Back in the twilight days of Mark Richt’s Georgia tenure, I took a lot of grief in certain quarters here for suggesting that the enthusiasm of some for firing Richt ought to be tempered by the realization that even were the head coach to be removed, the rest of the athletic department would still be in place, meaning that the problems facing Georgia football were more than just Mark Richt’s management. I don’t think subsequent developments have rebutted my argument.
It’s probably a wise lesson to be applied today, as I hear much the same from a lot of people about Greg McGarity. While I’m obviously no fan of his management, once again it’s hard for me to see how his departure would change things much. Doubt me on that? Well, let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. It’s something that Seth Emerson mentioned yesterday, but Jason Butt spells it out in a little more detail here:
Much has been discussed about the large amount of money sitting in Georgia’s operating reserves. The worry is that millions of dollars that could be used toward athletics facility upgrades is going to waste.
During Thursday’s annual spring UGA Athletic Association Board of Directors meeting at the King and Prince Golf and Beach Resort, the topic was broached during an hour-long presentation. In essence, Georgia preached a fiscally responsible approach to its spending. The money in the operating reserves has multiple purposes, such as maintaining projects, being prepared for unforeseen events and to maintain good standing with lenders.
But one point the UGA Athletic Association hadn’t made clear before is what some of the money is actually tied to. On Thursday, Georgia reported an uncommitted balance of $36.9 million in its operating reserve. But that money can’t simply go toward new facilities at a rapid pace without facing financial consequences.
UGA vice president of finance and administration Ryan Nesbit said that a portion of the $36.9 million in its operating reserves is tied to bond-related covenants related to other projects. While the Georgia athletics program is able to take some money out, it won’t allow the reserve to drop below $30 million. UGA must uphold previous bond agreements that state a specific amount of untouched cash is available without use. [Emphasis added.]
That’s a lot of money to be sitting there. And while McGarity may be tasked with defending that proposition,
The Athletic Association reported an Aa3 credit rating provided to it by Moody’s, which is the lowest level of the credit rating agency’s “high grade” description. This has led to favorable bond and interest rates, the ability for future re-financings and the possibility of obtaining a low-interest line of credit for the West end zone project.
But the Aa3 rating is only one notch away from an A1 designation, which is considered “upper medium grade.” Nesbit said Georgia wants to avoid dropping into this category.
Georgia athletics director Greg McGarity stated other collegiate programs are willing to take on additional debt without the means of replacing it in a sound manner.
“That is the situation a lot of institutions are in now,” McGarity said. “Their reserves have either been depleted or their debt services are so high that future occupants of an athletic director’s chair is going to make it tough 20-to-30 years out. I think it’s a story that’s not very popular in college athletics.”
… I have a hard time believing that’s his call to make in the first place.
During the board meeting, UGA president Jere Morehead expressed the need for the program’s donors to come through with the $53 million for the project. If Georgia has to dip into its reserves for it, the bond-related covenants and credit rating could be affected.
Let me say, before anyone tries to lob a stupid accusation my way, that it’s entirely admirable for Georgia’s athletic department to behave in a fiscally prudent manner. You read stories about the out of control finances at schools like Cal and realize bad management can easily lead to awful problems.
However, frugality is only a means, not an end in itself. The end, need I remind you, is putting competitive sports programs on the field. Banking money isn’t winning; it’s banking money. It’s questionable if McGarity’s bosses recognize the difference.
While Georgia claims it is more financially stable than its counterparts, it still remains to be seen whether this will translate into winning. Georgia’s athletics programs had one of its worst runs in quite a while during the 2016-17 season.
… It’s hard not to notice that the losses that have piled up play a part in the notion that the athletics department isn’t spending money on upgrading facilities at a fast rate. And until the wins start adding up, fans will be wondering what more can be done to fix the situation Georgia athletics has found itself in.
“I know our program is not reaching its full potential,” McGarity said.
