Showing posts with label UMass FBS football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UMass FBS football. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Home Is Where The Alcohol Is

AFD North Station, overlooking UMass

If UMass needs alcohol to sell the football team then perhaps they should think twice about how viable the game is as a stand alone enterprise.

Homecoming weekend should be about more than just alcohol.

 Lot 22 was ground zero for tailgating

McGuirk Stadium 6:00 PM Saturday

17 out of 27 "emergency" runs (63%) to UMass were for excessive alcohol intake, aka ETOH

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

License Plate Stall



Unless the UMass Alumni Association gets lucky enough to have a meme or YouTube video go viral, the total circulation of 3,000 specialty license plates by October 1st is looking about as likely as a winning football season.

Currently, after 20 months of sales efforts, only 1554 plates are on the road -- only 54 over the minimum number required by the Registry in order to have convicts crank out the plates. 

Ah, if only somebody can get a picture of Aaron Hernandez working on one.

But the Registry also requires 3,000 be on the road by year two, a deadline fast approaching.
 
The Alumni Association had to put up a $100,000 bond guaranteeing the 3,000 sales within two years, or the Registry can discontinue the plate and keep the bond money.   

These days the Alumni Association has trouble even giving them away.  A recent offer to pay the $40 plate fee plus $20 swap fee resulted in less than 50 takers.  The University makes $28/plate, but certainly not when they give them away.

So even if all 1,554 plates were legitimately paid for by exuberant alumni, that's only $43,512 into UMass coffers -- less than half the amount of the $100,000 bond they stand to lose.

With a target base of 120,000 graduates living in-state (almost all of them drivers) you would think selling 3,000 plate to 2.5% of them would be easier than selling all-you-can-drink Solo beer cups at a frat party.

Heck, I would have purchased one if "Amherst" appeared somewhere in the logo.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

And Another One Gone


 UMass Football coach  Charley Molnar heads to the unemployment line

In addition to the $6,312,074 UMass FBS gamble is projected to cost this Fiscal Year (on top of the $5,644,099 it cost/lost last year) you can now add another cool $1 million to buy out the remaining three years of coach Molnar's contract and a couple other coaches who were pushed into falling upon their swords.

And yes, remember it also cost a cool $1 million to buy out the previous coach Kevin Morris and staff, when UMass brought in Molnar to make the BIG jump to FBS.  A million here and a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money.

Maybe higher authorities in the food chain should start fearing the thud of an ax.


Twitter has the solution





As does Reddit

Friday, December 13, 2013

"Obviously a Major Malfunction"

UMass McGuirk Stadium expansion (20% over original budget estimates, naturally)


The only thing I question in the "Failure To Launch" minority report issued by members of a break away group from the Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football is the title.

Umass BIG time football indeed launched but, like the 1986 Challenger space shuttle mission, it quickly ran into major difficulties. 

According to the "official" report of the Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football, the Big Business  of Umass football in FY13 cost $7,639,732 in overhead, took in $1,995,633 in revenues for a loss of $5,644,099 in taxpayer dollars.  Up from FY11 $3,100,000 the (pre-FBS) season two years before. 

And this year (FY14) it will be even worse, with total losses projected at $6,312,074. 

Let's see, with the team's 2-22 record that works out to $6 million per victory.  And yes, UMass football has always been a loser economically, but even if you factor in  FY11 losses (before going FBS) the total increase in subsidy these past two FBS years is $8,606,833 or $4,303,416 per victory.

Reminds me of comedian Tommy Smothers line during the height of the Vietnam war protests when he calculated the average cost per Viet Cong killed thus far in the ill-fated war was just over $600,000. "Heck, we could buy them off for a lot less than that."

So you have to wonder if the intangible benefits of BIG time football -- prestige and ego -- are worth $12 million?  And as an "opportunity cost," weight how many deserving students could be afforded the opportunity for a life altering education via scholarships.

Or even if you simply wish to keep the money within the realm of athletics, you could revive men’s tennis, gymnastics, or women’s volleyball and gymnastics, all cut in 2006 to save money.



Friday, January 4, 2013

Under Reported Story Of The Year

 UMass Amherst Alumni Association, Memorial Hall

UMass football ascension to F.B.S. becoming a financial black hole -- not to mention the embarrassing 1-11 competitive result -- has received plenty of coverage lately, with major long-form stories in the Boston Globe and most recently their BIG sister publication, the New York Times.

