Stadium default didn't choose Cal
http://deadspin.com/the-desperate-future-of-cal-athletics-is-here-1797944572/amp
Comments
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Everyone is talking about the difference between Cal's debt 2016 and Cal's debt 2017.
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Cal just needs more tim to get its own stadium revenues in there.
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Why don't they just win some football games? That cures everything.
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Remove Cal from the conference and bring in Tennessee
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If the problem gets bad enough, they will dump some money in the AD accounts from the enormous university endowment. People will bellyache for a while. Fin
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Somewhere on the west coast, boorswiiin looks over the horizon and wonders if he'll ever have victory coitus again
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Such a stupid decision. Instead of having a crazy awesome stadium, a cheap coach, and a shitty team buy a top shelf coach.
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Cal's endowment is not that enormous relative to the operation it supports and a lot of that $$ is restricted.AZDuck said:If the problem gets bad enough, they will dump some money in the AD accounts from the enormous university endowment. People will bellyache for a while. Fin
It's not that easy ... it's not like there's a 4 billion cash acct they can just raid to fix fuck ups. Far from that simple.
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I can't ever see the ivory tower types at Cal approving that.AZDuck said:If the problem gets bad enough, they will dump some money in the AD accounts from the enormous university endowment. People will bellyache for a while. Fin
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cal's bond rating is too high
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Can @BearsWiin or someone else provide a rundown of how they decided to finance a 300MUSD stadium reno in the first place? I vaguely remember it being part of Tedfords demands, then there was fault line reasons to help justify it.
It's baffling that these financial terms ever got approved. -
Pac-12 TV money that never came.LoneStarDawg said:Can @BearsWiin or someone else provide a rundown of how they decided to finance a 300MUSD stadium reno in the first place? I vaguely remember it being part of Tedfords demands, then there was fault line reasons to help justify it.
It's baffling that these financial terms ever got approved. -
Cal is a big-time athletics program, with a bunch of national championships and a cadre of prominent alumni in the NFL, NBA, and Olympic sports
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Sooner or later that debt hole will start eating the university. Even Cal alums won't let things get so bad that they can't stay in D1A, the Pac-12 or playing Stanford. So they'll do something.
The endowment is 4.1BN independent of state support. The money's there. -
AZDuck said:
Sooner or later that debt hole will start eating the university. Even Cal alums won't let things get so bad that they can't stay in D1A, the Pac-12 or playing Stanford. So they'll DO SOMETHING!!¡¡
The endowment is 4.1BN independent of state support. The money's there. -
NotThisShitAgain.gif
Football and basketball support a shitload of sports programs at Cal. The Athletic Department is too big, but like the federal budget everybody complains that it's too big but nobody wants to stick their necks out and go on record about what they'd cut.
Cal financed the stadium ten yeas ago with the ESP program, Endowment Seating Plan or something like that. It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years. In exchange for that ongoing pledge, donors would get the nice seatbacks on the shady side of the stadium between the 30's, and they'd get access to the fucking Donor's Club where they could drink heavily whilst watching the game and congratulating each other on how much money they had to throw away on status perks. So the stadium was financed on the expectation that donors would keep donating no matter how fucked the product was on the field.
Turns out that Cal donors aren't suckers. They see a shitty product and an AD (Williams) who is horrible at alumni/donor relations, they stop coming. Many backed out on their ESP pledges, and lo and behold money for the yearly payments dried up. Williams didn't resign; he was told that he wouldn't be retained after his contract was up, so he then made the resignation statement. He's made some right moves so far (getting rid of Dykes and hiring Wilcox) but pissed off basketball donors after Martin left by not listening to their concerns/suggestions and just went ahead and hired Martin's assistant instead. The new AD will have to be somebody who can reach out to the money (it's there) and coax it back to Cal.
The stadium plan was too expensive. Some things needed to be done (seismic retrofit), but that could have been done on the cheap. Instead, Sandy Barbour and Co. went ahead with a more pricey plan to make attending Cal Football games a status symbol. But you can slap a MBZ star on a Kia, and it's still a fucking Kia. Improve the car, and the donors will come back. Maybe. Hopefully. The landscape is changing anyway; people like me aren't big money, but I'm one of many who used to religiously attend games but long ago decided that it was cheaper to drink at home (comfy couch, HDTV, 20+games per Saturday). Winning ought to cure this problem, but we'll see.