Seeing that is the easy part. It’s knowing how to remedy the situation that’s the challenge. Especially when your priorities run in a different order.
The new spending initiative the UGA Athletic Board passed allows for athletics to spend four percent yearly of a reserve fund currently set aside in a bank account. Its about another million dollars a year, which will ultimately get swallowed up in the $127 million budget the board passed Thursday.
To be sure, the spending measure is a new thing. UGA president Jere Morehead told reporters after the meeting concluded that only now did UGA feel comfortable enough financially to start the new spending from their rainy-day funds.
“It finally reached a level where we felt comfortable that we could start pulling from it,” he said. “We need to tap into it because revenue is not growing as rapidly as expenses in this intercollegiate athletic environment that we’re in today. We’re looking for new sources of revenue.”
Ryan Nesbit, Vice President for Finance and Administration at UGA, gave a nearly one-hour presentation attempting to explain Georgia’s position as it relates to bond covenants (which is just an agreement about how much money UGA must show each month in its accounts in order to comply with the financing provided by the bonds), reserve accounts and how all those millions of dollars work (or don’t work as some would argue) at UGA.
The morning meeting was a stark reminder that at Georgia few things are an irritant more than money. The perception of having too much of it, and not spending it to win has a dragging effect of those leading the institution. Money is something the higher ups keep a keen eye on, and its something fans (and some inside of the athletic department) use as a constant was to criticize those in charge.
At no point did any leader in the room give more than a passing comment on why UGA is struggling so much in the field of play…
(As an aside, with all the money rolling into the athletic department, note that it still feels the need to collect $3.24 million in student fees this coming fiscal year. Were I a student, or a parent paying the bill, I would be infuriated by that.)
I am not an accountant, nor do I play one on TV. I’m also not a college sports administrator. What I can’t help but wonder, though, purely as a dumbass fan on the outside looking in, is how programs like Alabama and Ohio State manage to succeed without maintaining enormous reserve accounts. Morehead and McGarity are clearly versed in certain college athletic departments’ financial train wrecks. Have they bothered to inquire into how the winners have managed to stay afloat? Are there no positive lessons to be learned from the way those programs are run? More relevantly, if there are, would anyone calling the shots at Butts-Mehre care?
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UPDATE: One more example of what I’m referring to in this post can be found in Emerson’s piece today about Georgia’s master plan (or lack thereof).
Georgia’s football team has one of the smallest weight rooms in the SEC. Bulldog football players also don’t have easy parking, so star players move around campus on scooters.
All the while, the program’s rivals, which had indoor facility and new locker rooms well before Georgia, are continuing to add their own projects. It’s the facilities arms race.
UGA has dipped its toe into it, with the indoor facility ($30.2 million) opening earlier this year, and construction on the Sanford Stadium west end zone project ($63 million for new locker rooms and a recruiting area) beginning this summer.
For now, that will be it. When asked to pinpoint any future projects, McGarity declined to pinpoint anything.
“Oh, we are totally focused on the west end. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, all our efforts are west end,” McGarity said. “We’ll talk about that when the west end zone is well underway.”
You can’t think forward about projects when you’re bound by a mindset of pay as you go. Not to mention that when you’re behind in the race from the start, it’s a strategy that’s doomed to keep you there permanently.
“We need to tap into it because revenue is not growing as rapidly as expenses in this intercollegiate athletic environment that we’re in today. We’re looking for new sources of revenue.” Seriously? Money paid to schools has been increasing exponentially for years now, we have the largest reserve fund in memory and we need new sources of revenue? They may like to talk about money a lot but if they’re hurting for cash then they certainly do not know how to actually manage money.
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He debt covenants were used to enhance ratings and obtain a lower interest rate and/or avoid insurance, another arrow in the Georgia Way quiver. Saves a few dollars each year and gives admin a reason not to spend to stay competitive.
