Jamie Pollard letter on falls sports
- Thread starter Cyclonepride
- Start date
It's all Iowa State's fault by having the most anticipated season in recent history. Something was bound to happen.
When did flattening the curve to not overwhelm hospitals become how many new cases there are. Testing is up - a lot- and the positive rate for test has gone down since April. So, I guess my question is: are there really more cases out there, or are we just finding more now?
It was the strongest part of his message and I thought JP had good reasoning for why he feels that way.
The university is going to be taking its own financial hits from this, not only directly from increased costs and student enrollment drops that might occur, but they're probably anticipating a hit from the legislature when it comes time to fill the budget hole created by this virus
So there's no way in that environment the AD will just be handed money. Perhaps a loan?
Unfortunately this is largely an issue of self making - not just for ISU, but every program. There should never have been an arms race to see who can spend the most to have the largest scoreboard, who can renovate their stadiums the most in a 10 year plan, or who can get to the top of the salary ranks first. It has been a waste of billions of dollars worth of donations and revenue collectively That could have been used much more wisely.
Regardless, that is a society we’ve created and when anything goes wrong, it all comes crashing down. Unfortunately, the only real fix is legislative. I don’t know why schools aren’t pushing to have legislation that allows for operating with debt for the next 10 years and remove the need to be largely net neutral fiscally. Give them the option to create short-term debt reduction solutions to get through a rough year or two and slowly build back up to profitability.
If schools could sell bonds, or do unique things - along with scaling back the arms race of capital expenditures for the next decade - this could actually be about public health instead of money. Instead, the same people that have begged for every dollar possible over the past 10 years are trying to guilt-trip the rest of us to keep pouring hard earned dollars into a never ending waste of money.
And no, I don’t blame Pollard - his message was good and necessary and he has done everything possible to keep ISU competitive. It’s more a rant about that constant need to have the shiniest helmets and biggest scoreboards that continues to skyrocket the costs for us fans. And then when things go bad, we’re no better off than the AD and can’t exactly keep forking over paychecks as donations.
Regardless, that is a society we’ve created and when anything goes wrong, it all comes crashing down. Unfortunately, the only real fix is legislative. I don’t know why schools aren’t pushing to have legislation that allows for operating with debt for the next 10 years and remove the need to be largely net neutral fiscally. Give them the option to create short-term debt reduction solutions to get through a rough year or two and slowly build back up to profitability.
If schools could sell bonds, or do unique things - along with scaling back the arms race of capital expenditures for the next decade - this could actually be about public health instead of money. Instead, the same people that have begged for every dollar possible over the past 10 years are trying to guilt-trip the rest of us to keep pouring hard earned dollars into a never ending waste of money.
And no, I don’t blame Pollard - his message was good and necessary and he has done everything possible to keep ISU competitive. It’s more a rant about that constant need to have the shiniest helmets and biggest scoreboards that continues to skyrocket the costs for us fans. And then when things go bad, we’re no better off than the AD and can’t exactly keep forking over paychecks as donations.
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Yes the number of people getting the virus and dying from it is dropping, but that number has nothing to do with the people getting the disease. Right now if ONE person on the team tests positive, the WHOLE team has to stop all activities for 14 days, it does not matter that the person recovers, what does matter is that team cannot play for those 14 days. We all hope that person will recover, but how many are dying from the virus is less important that number of those affected by it for playing sports.
"Not sure what this addresses to the posters question. Would under 200 cases be the magic number, under 100?
What are schools/colleges/businesses prepared to operate with? 0 is ideal, but also unrealistic since the virus is already here and doing what viruses do."
No one has stated what those numbers are that I have seen, according to the CDC guidelines the numbers of new cases in state must be DROPPING to go ahead with schools and sports. Dropping by how much and to what level is not answered, nor is over how long of a sample size. Dropping for a day, a week or month, those guidelines have not been set, nor when its considered an number of cases per state.
Some people don’t like the connotation that comes with the simple phrase revenue generation. It sounds kind of heartless when in reality that revenue generation is what is providing people with jobs/health insurance and opportunity.
Agree and those should be the conversations being had, but they are not. Especially dealing with a virus with no cure and with it likely being around for the foreseeable future. 0 cases, 0 deaths in not attainable anytime soon or ever
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.
Now would be a great time to start looking at paying players. They're now risking both their brains by playing college football and their lungs / respiratory system.
The scientific evidence of both brain trauma in football and the impacts of COVID-19 matter a lot here.
Hopefully the athletic departments and NCAA don't use the recession and COVID as a reason to continue to not pay students.
The scientific evidence of both brain trauma in football and the impacts of COVID-19 matter a lot here.
Hopefully the athletic departments and NCAA don't use the recession and COVID as a reason to continue to not pay students.
Translation. We really really need money and will do anything we can to put people's lives and health at risk if it means we can get at least some of the sweet sweet cash.
Forget about the fact these are supposed to be students first and are supposed to be amateur's like the NCAA has been arguing for years. These kids were brought here to make money for us and god dammit they are going to make us money.
Forget about the fact these are supposed to be students first and are supposed to be amateur's like the NCAA has been arguing for years. These kids were brought here to make money for us and god dammit they are going to make us money.
Hi Curt! I know you are good accountant (we have met) and I think you are trying to make the point that reserves are held inside of non-profits and your post shows that point well, but I disagree with your presentation. Someone not familiar with accounting and looking at the ISU financial statement would indicate that there is a bunch of unrestricted cash and investments laying around.
#2 above is actually unrestricted capital assets like buildings, land, and equipment. it is not liquid.
The other point people need to understand is the assets of the Foundation are included in this balance sheet and therefore the cash and investments appear to come mainly from the Foundation. There is about $40 million of cash in the University accounts, but that is probably smaller than what you would expect for a $1.3-$1.4 billion enterprise.
I agree with your point about reserves, I just don't want people to think the University has that much unrestricted resources available to solve this potential problem outside of the Foundation.
I think you're defining "revenue generation" as though Pollard's going to pocket off this or something.
Acting like not playing is not going to have real world impacts on athletes, peoples jobs, local economy, etc. is short sighted. It's not just greed and money, it's keeping people employed and keeping the athletic department and individual programs viable.
This is so oversimplified. I don't understand what's so hard to understand about the fact people will lose jobs if there's no football. There will be athletic programs that are cut. There will be jobs within the athletic department that will be terminated. There will be pains in the local economy.
Now whether or not that is important enough to justify playing is a whole different question. But acting like this is about Iowa State trying to grab some "sweet sweet cash" is absurd.
This isn't about trying to cash in on a windfall, it's about trying to stay financially viable.
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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.
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That’s not ISU’s Athletics Department’s job. If they need unemployment, that’s someone else’s responsibility.
People are losing their jobs all over the country right now and a lot more to come sadly.
I’ve been trying to say just how bad this is going to be for a long time now, but not too many wanted to believe it. I think JP is starting to realize it.
ISU football will soon be the least of all our worries.... including JP.
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?
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