Hearing gross on his

[Alsacs]

Where did the $150M in debt come from? I've never seen any figure like that tossed about. We see the annual earnings that the school makes from sports. It appears we more than break even every year. We are one of the top earners in college sports. Did you get that supposed debt figure from anywhere, or is it just speculation? It's not like we built a football stadium recently.

Read post #84 by Bees I am going by that figure.

"While other athletic programs may be carrying light debt, Syracuse’s basketball program owed about $149 million. Under Chancellor Nancy Cantor, the debt has risen to $396.9 million in 2011-2013. Major donors have made up most of the debt, but Syracuse borrowed money to cover the rest, according to Syracuse.com."

The BoT had to have a real reason to slow down the IPF project. They haven't done anything to hurt athletics. We were going through a Chancellor search and they probably went through the AD office books and saw all the debt we had. Gross does seem like the guy who is more than willingly to be generous and put it on the credit card. I like Dr. Gross and his a great guy, but our fundraising sucks and the AD office has always spent a lot of $$$ during his time. Gross has incentives in his contract for conference, national championships, top 25 finishes in the Director's Cup he has spent to improve athletics, but it has been a benefit to himself as well.

 

[Millhouse]

I think with Gait, there was the idea that he could be the men's coach-in-waiting if Desko ever falls down in the job.

that is a very expensive way to hire a new coach, especially when a zillion coaches would do human sacrifice to get that gig.

has there ever been a coach in waiting who coached womens sports prior?

 

[SmilinBob]

that is a very expensive way to hire a new coach, especially when a zillion coaches would do human sacrifice to get that gig.

has there ever been a coach in waiting who coached womens sports prior?

Yes...Flood, current coach at Rutgers.

 

[cuseinchina]

Actually, having worked in education for over 30 years now, yes, BOTs do have items they give to a President to address or bring back recommendations on how they will be addressed or research for them and get back to them on what they find so they can determine how to proceed.

And, of course, Presidents have items they bring forward to the BOTs to keep them informed on certain topics that will include their recommendations on how to proceed whether that be by a BOT vote or involve giving the President the authority to act on the issue as the President sees fit.

BOT general policies are suppose to be public and those policies, along with the goals and missions of the university; the planning, resource allocation, and institutional renewal; leadership and governance; administration; integrity; and then institutional assessment of all of these items are the first seven standards the accrediting agency needs to confirm are being met for the institution to continue to be accredited. The accrediting team will always meet with the BOT as part of their investigation.

BOTs are not for show and their main purpose is in terms of goals and missions. Rarely should they get involved with the day-to-day stuff, but when it comes to athletics overall that does appear to be an exception at many institutions.

In this regard though, if it were a goal of the BOT it could be something as simple as they think too much is being spent on athletics and take care of it.

Cheers,
Neil

Sure...but it's always soft/vague/squishy sort of directives because you need to drive consensus among a large group of people with differing backgrounds and motivations. This is part of why corporate structure tends to work better than non profit structure but also can face 'agency issues' (corruption) - one has too much governance the other not enough.

 

[IthacaMatt]

that is a very expensive way to hire a new coach, especially when a zillion coaches would do human sacrifice to get that gig.

has there ever been a coach in waiting who coached womens sports prior?

I look at his hiring as an insurance policy. Maybe that's not a prudent use of funds, but Gait had no real experience before he got this gig, if I recall correctly.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Read post #84 by Bees I am going by that figure.

"While other athletic programs may be carrying light debt, Syracuse’s basketball program owed about $149 million. Under Chancellor Nancy Cantor, the debt has risen to $396.9 million in 2011-2013. Major donors have made up most of the debt, but Syracuse borrowed money to cover the rest, according to Syracuse.com."

The BoT had to have a real reason to slow down the IPF project. They haven't done anything to hurt athletics. We were going through a Chancellor search and they probably went through the AD office books and saw all the debt we had. Gross does seem like the guy who is more than willingly to be generous and put it on the credit card. I like Dr. Gross and his a great guy, but our fundraising sucks and the AD office has always spent a lot of $$$ during his time. Gross has incentives in his contract for conference, national championships, top 25 finishes in the Director's Cup he has spent to improve athletics, but it has been a benefit to himself as well.