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Agree that somehow other large athletic programs manage to operate very successfully without an $80M reserve fund, so why can’t we? I would be interested to know how much of the $30M used as collateral to comply with bond covenants is for UGAA projects vs. non-athletic projects being undertaken by the University. One would imagine that since this is UGAA money it would be 100% athletic projects. Also, there was very little talk of the $40M in reserves held by the UGA Foundation. Poor on the field performance and money management are just some of the Georgia Way symptoms of a greater problem.
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“What I can’t help but wonder, though, purely as a dumbass fan on the outside looking in, is how programs like Alabama and Ohio State manage to succeed without maintaining enormous reserve accounts.”
How about Occam’s Razor: Pick the right coaches and let them do their jobs.
Corollary: Greg McGarity isn’t a poor administrator because he’s a penny pincher, he’s a poor administrator because he makes poor personnel judgments.
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True dat, Hogbody. It is quite possible to have an AD who is both fiscally responsible and a competent coaching evaluator at the same time. Others do it with much less resources.
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exactly.
I don’t recall hearing how genius Alabama was when they hired and fired Stallings, Dubose, Fran, Price & Shula in a 10 year period.
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I agree and like your comment … I do have one problem with your statement.
We’ll never know the full impact of our late coming to the facilities arms race on our program across the board. That’s where the penny pinching and the lack of vision and execution have bitten us on the back side. Using football as the most visible example, CJP admitted he used the lack of an IPF against us in recruiting. How many in-state players decided not come to Georgia between 2010-5 because they heard the message, saw it for themselves, and decided to go elsewhere?
Take that combined with multiple questionable coaching hires, and you get a program that was a top 10 all-around program now languishing in the low 20s.
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We can embrace the healing power of ‘and’. The penny pinching and the personnel judgments hurt us.
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“Oh, we are totally focused on the west end. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, all our efforts are west end,” McGarity said. “We’ll talk about that when the west end zone is well underway.”
So depressing. Obviously no master plan, no forward thinking. He even has the balls to point to the IPF as an example, when we were basically the last to get one and even then were practically forced to publicly by Pruitt
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Not practically. He shamed them into it plain and simple. Good thing too. If he hadn’t we still wouldn’t have one today.
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http://onlineathens.com/stories/092508/oth_336489885.shtml#.WSgn6uvyuM8
Even if you have a master plan…doesn’t mean you have to actually follow it.
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Just for kicks…here are some of the lines from that 2008 master plan board meeting. 2008!
So we’d be talking about that being completed sometime around…now.
Buckhead took a good one from us.
Upgrades for the fans? No way!
So the plan was to guard the money so that you could actually use the money for capital projects? Novel concept.
Sigh.
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Senator, you de man, quite a start today with 6 items already posted. It appears more and more that Morehead and a few well connected boosters is running this show and they are not the ones to get us to winning championships. Keep after their ass.
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So the mob has arrived to the door of McGarity and the Senator stands up and declares this will not solve the ultimate issue. To do that we need to swarm the labyrinth of reserve funds and face the elusive Jere Minotaur. Any volunteers?
…[crickets]…
Never mind, McGarity turned me into a newt! (I got better tho). Lets burn the house!!!
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The problem (IMO) is that without seeing on the field success in most programs, the donations WILL start to recede. Then there will be an actual financial shortfall. With the current mindset, it would be hard to recover in that circumstance. There’s only so much blood in the turnip.
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My problem with the AD and his performance has nothing to do with money. Sure, he has attempted to monetize everything about the Georgia football experience, and he had to be called out by a total redneck assistant football coach to move on the CJPMIPF. I think he’s only doing the bidding of those on North Campus on the financial front. For capital projects, athletics is being treated no differently than any other program on campus. You don’t have to look any further than the Terry Learning Community campaign for evidence of that. What galls me about the performance of the AD is his tone deafness and the “let them eat cake” attitude toward the fans and alumni. I’ll never forgive him for the Gurley and Green suspensions. Does anyone believe that he would have done the same thing today? Finally, his personnel record has been a disaster which has been well documented.
