Jamie Pollard letter on falls sports

[clonedude]

It's not the Iowa State Athletic Department's job to try and strike a balance between being safe and maintaining financial viability? What are you even talking about?

If there’s no sports and the AD goes under, then that’s what has to happen. Yes, it sucks, and yes people are going to lose jobs. Millions have already lost jobs, with millions more to come.

There likely will be next to nothing that JP can do to stop it.

This entire country is on the verge of total collapse. ISU football isn’t real high on the priority list I’m afraid.

 

[PSYclone22]

Yeah, athletic programs that are losing incredible amounts of money should definitely find a way to increase their spending even more. I guess if we cancel all sport programs due to a lack of funds, you wont have to worry about colleges not paying players anymore.

Well if lack of funds is the issue I'm sure we'll immediately start seeing student athletes get paid when sports are profitable again next year.


Right?

 

[BCClone]

It's not the Iowa State Athletic Department's job to try and strike a balance between being safe and maintaining financial viability? What are you even talking about?

I'm genuinely curious as to what you want Pollard to do?

Health comes first, but there are other issues that arise that can affect the athletes and others also.

I wonder if people understand that the revenue generated by the athletic department pays for the scholarships of these athletes. How many scholarships do we have? 200? Figuring 30k per scholarship (about half in state and half out of state), that equates to $6MM right there. If sports gets cut for a long time, there is a good probability that those scholarships will be gone along with the jobs that are created with the athletic department, both full and part time. I would assume that the majority of the donations will cease to exist after this year if the athletic department does not have anything this year and next year has any question to it.

This is a situation that could have lasting ramifications as an athletic department, they are trying to find the right balancing place.

 

[Clonefan32]

If there’s no sports and the AD goes under, then that’s what has to happen. Yes, it sucks, and yes people are going to lose jobs. Millions have already lost jobs, with millions more to come.

There likely will be next to nothing that JP can do to stop it.

This entire country is on the verge of total collapse. ISU football isn’t real high on the priority list I’m afraid.

Well this isn't overly dramatic at all...

 

[CloneJD]

If there’s no sports and the AD goes under, then that’s what has to happen. Yes, it sucks, and yes people are going to lose jobs. Millions have already lost jobs, with millions more to come.

There likely will be next to nothing that JP can do to stop it.

This entire country is on the verge of total collapse. ISU football isn’t real high on the priority list I’m afraid.

You might want to sit a few plays out champ.

 

[BCClone]

If there’s no sports and the AD goes under, then that’s what has to happen. Yes, it sucks, and yes people are going to lose jobs. Millions have already lost jobs, with millions more to come.

There likely will be next to nothing that JP can do to stop it.

This entire country is on the verge of total collapse. ISU football isn’t real high on the priority list I’m afraid.

You must have a blood pressure that is around 190/120?

 

[Pseudonym]

But how will spring be any different? Same thing was said in the spring about summer/fall. Same thing. I guess will be said in the spring but the issues will always be the same especially if you are going to allow fans at games.

Looking highly likely there will be widespread vaccinations given prior to Q2 '21.

 

[CloneJD]

Looking highly likely there will be widespread vaccinations given prior to Q2 '21.

According to whom? Once approved distribution will be a huge issue. The idea that that public at large will be vaccinated spring '21 is probably a fantasy.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51665497

 

[Clonefan32]

If there’s no sports and the AD goes under, then that’s what has to happen. Yes, it sucks, and yes people are going to lose jobs. Millions have already lost jobs, with millions more to come.

There likely will be next to nothing that JP can do to stop it.

This entire country is on the verge of total collapse. ISU football isn’t real high on the priority list I’m afraid.

So you never answered me, what is Jamie Pollard supposed to do? Just say "hey, it's inevitable, everyone pack up and go home. Last one out turn off the lights."

His job is to try to find a viable solution. His job is to balance the safety and the financial considerations. There's no right or wrong answer, and that's essentially what he's said thus far. He's just trying to be transparent and say if we don't play, here's what you can expect.

 

[clonedude]

You might want to sit a few plays out champ.

Just keep your heads buried in the sand and we’ll see where that gets us as a country.

 

[isucy86]

I thought it was good. I like how he laid out the costs, and the point about the athletes possibly being better off in Ames was good.

Business isn’t my cup of tea, but I’m wondering if the state could give them a waiver or something on the restriction of not letting them go into debt for operating costs. Not ideal, but considering they can go into debt to keep up with the Joneses in the college sports arms race, I don’t it see it as a big problem.

