So pause a moment to think what University of New Mexico instructor Daniel Barto’s daily life at that benighted school (in a benighted state) is like. He opens the paper and reads the following opening paragraphs:
University of New Mexico athletics has projected ticket revenue for the current 2017-18 fiscal year that it didn’t come close to reaching this past season.
And this comes after the recent retirement of its athletic director, the launch of two state investigations related to … possible fiscal mismanagement and the reality of failing to balance eight of the department’s past 10 budgets.
In fact, UNM has budgeted to spend about $1 million more from ticket sales this year than it actually brought in last year from its three revenue generating sports of football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball.
Read the whole thing. It gets more delusional with every paragraph. Barto reads things like this every day.
This blog has spent years documenting wild wacko wastrel UNM. (The link includes non UNM posts – jump around.). If you want to know what its like to actually belong to the UNM community, read Barto’s letter in the student newspaper. After reviewing the serious financial difficulties of many people on campus, he notes:
This [financial difficulty] pertains to us all — except one certain delusional department that seems to think that the hard math of budgeting does not apply to them.
I am talking about the Athletics Department, the department that has the most paid administrators of any other on main campus.
This department was headed by director Paul Krebs (salary $319,262) until he “resigned” after committing fraud. Paul used UNM money to fund a personal golfing trip to Scotland. This trip ended up costing New Mexico taxpayers even more, because Paul failed to get enough people to lock in for the discount group travel rate.
Pathetic Paul, so much money to embezzle but too few friends to even embezzle with.
Of course the Athletics Department claims, “We bring in the most money!”
But this is a lie of omission. The department wastes more money than it brings in. According to the ABQ Journal, since 2007 the Athletics Department’s expenses have exceed[ed] their revenue every year except two. As of 2016, the department has a $1,525,257 deficit that the University must cover.
Barto is angry. Of course he concedes that the state of New Mexico itself is one of the most dissolute in the nation; he understands that public universities in our most corrupt states are royally screwed. But he still can’t help hoping for things to change.
His letter hasn’t yet attracted any comments. If it does, UD feels pretty certain they’ll be abusive, semi-literate, and deeply deluded.
September 5th, 2017 at 4:54PM
elsewhere in the admin of the life of the mind
http://www.thedailybeast.com/corey-lewandowski-has-been-fired-from-the-one-america-news-network
http://iop.harvard.edu/about/newsletter-press-release/institute-politics-harvard-kennedy-school-announces-fall-2017
September 8th, 2017 at 7:27AM
Our athletics department has played this game for many years. It is difficult for them to mis-budget their expenses, since 95%+ of those are entirely predictable. Revenue, on the other hand…. OK, let’s project 20% better season ticket sales and 30% better walk-up sales…and our core boosters will put down their canes and portable oxygen machines long enough to write us 25% higher checks than the year before…and advertisers will buy 100% more commercials on the obscure network our away games are televised on. When all these fail, we will cover the increased athletics deficit, cut academics even more, hire a few more administrators and diversity coordinators, and then repeat the process next year.
September 8th, 2017 at 10:42AM
Along with what the professor stated, you need the myth that athletes are doing non stop public service, going to class, which helps to keep all that tax free money rolling along. But none of that can be done without huge public relations management. Best example of that is the infamous Notre Dame stunt, in which their All American linebacker’s grandma and non existent girlfriend died within hours of each other, and supernaturally powered him to football glory. That couldn’t have worked without a compliant mass media….