If anybody really thought that stadium finance would be a god use of TV revenue, they should be summarily shot. Everybody in the conference got that money and put it to use in the coaching arms race. Cal needs to do that too, so no money there, really. -
*swoon*BearsWiin said:NotThisShitAgain.gif
Football and basketball support a shitload of sports programs at Cal. The Athletic Department is too big, but like the federal budget everybody complains that it's too big but nobody wants to stick their necks out and go on record about what they'd cut.
Cal financed the stadium ten yeas ago with the ESP program, Endowment Seating Plan or something like that. It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years. In exchange for that ongoing pledge, donors would get the nice seatbacks on the shady side of the stadium between the 30's, and they'd get access to the fucking Donor's Club where they could drink heavily whilst watching the game and congratulating each other on how much money they had to throw away on status perks. So the stadium was financed on the expectation that donors would keep donating no matter how fucked the product was on the field.
Turns out that Cal donors aren't suckers. They see a shitty product and an AD (Williams) who is horrible at alumni/donor relations, they stop coming. Many backed out on their ESP pledges, and lo and behold money for the yearly payments dried up. Williams didn't resign; he was told that he wouldn't be retained after his contract was up, so he then made the resignation statement. He's made some right moves so far (getting rid of Dykes and hiring Wilcox) but pissed off basketball donors after Martin left by not listening to their concerns/suggestions and just went ahead and hired Martin's assistant instead. The new AD will have to be somebody who can reach out to the money (it's there) and coax it back to Cal.
The stadium plan was too expensive. Some things needed to be done (seismic retrofit), but that could have been done on the cheap. Instead, Sandy Barbour and Co. went ahead with a more pricey plan to make attending Cal Football games a status symbol. But you can slap a MBZ star on a Kia, and it's still a fucking Kia. Improve the car, and the donors will come back. Maybe. Hopefully. The landscape is changing anyway; people like me aren't big money, but I'm one of many who used to religiously attend games but long ago decided that it was cheaper to drink at home (comfy couch, HDTV, 20+games per Saturday). Winning ought to cure this problem, but we'll see.
If anybody really thought that stadium finance would be a god use of TV revenue, they should be summarily shot. Everybody in the conference got that money and put it to use in the coaching arms race. Cal needs to do that too, so no money there, really. -
All that Cal brain power yet nobody thought to question the assumptions on Larry Scott's Magic Revenue?... and then ACTED on it?TierbsHsotBoobs said:
Pac-12 TV money that never came.LoneStarDawg said:Can @BearsWiin or someone else provide a rundown of how they decided to finance a 300MUSD stadium reno in the first place? I vaguely remember it being part of Tedfords demands, then there was fault line reasons to help justify it.
It's baffling that these financial terms ever got approved. -
I went to the stadium the year the refurb was finished to watch my (then) shitty Dawgs play. I was all proud of myself because I smuggled in a bottle of Hennessy. My brother in law did a sweet spin move to distract the 20 year old security detail, only after I got in did I realize the kid didn't give a fuck. I digress...
I was disappointed by the stadium. Maybe it has cool shit in the corridors, but the experience up top was just sorta meh. Was is that shitty beforehand? They put in stripper poles in the box seats? I get the earthquake safety but am I missing something's @BearsWiin? -
It was built in 1923, and it's been crumbling for as long as I've been a Cal fan (since 1986). It was that shitty. But if you were up top, then you didn't really see where the money went. They spent money on the donor areas, not so much the visitor fan areas. They didn't even touch the east side of the stadium, the part that was originally built into the hill itself; that phase was left for later (if they could ever find the money for it). So if you're on the east side of the stadium in Young Alumni seating, or student seating, of even in the east side of the end zones, you're still making use of the old stadium, not the new part. They spent $320M so that half of the fans would still have to use porta-potties, and the wealthy donors could hobnob amongst themselves in their gated community.biak1 said:I went to the stadium the year the refurb was finished to watch my (then) shitty Dawgs play. I was all proud of myself because I smuggled in a bottle of Hennessy. My brother in law did a sweet spin move to distract the 20 year old security detail, only after I got in did I realize the kid didn't give a fuck. I digress...
I was disappointed by the stadium. Maybe it has cool shit in the corridors, but the experience up top was just sorta meh. Was is that shitty beforehand? They put in stripper poles in the box seats? I get the earthquake safety but am I missing something's @BearsWiin? -
TYFYS @BearsWiin
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and I want YOUR BIKE!rodmansrage said:Cal is a big-time athletics program, with a bunch of national championships and a cadre of prominent alumni in the NFL, NBA, and Olympic sports
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Always about the Volunteers with youDerekJohnson said:Remove Cal from the conference and bring in Tennessee
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"It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years."BearsWiin said:NotThisShitAgain.gif
Football and basketball support a shitload of sports programs at Cal. The Athletic Department is too big, but like the federal budget everybody complains that it's too big but nobody wants to stick their necks out and go on record about what they'd cut.