Let me ask again - how in the world could the sports program have gotten $400M in the red? Seriously, where was all that money supposedly spent? We should have the best GD facilities in the ACC with that kind of dough.

I mean, Maryland was supposedly "only" $50M in debt, which caused them to change conferences. I wonder where in the world such a figure came from. We don't pay squat to Boeheim. We built the Melo Center, we spruced up the locker rooms, but come on. I find that figure hard to believe.

Edit: Excerpt from a Post-Standard article about a year ago:

According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis, Syracuse balances its athletics budget through an all-sources model using various resources including university support, restricted funds carry-over and reserve balances.

The latest numbers Syracuse supplied to the US Department of Education are for the reporting year that ran from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012 and show a profit of about $4.1 million.

Expenses: $69,187,052.
Revenue: $73,287,687.

"We're balancing, but it's always been a struggle," Gross said. "We do some creative things to keep the donors going that we won't have to depend as being as creative going forward now with the ACC. We have a little bit more solid base as far as the finances go. We feel really good about our budget this year."

 

[Alsacs]

Let me ask again - how in the world could the sports program have gotten $400M in the red? Seriously, where was all that money supposedly spent? We should have the best GD facilities in the ACC with that kind of dough.

IMO they cooked the books for tax purposes somewhere. I don't believe charter planes, coaching staff recruiting trips, paid official visits, 5 star hotels, paying for the Melo Center construction, coaching staff offices, players stipends on the road, and coaching staff salaries could get the deficit that high. However, if the SU AD "paid" for renting the Carrier Dome and had to incur a lot of the expense for operating the Dome and the workers who put the floor down and the electricity to run the place the expenses could rise. I think the SU AD legal dept probably figured some tax loophole by spending the money here they could qualify for deductions there type of scheme.

I agree with your premise though. I eventually want to run for the SU BOT so I should find out this information from people I know. I worked with the SU BoT thru SGA when I was a student. Its how I became friendly with former Chancellor Cantor's Daughter who was going to Wisconsin at the time and my SU GF at the time was sorta her SU student liaison.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Actually, Gross has declared for the NBA draft.

He gone!

 

[rrlbees]

Let me ask again - how in the world could the sports program have gotten $400M in the red? Seriously, where was all that money supposedly spent? We should have the best GD facilities in the ACC with that kind of dough. I mean, Maryland was supposedly "only" $50M in debt, which caused them to change conferences. I wonder where in the world such a figure came from. We don't pay squat to Boeheim. We built the Melo Center, we spruced up the locker rooms, but come on. I find that figure hard to believe. Edit: Excerpt from a Post-Standard article about a year ago: According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis, Syracuse balances its athletics budget through an all-sources model using various resources including university support, restricted funds carry-over and reserve balances. The latest numbers Syracuse supplied to the US Department of Education are for the reporting year that ran from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012 and show a profit of about $4.1 million. Expenses: $69,187,052. Revenue: $73,287,687. "We're balancing, but it's always been a struggle," Gross said. "We do some creative things to keep the donors going that we won't have to depend as being as creative going forward now with the ACC. We have a little bit more solid base as far as the finances go. We feel really good about our budget this year."

I can't reconcile those numbers either. I think it is poorly worded. It's not debt really because of donations. I think it is some running number and what it would be with zero donations.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Amazing how NBA and NFL teams make tons of money while paying players while colleges use free labor and lose money. Something is rotten in Denmark.

This post will probably get lost in the shuffle, but the above is a GREAT point.

 

[rrlbees]

Amazing how NBA and NFL teams make tons of money while paying players while colleges use free labor and lose money. Something is rotten in Denmark.

The revenue is off the charts. I remember an article a year or more ago about the NFL. Revenue was $10B+ and player salaries were $5B+.

 

[ClamOtto]

Sounds like we're confusing debts and deficits here. Even if the basketball program ran an annual operating deficit (which I don't think it does) and paid for capital outlays like the Melo center exclusively with debt (which I don't think they did) it's still hard to imagine they could run up $149 million in debt. Just to put it in perspective, you'd have to run a $5 million annual deficit for 30 years in a row to have it add up to $150 million in debt. the melo Center cost about $15 mil to build, so we're still not even close.

