Dave in Green

Anyone going to show up for intramural touch football? The tailgaters will still be out in the parking lot even if UA drops football entirely.

The number that jumps out at me is that Miami's debt jumped an astronomical 588% ($93,151,622 to $641,065,000) -- a far greater percentage increase than any other Ohio school. Miami's debt went from less than half of UA's in 2004 to 30% greater than UA's in 10 years.

The doom and gloom about Zips athletics is nothing compared to all the ticking time bombs in the real world. Anyone who thrives on depressing news should read the following piece from The New Yorker. It's absolutely chilling and extraordinarily well written: The Really Big One

I don't recall anyone bringing up the question of exactly why the MAC decided a couple of years ago to quietly change the rule to no longer require all MAC schools to participate in baseball. I think the most likely scenario is that more than one school in the conference was quietly telling the MAC that there was a good possibility of budget cuts in the future, that some schools would have to cut some sports, and that baseball was a likely target. As I said earlier, I believe that UA was just the first of a number of MAC schools to actually pull the trigger.

On those debt numbers, here's my math factoid of the day: 139.7% = percentage of debt increase of all 14 Ohio public universities from 2004-2014 ($2,805,418,204 to $6,725,378,204) 137.9% = percentage of debt increase of UA from 2004-2014 ($204,729,516 to $487,101,792)

Nah, I saw those numbers a few days ago. The ABJ article was fairly predictable: Personally, I think it's fair to ask that it be considered. I recently posted some football budget numbers from a few years ago that showed some FCS schools spending as much or more than UA. Let them study in detail what dropping a level would cost and report it out. I think they might be surprised that there are not huge cost savings unless you have a gutted FCS program that will likely not be more of a winner than what Coach Bowden is developing at the Zips' current level.

Lots of good info in that interview. Considering how often the U.S. News and World Report rankings are cited in this forum as meaningful, maybe the following quote gives cause to reconsider:

Regarding peer review, I agree that it's important. But not everything that hasn't been peer-reviewed should be summarily dismissed. It just requires a little closer scrutiny to determine the validity of the data. Any kind of case study of a university changing to a polytechnic, let alone one that's been peer-reviewed, is a pretty unlikely item to be easily found if it even exists. I try to prioritize my search time on things where I'm likely to find good data in a reasonable time frame. I also agree that those who care the most about something should be critical about it. But there's a big difference between constructive criticism and continuous bashing. It's not constructive to treat something like a FPS with unlimited ammo where you just hold down the trigger, strafe anything that moves and ignore anyone who says, wait, what you're trying to blow away may not be a space invader after all. Constructive criticism requires taking the time to intelligently research things to clearly differentiate what may be wrong from what may be right. It requires a balance of acknowledging what's right along with criticizing what appears to be wrong. It requires focusing on the primary things that appear to be wrong and not getting distracted by trivial side issues. It requires acknowledging that those being criticized for apparently being part of the problem are not always entirely responsible for having created the problem. It requires showing respect for the opinions of others who also care but may have different perspectives and conflicting viewpoints. We should all welcome constructive criticism.

Have you (or anyone else reading this thread) spent any time at all on OhioHigherEd.org, the home of the Ohio Board of Regents that oversees Ohio's public universities? You can get a really good read on where they're pushing UA and other public universities by seeing what's prominently featured on that website.

It was pretty obvious that UA was going to have to explain that fee thing in more detail once the complaints reached Columbus. If they don't have a good answer it could get messy. This is one of the real issues as opposed to the red herring of the president's home refurb after 16 years of wear and tear.

It's very simple. The UA-owned home that President Muse lived in was a money pit that required tapping a lot of cash from the general fund to maintain. UA wisely dumped that property and temporarily tried entertaining donors on campus instead. It didn't work out as well as they had hoped it would. Some donors were willing to finance another private home, as most universities have for their presidents, and UA wisely purchased one that was in a good state of repair and didn't require major funding to maintain. UA has owned the current home for 16 years and it just now requires updating -- as most homes do after 16 years of wear and tear from living in and entertaining guests -- at a cost that's reasonable compared with the upkeep costs of the old home they dumped many years ago. A nice home that represents a university well without exorbitant upkeep costs represents a prudent investment because the cost of housing is factored into a university president's salary. Those presidents who aren't provided a home by the university are typically paid a higher salary to compensate. By owning and maintaining the president's home and offering a lower salary, a university can better control the image it presents to donors. This is a red herring that just takes attention away from the real issues.

