Last updated on 12/14/2014
This is part of Interim President Coltrane’s new effort to reduce athletic subsidies and shift money towards academic excellence. Breaking news here:
The biggest cost-cutting move is just limiting the number of people who go, which saves travel and hotel costs. In 2009, the Wolf Pack did not take its band to the Hawaii Bowl. Some schools will charter either a large jet, a second jet or take multiple trips, but Nevada has consistently gone with smaller, less-expensive jets and told some support staffers that they’ll have to watch the game on TV at home.
The school also saves money by taking the less-expensive team-meal options at the hotels and not splurging on expensive rings and watches in the event of a victory.
Brian Polian is headed to his first bowl game as a head coach, too. Hired three months before Knuth, Polian has extensive history in big bowl games as an assistant coach at Stanford, Notre Dame and Texas A&M, schools where the presumption is that money is handed out like athletic tape.
And while that’s a stretch, the comparison has legs. Schools with massive athletic budgets tend to be more free-wheeling with money, and big-money bowls tend to cost more — in some cases a lot more — which can lead to red-pencil accounting.
Oh wait, that story is about the University of Nevada. Never mind. Here at UO, all indications are that our Johnson Hall colleagues, and their families, are planning their usual all-expense-paid bowl-game junkets. The next one is to the historic Rose Bowl in sunny Pasadena, for the football championship semifinal extravaganza, Jan 1.
But Park gets to go right? Isn’t it in his contract?
Doug Park gets to go, and so does Beth Stormshak from Prevention Science, since they are married.
The Rose Bowl is easily the most opportune time to network with supporters and donors, and we cannot count on it occurring again. Coltrane telling admins not to go and instead “watch the game from home” would be completely against the university’s interests. In your Nevada example, Nevada told only “some support staff” not to go, and that was for a far less marquee bowl.
Maybe. But if UO needs high-profile social butterflies to schmooze donors at these events, why would they send Doug Park?
What are those networking going to do? Steal donors from the other school UO plays? Doubtful. These idiot administrators will be way too busy patting each other on the back during that weekend and enjoying the trip and all expenses paid by the school. How much of that money could be used to fund scholarships for kids who can’t afford to go to college? But we all know that these despot administrators are going to be the last ones to give up any of their freebies.
All networking will be happening with the kind of donors who are only interested in supporting athletics, not academics. We don’t need anymore of those. Therefore, the junkets are not in the university’s interests. In fact they’re against the university’s interests – if you think, as many of us do, that the university’s interests should be academic, and not athletic.
I know some people disagree.
If they were really smart, they’d also be sending some of their socially charastmatic and highly successful faculty. Then the faculty could just talk to donors about common interests. Honestly, we’d do a great job of selling the donors on academics.
Even if it is just for political cover, a savvy administrator would harvest faculty for these trips. That’s what continues to amaze me… that our admins are not even savvy in their personal rent seeking. I lose all respect for them at that point.
Faculty talking to donors? That might cut into the athletic department’s take.
Or it might persuade a donor that UO’s highest building need is not really new offices for CAS administrators.
So faculty are not going to go junketing, unless they are carefully selected and supervised.
Under Oregon law and since the athletics department is supposed to be a separate and independent entity to the educational side of things, isn’t providing these free tickets come down to a gratuity which is against Oregon law for public employees to accept and also against Oregon Administrative Rules? Who pays for the tickets? I think these junkets go far beyond a simple stipend. And I don;t think there is any faster way to scare the shit out of donors than letting Doug Park loose on them. What the hell is the school thinking? Doug Park has the personality of wet dirt.
It is not just administrators who junket to Bowl games Ask our current Senate President why he took a free Rose Bowl trip a few years back. Other but not all Senate Presidents have also gone to Bowl games gratis. We all have a price, but to sell out for a trip to LA, football tickets and a couple of nights at a posh hotel?
And you think the Senate President gave the athletics department what, in exchange? Or were they just using him for cover?
It is not the Athletic Department the Senate President sold out to, it was the administration. Take a look at the Senate Motions since the Senate Prez took the Rose Bowl trip. Not one has been effective in preventing the administration or the new BOT from implementing their long term plan of destroying faculty governance. We have had excellent Senate Presidents in the past (Marcus, Hurwit, Earl, Keyes, Tedards) who stood up to the administration. We need more faculty leaders and less wimps.