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Obviously, our bond holders and financiers are much more restrictive than our competitors. What kind of Moody’s rating do Clemson and Alabama have? It appears their reckless spending is realizing reckless revenue as well, thus generating ample debt service coverages, low leverage and, I would expect, keeping Moody’s and the like impressed. Say nothing of their fan bases.
We say we’re sitting on cash for a rainy day. I’d suggest it’s raining now.
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Your second to last paragraph is the one that hits home for me. I’ll have a student in college in a few years and that is something that I’ll look at. With all the millions going into athletics, still collecting student fees is absolutely ridiculous.
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they charge a flat fee so that students can get access to sporting events at steep discounts.
What a great idea it’ll be to get rid of this and make those students open a Hartman Fund account and buy tickets like the rest of us.
Brilliant!
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snark aside, you probably dont want to do the math on that one.
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What about those students who don’t care about paying for sports at all?
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Why would the students care about what they pay for when they can use taxpayer money through federally subsidized loans and/or lottery funds to pay for those fees?
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they can go do the same thing that students who don’t care to pay for the bus fee, health center fee or the technology fee do…go to school elsewhere.
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My bad. I didn’t realize the UGA bus department was getting $40 million a year from the SEC.
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well, to be pedantic, UGA doesn’t receive 40 million from the SEC. UGAAA does. UGA charges students fees for a number of areas that they (UGA) provide regardless of how much the student uses it (like the bus, the Ramsey Center, the Health Center, etc.)
Click to access FY2018_Mandatory_Fees.pdf
Lest we forget, when UGAAA transfers a paltry 1 or 2 million to UGA each year, they are pilloried by some in the blogosphere for “wasting money on them stoopid ackademicks”.
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I appreciate the straw man… er, pedantic effort here. But the gist is UGAAA charges students fees for something it provides regardless of how much the student uses it, just like UGA does.
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Now we have come full circle. The academics exist just to make sure our athletics department exists. Might as well burn your diploma.
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the war is over Blutarsky, Richt got fired.
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No it isn’t B-M is still doing B-M things, Richt firing was only an early phase of destroying the UGA way.
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good point, McGarity makes that tackle vs GTech and we win.
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The war isn’t over Blutarsky. It’s over the way my alma mater handles its athletic department.
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Senator, thank you for these posts. I’m not a UGA alum and I live far removed from the SEC and UGA so I am totally out of the loop on this stuff. I would never seek this stuff out. I just don’t have the time. I appreciate you blogging about the athletics administration (and the SEC and the NCAA). It helps me better understand what all is going on in Georgia Football, and UGA athletics in general.
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what a waste of time, has nothing to do with winning, all about players and coaches you dorks.
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amen, the Senator and his conspiracy theories, goin all X files on us.
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That’s right…because when Saban got to Alabama, he looked around and said “I have plenty of resources….you don’t need to build me anything new or give me more money for more people because what the AD does with his money has nothing to do with winning.”
If you don’t think this stuff matters, you haven’t been paying attention to the world of college athletics for the last decade. Everyone else saw the trend and invested…UGAAA made a master plan in 2008 and then Evans gets fired and McGarity comes on board and we sit on our thumbs and then we act surprised that our teams don’t win.
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So let me get this straight, for the last 8-9 years the fed rate has been 0 or close to it. Anyone with just decent credit could get money for next to nothing and UGA has been slowplaying investments in their revenue generating properties because they wanted to maintain their marginally good credit score to help keep interest rates low?
It’s amazing how bad they are at this.
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YEAH, BRING ON THE JUNK BONDS!!!
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It’s been a rough time for you, huh.
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not at all. but I don’t blame the AD for CMR or Kirby’s failures.
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what does that have to do with me laughing at the AD for his current failures?
