration of their programs and their facilities are maintained by one little old semi-retired guy and his part time wife

and in the case of Cal specifically ignoring the jackassery that lead to the stajium costing so much and ignoring that the football program would have been better off with a new facility costing a great deal less

Quote:you cannot place the direct financial consequences of stupid decisions and tree squatting morons on the football program

It's the cost of doing business, my friend.

I really don't envy public higher education's future. What Cal has to do to keep up with Stanford and USC, and how much easier those private schools can do things without the general public staring down on their every move...this is the burden you bear.

(06-02-2017 01:56 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

Quote:you cannot place the direct financial consequences of stupid decisions and tree squatting morons on the football program

It's the cost of doing business, my friend.

I really don't envy public higher education's future. What Cal has to do to keep up with Stanford and USC, and how much easier those private schools can do things without the general public staring down on their every move...this is the burden you bear.

it is not "the cost of doing business" it is the cost of capitulating to morons

and they had to do something with the stajium because it was falling apart and if there was an earth quake especially during a game it could have killed thousands or more

but what you won't grasp because it makes your already weak argument that Cal (or any other major D1-A athletics program) would do well without football even weaker is that Cal could have more than kept up with Stanford or USC with a new stajium for much lower cost

but the idiots in the trees would not let that happen and the administration capitulated to their stupidity

and that is not the "cost of doing business" or "the cost of football" that is the cost of caving in to stupidity

so again it is not a "cost of football" that the administration chose the much more expensive option of renovating old junk Vs building new

the football program would have been better off with a new stajium for a lower cost, but the administration simply did not have what it took to make that happen

the fact that you and others like you try and then place the responsibility and the cost for that stupidity on the football program is why no one that looks at the actual numbers takes your argument serious that Cal athletics or any other major D1-A athletics program would be better off or more financially viable without football

the numbers simply prove that wrong over and over

if the engineering college at Cal went away the administration at Cal would barely shrink a bit even though the engineering department is large, has high paid professors, expensive labs and sometimes expensive classrooms and brings in a large amount of grants......the administration would not come close to decreasing in size relative to the size of the engineering college much less relative to the budget of that college just like the athletics admin would not shrink massively without football

and if the college of engineering had an old building that was falling apart and that they could replace for $200 million with something newer and better and instead the administration decided to cobble together old crap for $400 million that stupid decision is not on the college of engineering just like that stupidity was not on the football program

being able to do as well or better with something newer and less expensive and having the decision to not go that route made above your program level is not your burden it is the burden of the idiots above you even if they stick your program with the cost of their stupidity

I'm not indulging your personal jabs or straw man crap, so spare me.

You toss a ledger that only you are interpreting as canon. In the flipping footnotes it even says the school spreads out some of the expenses and revenues; this is exactly my point about football operations. Or athletics operations across the board.

It's a shell game. Having a tantrum over protesters, labeling them whatever you do; hey, whatever you need to do to frame your argument and make you feel good, go right ahead. Move those goalposts as much you can, champ.

We can't all be Texas football. And Cal is no Texas.

hey chief lets apply some of your financial "logic"

the lacrosse program uses the same stajium as the football program and they had 11 home games there last season that is nearly 100% more home games than the football program

so if we are going to use your "logical" distribution of cost it is the lacrosse program that is actually responsible for the vast majority of the stajium debt and renovation cost because they host nearly 100% more games at that stajium

so if we shifted the cost of the stajium renovations to the lacrosse program in proportion to what the football program uses the facility then very clearly it is the lacrosse program that is the major money loser and the major expense for Cal athletics and if Cal did away with that program then they would do away with a lot of the expenses of the athletics program in general

and we can't use any "strawman arguments" like "well if the lacrosse program was not using that facility and football did not exist then the lacrosse program would have a much smaller and more affordable stajium to play in" because using your "logic" well that is not what happened and that is "the cost of doing business my friend"

so again even using your "logic" and your financial distribution of cost it is clear that football is not the issue it is in fact mens lacrosse that is not paying their way and that is responsible for the vast majority of the cost of the stajium they play in