 

[orangefog]

Sounds like we're confusing debts and deficits here. Even if the basketball program ran an annual operating deficit (which I don't think it does) and paid for capital outlays like the Melo center exclusively with debt (which I don't think they did) it's still hard to imagine they could run up $149 million in debt. Just to put it in perspective, you'd have to run a $5 million annual deficit for 30 years in a row to have it add up to $150 million in debt. the melo Center cost about $15 mil to build, so we're still not even close.

My wife could do it.

 

[Millhouse]

This post will probably get lost in the shuffle, but the above is a GREAT point.

pro sports are more popular.

 

[sutomcat]

Read post #84 by Bees I am going by that figure.

"While other athletic programs may be carrying light debt, Syracuse’s basketball program owed about $149 million. Under Chancellor Nancy Cantor, the debt has risen to $396.9 million in 2011-2013. Major donors have made up most of the debt, but Syracuse borrowed money to cover the rest, according to Syracuse.com."

The BoT had to have a real reason to slow down the IPF project. They haven't done anything to hurt athletics. We were going through a Chancellor search and they probably went through the AD office books and saw all the debt we had. Gross does seem like the guy who is more than willingly to be generous and put it on the credit card. I like Dr. Gross and his a great guy, but our fundraising sucks and the AD office has always spent a lot of $$$ during his time. Gross has incentives in his contract for conference, national championships, top 25 finishes in the Director's Cup he has spent to improve athletics, but it has been a benefit to himself as well.

I found the source of this very strange sounding paragraph here. The authors are a couple of high school students who really don't belong in high school.

The debt being referenced is the total debt for the university, which indeed rose dramatically under Cantor.

The basketball program has consistently been one of the most profitable programs in the country since the Carrier Dome opened and it surely the most consistent source of profit for the university. No idea where they got the $149 million number from or how they got so confused that they blamed a program that they rightly named as hugely profitable for building up a huge dept. I blame this one on the use of lead paint in the older houses in New Haven.

Anyway, ignore that paragraph. It is arguably the dumbest thing any student has ever written in the history of New England high schools. This explains a lot about some posters I know on The Boneyard.

 

[anomander]

Disagree with this. I take it as a source of pride that we have improved our overall athletic program over the last 10 years. Every University playing big time college sports has the same issue of subsidation of the non-Olympic sports by football and bball. The issue isn't unique to us. I'm proud that we aren't a one-trick pony and are national players in multiple sports. Daryl Gross has done an excellent job in this area. If it means we're spending some money to do so, good on us. And last time I checked, last year we were 10 million in the black as an athletic department. Lets not pretend we're a Rutgers and we have a 30 million annual hole needed to be filled.

I hope the TGD rumors are just that, rumors. Overall, he'd been a major plus for this athletic department.

i'm not saying strip it so it's a bare bones budget, but i am saying get it in line with the rest of the ACC. I remember reading our non-revenue budgets are the highest %, and our Football/Basketball are the lowest % in comparison to the rest of the ACC. Sorry, but that makes no sense.

 

[AZOrange]

I don't even know who Jensen is...but holy these guy are making an absurd amount of money. Does The AD fund itself completely?

 

[GoSU96]

Do we know everything on how the whole budget and spending works? Gets something I found that compares around 2008 to 2013. Not completely sure of it's meaning. And this is just basketball.

"While other athletic programs may be carrying light debt, Syracuse’s basketball program owed about $149 million. Under Chancellor Nancy Cantor, the debt has risen to $396.9 million in 2011-2013. Major donors have made up most of the debt, but Syracuse borrowed money to cover the rest, according to Syracuse.com."

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/03/syracuse_universitys_debt_more.html

Nowhere in that article does it mention athletics spending, where did you get that from.

"Alper and Lou Marcoccia, SU’s chief financial officer, stressed that SU borrows only for long-term building projects, not to pay day-to-day expenses. The total interest and payments amount to just 2 percent of SU’s annual budget, Marcoccia said: about $20 million out of a $1 billion budget.

“That is a reasonable benchmark,” Marcoccia said.

Cantor declined comment.

Among similar universities, SU’s debt is slightly larger than the average of $348 million. SU spends a smaller percentage of its budget on debt, though – the average is 4.6 percent."

The school is financing capital investment, something that happens every day all around the world, and makes sense when you can get financing terms that are that are basically giving the money away. How does it make any sense to say the Basketball Program owes $149M to anyone?