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I don’t disagree with you DP but the strategery on our debt rating doesn’t strike me as outrageous. Reasonable minds can differ. I’m critical of the entire debt financing of growth that Bama has pursued campus-wide and am curious how it will turn out but only time will tell.
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Are you also critical of the revenue and winning which the ” debt financing of growth” at Bama has produced? I understand your point but as far as return on capital goes, debt financing a championship football team might not be such an imprudent idea.
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UGA will have so much winning we will be tired of winning.
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I’d be more skeptical of what they’re doing if there wasn’t a clear correlation of visibility of the football program with a large increase in enrollment from out of state applicants. I’d say throwing money at football has done wonders for the University’s academic profile because they’re attracting good students that want to be a part of that which area also paying a higher cost to attend because they’re from out of state.
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they hired Saban. Take him away and nothing else occurs. Rich Rod would not’ve ushered in a decade of championships, massive facility upgrades and 50% growth of the undergrad population, much less Shula/Fran/Dubose/Price.
BTW, the competitive out of state students are given tuition forgiveness scholarship to entice attendance at in-state rates.
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The difference is that UGA doesn’t have as much room for improvement in terms of enrollment, admission stats (SAT, GPA, etc.), and academic prestige that Alabama did, not to mention Clemson, FSU, and others that took the football-first approach. Legacies already complain about their kids, many with very good credentials, not being able to get into UGA. Could you imagine the howl if UGA took an even larger % of out-of-state applicants and rejected more legacies?
I have led an endowment board, so I get the competing interests of capital preservation and disbursement, but in my situation capital preservation was built into the bylaws. Curious to know waht the bylaws for UGAA endowments are. Also, bylaws can be changed…
But a couple of things bother me about the UGA approach 1) Do they really have close to $30M in cash sitting in a money market account? If true, it’s hard for me to see that as anything other than incompetent mismanagement. Invest it! Surely they can use property, investments, and other forms of value as credit to prop up their lending power. 2) The credit rating seems like a complete straw man to me. The endowment I am involved in was able to secure a LIBOR + ~1% adjustable rate line of credit, and we hold less than 2% of the endowment in cash. Are they not able to take advantage of adjustable rates? And regardless, what is the % spread between the different rating? Are we foregoing millions in investment income and the the capital improvements they would allow just to save a tiny fraction of that on interest payments?
I am pretty strong on the anti-debt position, but this is like racing to pay off a home mortgage at 3% and keeping 18-months expenses in a savings account while contributing $0 to a company 401k or IRA while the stock market returns 8% a year. It goes from conservative to stupid. If you don’t put some money to work, you’ll always have to work for money.
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you guys need to prove a direct correlation between debtloads and championships, otherwise, you’re just barking.
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Unrelated. I am just commenting that in my opinion the statements made by the people in charge don’t measure up.
It is possible to disapprove of the job leadership is doing even if one of the lieutenants (Smart) manages to save their asses.
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looks like the senator is a dumb & dumber fan. sure, it’s mcgarity’s fault AM choked on the 5 yardline.
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it’\s year 1 you negative nans for the Kirby Smart regime. Give it some time before you start bitchin. Don’t make UGA sound like a bunch of loser whiners..
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Apparently trolls are unable to hold more than one thought in their head at any given time. Smart’s regime, win or lose, does not the sum total of discussion on GA Athletics make.
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do you even know the AD’s average ranking in the Director’s Cup since he arrived? No you don’t.
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Do you even know if that average is higher or lower than the average for the 7 years before he got here?
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I know that UGA is going to finish outside the top 20 for the first time in two decades which means that whatever averages anyone wants to throw out will ultimately show the worst downward trend since before most of the kids at UGA currently were born.
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Troll be gone, man.
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this blog is the dumbest discussion related to sports I’ve ever seen. Congrats.
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I give you credit for persistence. Happy trolling!
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and yet here your are
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Then this from McGarity: “Don’t be distracted by those who seek to divide us.”
I guess that’s us…………….