Cal financed the stadium ten yeas ago with the ESP program, Endowment Seating Plan or something like that. It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years. In exchange for that ongoing pledge, donors would get the nice seatbacks on the shady side of the stadium between the 30's, and they'd get access to the fucking Donor's Club where they could drink heavily whilst watching the game and congratulating each other on how much money they had to throw away on status perks. So the stadium was financed on the expectation that donors would keep donating no matter how fucked the product was on the field.
Turns out that Cal donors aren't suckers. They see a shitty product and an AD (Williams) who is horrible at alumni/donor relations, they stop coming. Many backed out on their ESP pledges, and lo and behold money for the yearly payments dried up. Williams didn't resign; he was told that he wouldn't be retained after his contract was up, so he then made the resignation statement. He's made some right moves so far (getting rid of Dykes and hiring Wilcox) but pissed off basketball donors after Martin left by not listening to their concerns/suggestions and just went ahead and hired Martin's assistant instead. The new AD will have to be somebody who can reach out to the money (it's there) and coax it back to Cal.
The stadium plan was too expensive. Some things needed to be done (seismic retrofit), but that could have been done on the cheap. Instead, Sandy Barbour and Co. went ahead with a more pricey plan to make attending Cal Football games a status symbol. But you can slap a MBZ star on a Kia, and it's still a fucking Kia. Improve the car, and the donors will come back. Maybe. Hopefully. The landscape is changing anyway; people like me aren't big money, but I'm one of many who used to religiously attend games but long ago decided that it was cheaper to drink at home (comfy couch, HDTV, 20+games per Saturday). Winning ought to cure this problem, but we'll see.
If anybody really thought that stadium finance would be a god use of TV revenue, they should be summarily shot. Everybody in the conference got that money and put it to use in the coaching arms race. Cal needs to do that too, so no money there, really.
What could go wrong there??? -
What makes it extra hilarious is that you can literally see the Haas School of Bidness from the stadium. Yet the brain trust at Cal's AD signed up for this.salemcoog said:
"It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years."BearsWiin said:NotThisShitAgain.gif
Football and basketball support a shitload of sports programs at Cal. The Athletic Department is too big, but like the federal budget everybody complains that it's too big but nobody wants to stick their necks out and go on record about what they'd cut.
Cal financed the stadium ten yeas ago with the ESP program, Endowment Seating Plan or something like that. It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years. In exchange for that ongoing pledge, donors would get the nice seatbacks on the shady side of the stadium between the 30's, and they'd get access to the fucking Donor's Club where they could drink heavily whilst watching the game and congratulating each other on how much money they had to throw away on status perks. So the stadium was financed on the expectation that donors would keep donating no matter how fucked the product was on the field.
Turns out that Cal donors aren't suckers. They see a shitty product and an AD (Williams) who is horrible at alumni/donor relations, they stop coming. Many backed out on their ESP pledges, and lo and behold money for the yearly payments dried up. Williams didn't resign; he was told that he wouldn't be retained after his contract was up, so he then made the resignation statement. He's made some right moves so far (getting rid of Dykes and hiring Wilcox) but pissed off basketball donors after Martin left by not listening to their concerns/suggestions and just went ahead and hired Martin's assistant instead. The new AD will have to be somebody who can reach out to the money (it's there) and coax it back to Cal.
The stadium plan was too expensive. Some things needed to be done (seismic retrofit), but that could have been done on the cheap. Instead, Sandy Barbour and Co. went ahead with a more pricey plan to make attending Cal Football games a status symbol. But you can slap a MBZ star on a Kia, and it's still a fucking Kia. Improve the car, and the donors will come back. Maybe. Hopefully. The landscape is changing anyway; people like me aren't big money, but I'm one of many who used to religiously attend games but long ago decided that it was cheaper to drink at home (comfy couch, HDTV, 20+games per Saturday). Winning ought to cure this problem, but we'll see.
If anybody really thought that stadium finance would be a god use of TV revenue, they should be summarily shot. Everybody in the conference got that money and put it to use in the coaching arms race. Cal needs to do that too, so no money there, really.
What could go wrong there???
