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“[T]he stadium has incurred a debt of $35 million of its own, separate from the annual $15 million operating deficit. This fact is disturbing because the university announced in 2011 that it had raised $40 million in pledges for the $60 million stadium and was attempting to have it funded entirely by private funds.”

Piece of cake. Everyone loves football. I’m sure the money will appear any day now.

Margaret Soltan, February 15, 2015 9:25AM
Posted in: sport

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One Response to ““[T]he stadium has incurred a debt of $35 million of its own, separate from the annual $15 million operating deficit. This fact is disturbing because the university announced in 2011 that it had raised $40 million in pledges for the $60 million stadium and was attempting to have it funded entirely by private funds.””

  1. theprofessor Says:

    Ah, yes, pledges. I have seen many a question over the next hare-brained Gilligan building project deflected with the old “We have about half the money pledged and are expecting to secure pledges for the rest.” What this means in real life is, “We actually have only 10-20% of the funds in hand, and another 20% promised in totally non-binding pledges that will be payable over the course of the next five (or ten) years. We are expecting the rest in the same way as most Christians are expecting the Apocalypse–some day, but not any time soon. In the meantime, we will execute the Gilligan Two-Step, and secure the needed cash that the contractors will demand by a “bridge financing” loan. We will not actually count the interest on said loans as part of the project cost, though. Then, although you are supposed to get the idea that we will pay down the principal on the bridge loan with the pledge money coming in, we will actually use that money however we effing please, because we will have rolled the bridge loan into our long-term debt.”

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