The athletic department is not running on borrowed funds and I'm unaware of any athletic department capital spending that would run up to that number, let alone basketball specific investment.

 

[rrlbees]

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/03/syracuse_universitys_debt_more.html Nowhere in that article does it mention athletics spending, where did you get that from. "Alper and Lou Marcoccia, SU’s chief financial officer, stressed that SU borrows only for long-term building projects, not to pay day-to-day expenses. The total interest and payments amount to just 2 percent of SU’s annual budget, Marcoccia said: about $20 million out of a $1 billion budget. “That is a reasonable benchmark,” Marcoccia said. Cantor declined comment. Among similar universities, SU’s debt is slightly larger than the average of $348 million. SU spends a smaller percentage of its budget on debt, though – the average is 4.6 percent." The school is financing capital investment, something that happens every day all around the world, and makes sense when you can get financing terms that are that are basically giving the money away. How does it make any sense to say the Basketball Program owes $149M to anyone? The athletic department is not running on borrowed funds and I'm unaware of any athletic department capital spending that would run up to that number, let alone basketball specific investment.

Read the whole thread. Tom already pointed out the error in the article.

 

[GoSU96]

i'm not saying strip it so it's a bare bones budget, but i am saying get it in line with the rest of the ACC. I remember reading our non-revenue budgets are the highest %, and our Football/Basketball are the lowest % in comparison to the rest of the ACC. Sorry, but that makes no sense.

Where do you get that from?

According to publicly available information SU has the highest percentage of basketball expenses vs total department expenses and 22nd highest football, and that is in reference to all of D-1. Obviously the percentages are effected by how expenses are allocated, but that is the only data available that I know of.

 

[GoSU96]

I found the source of this very strange sounding paragraph here. The authors are a couple of high school students who really don't belong in high school.

The debt being referenced is the total debt for the university, which indeed rose dramatically under Cantor.

The basketball program has consistently been one of the most profitable programs in the country since the Carrier Dome opened and it surely the most consistent source of profit for the university. No idea where they got the $149 million number from or how they got so confused that they blamed a program that they rightly named as hugely profitable for building up a huge dept. I blame this one on the use of lead paint in the older houses in New Haven.

Anyway, ignore that paragraph. It is arguably the dumbest thing any student has ever written in the history of New England high schools. This explains a lot about some posters I know on The Boneyard.

What is the source article, just curious.

Never mind, found it. - Yikes

 

[Brian Orange]

Gross was very good for Syracuse and will be a real loss. He was the right person at the right time - thought big, outside the box, etc - stuff that Syracuse and the community is not known for. Hence right person at the right time. I think SU was a bit stale. He changed that, for better or worse. I don't think he was every truly accepted for various reasons and I think that's a shame.

Regardless, on Gross' watch Syracuse was saved from the Big East and went to the ACC. We have no idea how much Gross was responsible for this move. But it's a bit like being the president when the economy is strong, you get credit for it whether it was your doing or not.

 

[Alsacs]

I know when Chancellor Cantor bought those building in downtown Syracuse for the Art students we spent A LOT of money on those buildings. We didn't get them cheap. That is stuff I am sure Cantor did during her entire regime that increased of debt.

I am glad that 149 million figure wasn't in the AD office because as ItachaMatt said that number would be extremely high.

 

[OttoMets]

I know when Chancellor Cantor bought those building in downtown Syracuse for the Art students we spent A LOT of money on those buildings. We didn't get them cheap. That is stuff I am sure Cantor did during her entire regime that increased of debt...

Chancy Nancy spent like a drunken sailor, but SU bought the Warehouse for only $1.6 million. I'm sure Gluckman Mayner gave a big discount on the renovation, as they did with the new law building, so this probably wasn't a very expensive project.

 

[Lawrinson14]

Chancy Nancy spent like a drunken sailor, but SU bought the Warehouse for only $1.6 million. I'm sure Gluckman Mayner gave a big discount on the renovation, as they did with the new law building, so this probably wasn't a very expensive project.

When I was leaving campus, construction was going on everywhere:

- The life science building, which is an absolute monstrosity and had to cost tens of millions.
- The School of management
- Ernie Davis Dorms
- Newhouse 3

These building alone had to run the school hundreds of millions.