But wait, there are more answers in the ABJ story to questions that haven't even been asked yet. Over the years some of the remaining $600,000 house fund was transferred to UA Foundation accounts, and the $35,000 difference between the remaining $340,000 and the $375,000 refurbishing budget will simply be transferred from the UA Foundation back to the house fund from which it came:

There's really a lot of detailed information in that ABJ story that answers a lot of questions:

Good find, LZip. Those who only read the local news might think that UA has unique problems. A quick internet search for colleges dropping sports shows that this is happening at many schools across the country due to budget problems. Visiting the sports fan forums of each of the schools dropping sports programs would likely reveal some fans blaming the previous school president for mucking things up.

The ABJ reports that UA purchased the 28-year-old home in 1999 for $850,000 and has budgeted $375,000 to give it its first major update. The article goes on to describe the importance of the home for such activities as fund-raising from donors, which some on this forum have suggested should be a high priority for Dr. Scarborough:

Cutting baseball was a prudent decision in the sense that Zips athletics had to share in the pain that other areas of UA were subjected to. The option would have been to reduce the budget of every sport and make them all less competitive or eliminate one completely. Had no reduction in the athletic budget been made the howls of protest would have been much greater from more than just a few sports fans.

Just heard some great news: Noah Robotham has been spotted back on campus. Will be interesting to learn in the coming weeks exactly how far along he is in recovering from his surgery and how early in the season he might be ready to play serious minutes.

In plain English, the first post proposes that Detroit has a more desirable OOC than UA not by the common measure of OOC SOS but by the nature of having all mid-ranked opponents rather than a mix of high-, mid- and low-ranked opponents.

Good, then you know that its stated purpose was to increase board members' roles in overseeing financial transactions, not decrease CEO responsibilities. By that standard, the UA President and BoT share responsibility for financial matters. Maybe I haven't been clear enough in the point I've been trying to make: If Dr. Proenza recommended and the BoT approved spending on a building plan that at the time of approval was generally considered in the financial community to be a high risk due to unreasonable debt load, then they should share blame for failing in their responsibilities to manage UA finances in a prudent manner. If on the other hand the plan was generally considered to be financially prudent based on the best data available at the time, they should not be blamed for results largely brought on by the unforeseen recession and subsequent economic repercussions that happened to strike at the high point of UA's debt loading. I'm still looking for the definitive answer on which of the two scenarios actually applies.

You obviously aren't familiar with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. While the CEO has traditionally taken the fall when things go wrong, Sarbanes-Oxley lays much greater accountability for oversight on boards of directors, especially in financial matters. A board that's responsible for selecting and appointing the CEO, setting the operating budget and approving all significant programs and expenditures no longer gets a free pass when things within the scope of their oversight go wrong. Blaming it all on the CEO is as simplistic and deceptive as blaming every football team loss on the quarterback.

Once again we need to separate hindsight from insight. You will find very little record of criticism of UA's building plan prior to 2007. Why? Because December 2007 is the month that the Great Recession began. Prior to that the economy was booming and larger debt loads were manageable and even recommended by financial experts. Prior to that is when one of the biggest complaints about UA was that it lacked modern infrastructure and the kind of pleasant campus environment that attracted students to other schools. Prior to that most agreed with Dr. Proenza and the BoT that modernizing UA's facilities was a sound investment on the road to making Hilltop High into a great university. There is some irony in the fact that complaints can be found on these forums about one of UA's few remaining inadequate facilities, the JAR, alongside complaints that some of the current financial shortfall is due to "overbuilding." But that's just part of human nature. We all want more and no one wants to pay for it. We all want our leaders to make tough decisions and then we assume when something goes wrong it's all their fault and castigate them whether or not we have all the facts available to make that judgment. Truth be told, none of us is in a position to know how much of today's problems are due to bad judgment by those in charge or unforeseen circumstances such as the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

Trying to pin all the blame on any UA President for what may or may not have been a good plan that went wrong due to unforeseen circumstances overlooks the actual UA operating structure and responsibilities:

Negative reader responses to internet-posted news stories are not news. They are the norm in modern America. The internet is infested with trend followers addicted to publicly posting clever trash talk in the comments section following any news story, each trying to one-up the others. They're like gang members with spray cans of paint or dogs marking their territory with urine. This type of abuse has caused many legitimate news sites to eliminate reader comments sections. Trash talk competitions do not accurately reflect a balance of legitimate public opinion, and they certainly don't represent newsworthy content from which to generate separate news stories.

I appreciate your wish to minimize the negative impact on UA. But you can't get away with secret moves in the modern world of instant social media. Word would leak of the first move and everyone would jump on UA as being sneaky and untrustworthy. The first move would get headlines, then a few months later the second, then the third, and it would become a downward trend with no end in sight. People would become paranoid looking under every rock to uncover the next move. No, the right way to do it is to be 100% transparent when announcing the moves. Put three years worth all together in one package and take your lumps all at once. That news will slowly fade and be replaced by good news in the coming months and years. As painful as the big announcement was, it beats the heck out of a series of negative gotchas.