It easy to say, pay for operating costs with debt. But someone has to buy the debt. I would agree that this is probably a 1 year blip for college athletics, but who knows if having a vaccine is reasonable within a year.

Also, it's not only the Athletic Departments that are going to feel the revenue crunch, but the overall university as well which JP spells out in his letter.

If football doesn't happen, then schools can't really afford the cost of Olympic Sports. But Title IX comes into play. So does can cuts to men's sports like wrestling, golf, cross-country and track & field cut enough costs to pay debt service? Currently football is an 85 full scholarship sport. For a period a time, does that need to be let's say 65 full scholarships? That would allow for a reduction in women's sports as well.

A lot of people focus on the billions that football and basketball bring in from their TV contracts. But the reality is most schools don't bank money because they spend on facility improvements and pay for the hundreds of other scholarship sport athletes.

 

[Clonefan32]

Just keep your heads buried in the sand and we’ll see where that gets us as a country.

...and just keep thinking we can cancel everything and stay home and everything will be hunky-dory on the other side of the pandemic.

I'm not really advocating either way. I can understand the safety concern. I can understand the financial concern. I just get a kick out of people trying to oversimply a very, very complicated issue with an expansive domino effect.

 

[CycloneErik]

You might want to sit a few plays out champ.

He sure isn't wrong. Bad times are coming.

 

[Clonefan32]

I think my favorite COVID person is the "actively hoping things get worse so they can say 'hey, I was right"" bunch.

 

[AuH2O]

I was not surprised for even a moment that a letter decrying that some of us have noted this is more about money than safety then proceeded to focus solely on the money.

Kind of an awkward sentence by JP, but the point remains valid. Everybody understands it is a trade off between money and safety, and save for a handful of arguments, few are really saying otherwise.

But people make that argument as if it is a simple decision, because football isn't essential, and act as if the decision to play is based on some rich guys getting richer, and that's all. Save for Campbell and to a lesser extent Pollard, it's about people having or not having jobs. That is not just within football and the AD, but ISU as a whole and Ames, whose economy is partially dependent on these gamedays.

I'm not saying ISU should have football. I don't know. But there are tons of things we do everyday that are tradeoffs between safety and money/freedom/convenience. Ban driving over 40 mph, alcohol, and added sugar and we probably save several hundreds of thousands of lives each year. None of those things are necessary.

 

[dualthreat]

Well if Pollard were to make these claims on facebook he would be called a monster that loves killing children. Everyone knows you either support 100% online and lockdown or you want young people to die.

No in between. No rational thoughts.

 

[isufbcurt]

Totally agree accounting wise and federal rules. However, at one point in my career ( a long time ago), I worked for an agency that was considered a state agency subdivision in Iowa. We generated all of our operating income through earnings and had little state monetary support, we even paid the state for some administrative resources. If we had a good year, we would have to spend excess, non-committed revenue; otherwise it would go to the state coffers. So we would bust our butts to maintain fiscal discipline, but when the fiscal year ended; would have to turn over any non-committed revenue to the state. So we devised a system whereby we would always have bidders ready and waiting around April 1st, to submit bids on "dream" projects, usually reasonably small equipment purchases or maintenance services to use any excess revenue; get it approved in May, and completed and paid by July 1. There were some exceptions for long term construction, but it was complicated, and usually would have to be planned prior to knowing whether the economy would be good or bad for the year. Because we didn't have reserves, we were forced to budget conservatively on our incomes.

Don't know if the state still does this, but if they do, it could apply to ISU athletics. Maybe that's why our donations go to the foundation, I'm sure they would have an exemption because of endowments.

That is a different situation. State agencies I audited were the same as what you describe because they receive APPROPRIATIONS from the state. If they don't use all their funding the state may not appropriate them that much money the following year.

 

[Bestaluckcy]

Just read the letter from JP. Appreciate his taking the time to send us this. It's was long on facts and absent the fluff and lies we have been getting from our politicians. My bet is our leader will keep us afloat in these rough waters. Just may be a little rough sailing ahead.

 

[SEIOWA CLONE]

see post 92.

The State had a push to get the Athletic departments self sustainable, nothing legally required but strongly pushed.

Once EIU became self sustainable in their athletic department, the pro EIU congressmen started pushing for ISU to do the same. They hoped that it would destroy the ISU sports programs, what they did not factor in was 1) ISU would be self funded within a year, 2) this would kill UNI which will never be self funded, so the idea quickly was dropped.

 

[isutrevman]

Well if lack of funds is the issue I'm sure we'll immediately start seeing student athletes get paid when sports are profitable again next year.


Right?

They already are paid. So they could be paid more, yes.