And with losses of $8 million (if you count capital improvements, which the town of Amherst never does with its municipal golf course), deservedly so.

But another annual multi-million dollar expenditure of tax money -- $949,789 in cash, plus another $1 million of "in kind" overhead support -- on the UMass/Amherst campus stays under the radar when it comes to media scrutiny.  Probably because the story is a complicated one.

Last April, after filing a public documents request, I first published the Bentz, Whaley, Flessner report analyzing the current state of the UMass Amherst Alumni Association, a report costing taxpayers $24,5000. According to that report, "The situation is viewed as complex and dysfunctional."

The volunteer board of directors "must cease the in-fighting and hostility that has been described as its mode of operation of over a decade."

The board of directors consists of 18 elected members, 12 appointed by the President, 2 student representatives, 3 ex officio directors and one alumni networks representative.  Although if you go to their webpage, only 16 elected members are listed.

Yes, as I said, complicated.  Or perhaps "confusing" is a better word.

The alumni membership, of which I am one, now consists of all 235,000 living Umass Amherst graduates, but only those who donate a minimum of $50 can vote (talk about "pay to play") in the Board of Directors election, usually held in the spring. Last year about 2,000 were eligible or only 1% of the total membership, down from 5,000 in 2010.

Their most recent minutes June 4th, approved at the October 27, 2012 meeting, had only one item on the agenda (not that there was a published agenda), which sounds like a change in direction:  phasing out "volunteers" and turning over more responsibility to the paid staff of 19 UMass employees.

One has to wonder if that paradigm shift goes all the way to the top to including staff oversight by the Board of Directors -- all of whom are "volunteers"? 

Not that they seem concerned, however, as the motion was passed unanimously by the 19 (out of 34) voting members "present". 

Interestingly, they unanimously support  "becoming more professionally driven and less reliant on the use of volunteers to address operational matters" but do so in a "Conference Call" meeting that clearly violates Mass Open Meeting Law.

The Attorney General has only recently allowed "remote participation," but one major caveat is that those who participate remotely do not count towards a quorum.  In other words, a majority of bodies must be physically present in the room in order to have a legitimate committee meeting or vote on any item.

The definition of a "public body" subject to Open Meeting Law includes any "multiple-member board, commission, committee or subcommittee within the executive or legislative branch or within any county, district, city, region or town, however created, elected, appointed or otherwise constituted, established to serve a public purpose." 

The  Bentz, Whaley, Flessner report cites the UMAAA "as both a University department as well as a 501-(c) (3) organization."


In journalism the expression "phoned in a story" means the resulting article is the byproduct of less than optimal efforts of the reporter and newspaper to "cover" an event.

The same sentiment certainly applies for phoned in, closed, bureaucratic committee meetings -- except in this case, "cover" has a completely different meaning.



Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Expensive Losses


UMass McGuirk Stadium (pre-expansion)


Hard to say if the initial 12 game football season that resulted in 11 losses made a major difference in the whopping financial losses this year for UMass football, but it certainly did not help.

At $8 million dollars in red ink (at least it's somewhat in the spirit of the holiday season) that comes out to $727,000 in losses per loss.  That a lot of loss.  Not to mention the hit Amherst businesses have taken ("intangible costs") now that "home" games are 100 miles away.

Earlier this evening the UMass Faculty Senate barely beat back a challenge from members wishing to vote on an motion to have the flagship University football program withdraw from the Mid-American Conference (MAC).  The motion required two-thirds support just to get to the point of being allowed on the floor for a discussion and vote, but failed.

Only narrowly, however, as it received 60% support.

While the Athletic Department only wants to acknowledge $715,068 in losses due to lousy attendance, the watchdog Ad Hoc committee casts a wider net, bringing up all the hidden costs.  Advertising alone was another $700,000 -- all of it paid for by External Relations using taxpayer money.

Throw in the $2 million for renovations to McGuirk Stadium, and Title 1X mandated gender equity scholarships of $260,105 plus the original FY13 Football budget of $7,160,339 and your grand total comes to just over $10 million spent on BIG time football.  Offset by gate receipts and sponsorships of almost $2 million, leaving a loss of $8,220,461.  On a football team with a 1-11 record.

Or ... many, many scholarships for a bevy of deserving students -- the serious ones who keep partying to a minimum.