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“seek to divide” is a code word for “those who question our methods” Typical slight of hand for those who want to duck accountability.
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Maybe someone has more insight on this than me but what bonds do we have? Bonds are used to finance projects such as the IPF and the West End Zone, etc. If donors are paying for the entirety of the project, what were the bonds for? I would assume if it is a cash flow issue, you would be able to flow that through the reserve fund. If there aren’t any bonds for future projects, is all of this to signal there will be substantial projects in the future? If that is the case, then that is a vision — but vision without realization is just daydreaming. And that is what it sounds like is happening here — daydreaming.
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bonds have been used on prior projects but are not being used on those two.
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I’m pretty sure the bonds are for other projects outside the AD. I did work on the new Terry compound and the new Science Center, and I believe the $44 million earmarked for the endowment fund is listed as collateral on that payment bond. I could be wrong. None the less, there’s no doubt the University is using AD funds for assets outside of the Ath Dept.
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file:///C:/Users/mikecook/Downloads/disclosure_doc%20(2).pdf
The bond issues are on page 23. It doesn’t desribe the projects but I assume if you take the bond series date and description you could figure out which specific project it goes to.
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bad link, try this
http://www.dacbond.com/dacContent/doc.jsp?id=0900bbc78016605e
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But, who has proven McGarity or any other admin is responsible for Kirby’s on field performance? You can’t.
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i am convinced this blog is the senator bloggin under dozens of names repeating himself. too much groupthink, it’s just one guy faking it, don’t fall for it goons.
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Need new sources of revenue?
Trump or NAACP Stadium perhaps?
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To respond to your first point, I still disagree about CMR. For his first five years, he was outstanding. Was that B-M’s achievement? For his last ten, he took a step back. Was that B-M’s fault? To me, a simpler and better answer is that McNutt and others left, and Meyer and Saban stepped in; the SEC got better, and CMR got pushed down the pecking order a bit. With this reasoning, I give CMR both credit and blame, which still seems like a fair assessment to me.
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Damn it, McGarity should have tipped away the Hail Mary pass in the Tenn game, he sucks!
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“how programs like Alabama and Ohio State manage to succeed without maintaining enormous reserve accounts.”
The quick answer to your question, Senator…Ohio State Endowment is $3.6 billion, UGA is about $1 billion. This means on any particular year if the athletics budget at OSU has a short fall, it can hit the endowment for a loan and it be a drop in the bucket- UGA does not have that luxury as they depend on the athletics department for injections into its endowment. And Alabama is an unfair comparison because at that institution you have the undergraduate, graduates, alumni base, athletics department, administration, board of regents and state legislature dedicated to winning football games above anything else. That is not the case at UGA and quite frankly never will be.
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I wonder the value of bonds that $30 million is frozen for. I’d bet it’s less than 50%.
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It feels like the entire University system is fubar.
They are consolidating schools at an alarming rate – example GA Southern and Armstrong. Sister is english prof and she hasn’t gotten a raise (or any of her peers) in 9 years. Univ system claims there is no money to be found…
I know that HOPE isn’t causing this but how impactful is this on the University system as a whole?
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I have worked for the university system going on 20 years. The state has gotten into the habit of balancing the budget by taking money away from higher education to spend elsewhere. That’s the primary reason tuition keeps going up. There’s money, that’s not the problem. Priorities are the problem. Even when money does come our way it isn’t spent on salaries.
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UGA athletics: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the reserve.
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+1
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Where is the $36.9 million? and who benefits from having it there?
Doesn’t more winning correlate to more revenue?
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I do not know enough about the finer points of finance to comment on whether a reserve fund – basically a savings account so you can get favorable credit lines – is a good idea or not. But I do hold a basic belief that while money and facilities are nice, I do not believe you can spend your way into championships (well, unless you’re Auburn, and even then you can’t consistently do it). UGA’s weight room is smaller than some others; how many weights do you need? Will building a bigger one make us better? I don’t think that matters as much as Seth implies.
