Kansas and Louisiana might want in on that conversation. California's budget situation looks pretty rosy compared to those two. There's plenty of idiocy going on in the low tax states as well.
CAL Athletics in Dire straits
- Thread starter Gorm
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Kansas and Louisiana might want in on that conversation. California's budget situation looks pretty rosy compared to those two. There's plenty of idiocy going on in the low tax states as well.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
Wisconsin, too.
In terms of that athletic budget and its issues, we're all going to see that when the football bubble bursts and the TV money is gone. Pretty much everyone is in too deep to sustain this stuff.
The programs with actual fan support and ticket sales are going to get a relative boost at some point. Which gets back to the original post in that the Pac 12 and maybe ACC are probably the programs where their revenue and facilities outpace actual football fan interest with the TV money raising all ships more equally than they probably should be. Pac 12 especially is lacking in the same level of financial fan support relative to how large, successful and expensive their athletics programs are. The overall endowment and research money is there for those academic institutions, the money and interest really aren't there specifically from sports fans.
I don't know about California being the business engine that drives the nation, but California seems to be a leader in driving businesses out of their state...
http://www.calbizjournal.com/whybusinessesleavecalifornia/
Yeah, on second thought it makes total sense for a Cal University thread to devolve into bashing the country's largest economy over its state debt which is below the national average.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
I thought it was nice to see a source of propaganda I hadn't seen before. I learned a new site today.
Somewhat back to the OP --
In a post-TV money world, assuming we can weather the storm, ISU is going to do pretty well. A college football landscape that moves back being oriented towards the size and intensity of your fan base, not the size of your TV markets, would be nice.
It would suck for Cal and Rutgers, but sure nice for Iowa State.
College sports were supposed to be Midwestern and Southern anyways. Big cities on the East Coast and West Coast can have all the NFL that they want.
In a post-TV money world, assuming we can weather the storm, ISU is going to do pretty well. A college football landscape that moves back being oriented towards the size and intensity of your fan base, not the size of your TV markets, would be nice.
It would suck for Cal and Rutgers, but sure nice for Iowa State.
College sports were supposed to be Midwestern and Southern anyways. Big cities on the East Coast and West Coast can have all the NFL that they want.
Pretty ironic statement from someone who tried to pass off a propaganda site as real news
Wazzu's athletic department is in debt as well. They had to borrow money from the university. From my understanding the Pac12 overestimated how much money the P12 network was going to bring in. The P12 is less stable than the B12.
http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/...llion-again-but-plan-in-place-to-get-solvent/
http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/...llion-again-but-plan-in-place-to-get-solvent/
The interest and passion just isn't quite there for Pac 12 and ACC football like it is for B10, B12 and SEC. I know my region of California isn't indicative of the entire Pac 12 but it is 2 out of 12 schools, spectator sports are a total afterthought here. It was cheap and easy to get Cubs playoff tickets in LA last year even with transplants like myself gulping up most tickets. There is no major city in the entire B12/B10/SEC footprint that's anywhere near as ambivalent about sports as LA. It's nearly 20 million people but there's hardly any interest. My guess is that Utah is the only program that has a similar per capita interest as those other 3 conferences, I've never really been to Arizona so can't comment on those two.
An article today from SFGate.com talking about what Cal is going to do to help pay off a portion of what it owes on the Memorial Stadium renovations. I'm sure their solution is ruffling a few feathers in Berkeley, but the options are limited.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-to-tap-academic-funds-to-help-bail-12330822.php
Also, here is an article with photo that shows the separation that had been ripping the stadium apart:
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2010/03/fault-creep.html
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-to-tap-academic-funds-to-help-bail-12330822.php
Also, here is an article with photo that shows the separation that had been ripping the stadium apart:
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2010/03/fault-creep.html
With as much money as they spent to renovate (more like make safe) a stadium being ripped apart because it was built on a fault line, you think the less-expensive option would have been to build a new stadium not on a fault line. Then again, with the extremity some people out there take their environmentalism, they probably would have thrown a fit over the environmental impacts of a new stadium (IIRC, several people threw a temper tantrum about the environmental impacts of renovating that stadium by living in nearby trees).
Then again, who thought it was a good idea to build a stadium on top of a fault line in the first place?
A fault line is ripping apart our stadium, what should we do?
Let's try Flex Tape, I saw it hold a boat together in a commercial.
Let's try Flex Tape, I saw it hold a boat together in a commercial.
Consider how much was known about earthquakes, faults, and seismic events in general in 1923 and you can guess they probably had no clue exactly how stupid the decision to build there was at the time. Geologists didn't even understand much about the idea of plate tectonics until after mid-century. As for building a new stadium in another location, there's literally no place to put one anywhere near campus, much less in Berkeley itself. Throw in the environmental issues of ALL kinds (as you mentioned) and that idea is done before the concept even falls out of the first person's mouth.
That stadium is pretty darn old, could they even find the smaller fault lines back then?