B-M has problems in the way it mismanages resources, like the wealth of athletic talent in this state, and the hiring of coaches (0-2 so far Greg, by your own count), and the way it wants us to be nobly held to a higher standard that not many care about or respect (AJ, TG, etc.). Spending money may be one of those things, but it’s way down on the list.
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It’s one thing to be required to sit on cash because debt agreements require that. My company has restrictions on what we can do with our free cash flows because of our debt structure and that’s completely normal.
That said – it’s completely incompetent management to not reinvest your excess cash back into the business especially since you don’t have shareholders that require a return (or employees to pay!). The fact that they don’t even have a plan in place for the future projects and initiatives they want to address aside from the ones they’re currently working on is completely pathetic.
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Ding ding ding!
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dabo and saban could win anywhere man, get right coach = championships. kirby da man.
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Saban is successful anywhere because he would destroy the UGA.
What’s more, he was given total control of the football program: recruiting, coaching, business administration and public relations. There are coaches at other universities who have similar salaries, like Charlie Weis at Notre Dame and Pete Carroll at the University of Southern California. But no coach, including those in the professional leagues, can match Saban’s combination of money, control and influence. Saban, now entering his second year as the coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, is the most powerful coach in sports.
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0901/092.html
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*the UGA way
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Here’s a link to what Moody’s has to say our our Debt ratings. Note this line in the remarks on Outlook:
The stable outlook on the lease revenue bonds reflects the expectation that USG will service its Public Private Venture (PPV) debt without extraordinary support by the system. It also incorporates the expectation that USG will remain committed to overseeing and managing the PPV program while maintaining stable operations and sizeable financial reserves.
’nuff said.
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Forgot the link: https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-affirms-Aa3-A1-A2-Ratings-for-University-System-of–PR_903354329
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The key phrase there is “without extraordinary support by the system”. That’s the world Morehead is living in and he knew it when he was offered the position.
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The math doesn’t add up. The amount we need in reserve to keep a golden credit rating and what’s in the bank is a wide gap. I’m not advocating that we raid the reserves, but rather loosen the purse strings a bit more in key areas such as marketing. I’d also like to see us dramatically upgrade what we’re willing to pay a head basketball coach and support staff. We’ll never turn that program around until we’re willing to spend the money to get a well recognized coach.
My issues with McGarity have less to do with financial management and more to do with imagination!
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“The amount we need in reserve to keep a golden credit rating and what’s in the bank is a wide gap. ”
Unless your privy to the University’s expected attendance over the next 20 years, the expected amount of debt needed to build facilities to handle this growth and the amount of capital UGA needs to take on this debt while maintaining their credit rating – you don’t know this.
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They should bring out a balance sheet at halftime of the App State game and honor it by having the crowd bask in awe and participate in druid-like chants.
I’ll give them this though…the Georgia Way ain’t going down without a fight.
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Have the Redcoat Band spell out the net present value in the middle of its Ludacris Money Maker medley.
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We can have a rolling surplus counter on the scoreboard. Kinda like a reverse national debt counter.
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whoever got Herschel was going to win Natl Championship. Had nothing to do with admin. All bout da playa.
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Herschel also had a pretty good offensive line to run behind. That didn’t hurt.
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I couldn’t love this comment more. Fantastic work.
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Until you guys establish a direct link between the BM admin and the 8-5 record, you have no traction. Conspiracies are great and all but it really comes down to players and coaches. Seriously, these type of debates make UGA look stupid.
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Number 1 it was the first year.
Number 2, the best 3 programs in the country (Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State) are not run that way. Not even close.
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Number 3, every other major UGA sports program is in the same predicament.
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Ask yourself: could Nick Saban have succeeded at UGA? of course. It’s not the admin. Case closed.
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Ask yourself: Would UGA have paid Nick Saban’s asking price?
Evidence indicates otherwise.
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yes, anyone would have.
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Not a chance under Michael Adams.No way.
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spent da bucks for Kirby’s staff, and $100 mill on indoor + stadium improvements–ya burned.
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Correct. But it should’ve been done years ago. The weight room is still a joke, the baseball was done on the cheap, Stegman just keeps getting lipstick on a pig and we just lost the NCAA Tennis Championships and the indoor courts haven’t been upgraded in 30 years.
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This is stupid. Georgia’s coaching staff salary is in the bottom half of the conference and every other team already had an indoor practice facility.
I’m sure the IP address will show this troll lives somewhere on Selig Circle.
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He didn’t succeed at Michigan State. So he left. Could he have done better or won a national title in Athens, yes. Because he would’ve made the changes necessary, which Richt had no clue and didn’t challenge anything. Kirby is and changes will happen but the board has to recognize the issues and they do not and they have toxic people working in the AD Department and not being held accountable and are being led by a poor communicator and leader. But three other schools have far better situations in the Athletic Department and they happen to be winning the most. They are Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson. FSU is right behind.
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ok senator, I mean atticus. sure you’re not the senator, you sound just like him?
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1-Bottom line the problem is the board. Look up the makeup and bylaws of the board and tell me how a board can be comprised of a large % of people who are receiving paychecks from the university and Morehead. No accountability no challenging of the status quo. Its a joke.
2-How can a non profit hold onto so much money? You keep a reserve fund and then spend everything else in the interest of its mission. Its mission is educating student athletes and winning championships.
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If McGarity blocks Zach Cunningham, we beat Vandy. Damn it McGarity.
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While I understand the Senator thoughts that “firing Richt ought to be tempered by the realization that even were the head coach to be removed, the rest of the athletic department would still be in place, meaning that the problems facing Georgia football were more than just Mark Richt’s management.”
I would also argue that Smart’s hire has increased the push to equalize facilities with other SEC programs, discipline is moving more inline with other SEC programs, and that there is more heat on B-M for their performance. Would we being reading about McGarity as much if Richt won 10 games last year and handed the East over to UF in Jax last year?
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Go back and read my posts at the end of 2014. The McGarity interview with Mark Bradley marked a turning point, long before Kirby Smart’s arrival.
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It may have been a turning point and we can debate on how much Pruitt changed things with his push for the IPF and clashes with B-M. I still believe we are hearing much more now than if Richt had remained.
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Not that anyone cares, but the cost of capital and how that impacts long term growth plans – the kinds of plans that a University should have – is a really big deal. Going down a notch in your credit rating can be very expensive over time and severly impacts your cost of capital. So as much as we’d all like waterfalls and putt putt it’s nice to see they’re actually considering this.
That being said, it sounds like BS that the money in the AA is the backstop in keeping the University’s credit rating…..that seems irresponsible and a little tail wagging the dog to me.
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“So as much as we’d all like waterfalls and putt putt it’s nice to see they’re actually considering this.”
What if we’d like bathrooms and concessions that are not from the 1960s?
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I really do not have a problem with how the finances have been managed. It’s the rest that is a train wreck. We just finished getting donors to cough up
30+ million for an IPF. Why didn’t we do it 2 to 4 years prior? Same with some of the staff people we have hired. I believe it is wise to have a large reserve fund. But I also think it looks like we have no plan other than managing the money well and that is where I find fault in the lack of plan and a sense of urgency to execute it.Then there is the coaching hire that have not exactly been stellar either.
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Investigate and be curious about how successful institutional programs succeed? Yeah. I’m just a normal guy that has served on 2 private school boards (one as a faculty rep, the other as a parent) and it amazed me at how futile it was for me to get anyone to even consider taking a visit to Westminster or Lovett. I even had colleagues from these two schools willing to come in and consult with us in our little town, for free, and I was just looked at as if I were purple..
It’s amazing how people become so territorial, entrenched, whatever….
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