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Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
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Love and Honor Offline
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Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
Quote:An internal audit has found extensive mismanagement within the budget-challenged Washington State athletic department, including the possible inflation of home football attendance figures and the improper distribution of free tickets to football games.

“The environment within Athletics ... did not support a culture of compliance or fiscal responsibility,” according to the audit, which was completed in mid-April.

The document comes as leaders of the school grapple with a $67 million athletic budget deficit built up over recent years.

https://apnews.com/ba5673b0508e4a36a8a50b73c881ff6e
05-06-2018 10:52 AM
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goofus Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
Worst part is, if they really are inflating thier attendance numbers, they still end up with one of the worse attendance numbers in P5, less than 32k average attendance in 2017.
05-06-2018 11:08 AM
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Lopes87 Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 11:08 AM)goofus Wrote:  Worst part is, if they really are inflating thier attendance numbers, they still end up with one of the worse attendance numbers in P5, less than 32k average attendance in 2017.

The previous President of WSU and their former AD Bill Moos who is now at Nebraska were all about spending money as fast as they could and Moos did some morally questionable things as the AD at WSU.

As it goes for Martin Stadium it only holds 35,117. Padding attendance is done everywhere like Moos has said. But it feels like he has left his alma mater high a dry to save his own skin.
05-06-2018 01:47 PM
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Renandpat Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 01:47 PM)Lopes87 Wrote:  
(05-06-2018 11:08 AM)goofus Wrote:  Worst part is, if they really are inflating thier attendance numbers, they still end up with one of the worse attendance numbers in P5, less than 32k average attendance in 2017.

The previous President of WSU and their former AD Bill Moos who is now at Nebraska were all about spending money as fast as they could and Moos did some morally questionable things as the AD at WSU.

As it goes for Martin Stadium it only holds 35,117. Padding attendance is done everywhere like Moos has said. But it feels like he has left his alma mater high a dry to save his own skin.

Yea, I was under the impression that attendance numbers included everybody: cheerleaders, announcers, concessionaires...

The secret discounted seating for athletic department staff only is the most questionable "perk" to me as they could personally profit from those.
05-06-2018 02:01 PM
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USAFMEDIC Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 11:08 AM)goofus Wrote:  Worst part is, if they really are inflating thier attendance numbers, they still end up with one of the worse attendance numbers in P5, less than 32k average attendance in 2017.
USC was 18th in attendance nationally. Washington was 21st. Stanford averaged 44,000 which was below 2-10 Rutgers. Cal averaged 36,000. Even UCLA averaged in the 50-60000 range. Fans have not been crashing the stadium gates in the PAC 12. I would say Wash State is in good company.
05-06-2018 02:02 PM
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
This doesn't surprise me. Wazzu is located in a small metro, far from most of their alumni in Seattle and Portland.

The school simply cannot generate any gate, as students, who make up much of their rather enthusiastic crowds, do not pay much of anything. As a result they are entirely dependent upon donations, Pac-12 revenues (TV and NCAA revenues) and licensing rights. As it is they operate with a smaller budget than any other P5 school.

The ticket mismanagement, while a headline, represents only 1% of the $13M deficit for 2016. That is really chipping at the edges.
Quote:Auditors calculated that the discounts, in place since 2012, potentially cost Washington State over $130,000 in lost revenue for the 2016 football season.

The big costs was the football stadium and facilities renovations, which seem to have not have had the necessary donations. This makes one think about the donation cannibalism going on at EMU to pay for the $30M planned football facility when the athletic department is borrowing >$25M a year just to keep the lights on, yet claims it's all from donations (no single year of EMU athletics raised even $1M in donations).

WSU will probably wind up balancing the budget in a few years, but wont be able to pay back the money. Like Cal (recent decision by the Chancellor) I expect some the Institution will eat much of that and forgive the debt or a large chunk of it.

Overall I welcome the sunshine coming onto athletic spending (e.g., New Mexico). But I also think it was long coming, as the transfers and loans from the host institution have increased 5x to 10x in the last decade or so, and are no longer a small line item in the school budget. Auditors and regents are starting to ask what is happening to $5-25M being transferred annually, even as State's are starting to pinch school funding.
05-06-2018 02:54 PM
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billybobby777 Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 02:54 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  This doesn't surprise me. Wazzu is located in a small metro, far from most of their alumni in Seattle and Portland.

The school simply cannot generate any gate, as students, who make up much of their rather enthusiastic crowds, do not pay much of anything. As a result they are entirely dependent upon donations, Pac-12 revenues (TV and NCAA revenues) and licensing rights. As it is they operate with a smaller budget than any other P5 school.

The ticket mismanagement, while a headline, represents only 1% of the $13M deficit for 2016. That is really chipping at the edges.
Quote:Auditors calculated that the discounts, in place since 2012, potentially cost Washington State over $130,000 in lost revenue for the 2016 football season.

The big costs was the football stadium and facilities renovations, which seem to have not have had the necessary donations. This makes one think about the donation cannibalism going on at EMU to pay for the $30M planned football facility when the athletic department is borrowing >$25M a year just to keep the lights on, yet claims it's all from donations (no single year of EMU athletics raised even $1M in donations).

WSU will probably wind up balancing the budget in a few years, but wont be able to pay back the money. Like Cal (recent decision by the Chancellor) I expect some the Institution will eat much of that and forgive the debt or a large chunk of it.

Overall I welcome the sunshine coming onto athletic spending (e.g., New Mexico). But I also think it was long coming, as the transfers and loans from the host institution have increased 5x to 10x in the last decade or so, and are no longer a small line item in the school budget. Auditors and regents are starting to ask what is happening to $5-25M being transferred annually, even as State's are starting to pinch school funding.

It's interesting to see this as I remember these ridiculous predictions by PAC 12 fans in 2010/2011 of dollar bills falling out of PAC 12 schools ears after they signed their new media deal with fox/ESPN/PAC 12 network...as if they had Ivy League money that was going to be a game changer that turned them into the SEC. I hate to say it but I feel like saying I told you so to those posters that thought that. Not Washington St posters in particular but the Larry Scott lovers. It's as if the thought was the new media deal was going to buy fans. It won't. It didn't.
The same lack of enthusiasm in PAC 12 land that was there pre 2012 is still there today and with 2 NFL teams in LA after a 25 year hiatus things will get much worse.
05-06-2018 03:58 PM
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 03:58 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(05-06-2018 02:54 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  This doesn't surprise me. Wazzu is located in a small metro, far from most of their alumni in Seattle and Portland.

The school simply cannot generate any gate, as students, who make up much of their rather enthusiastic crowds, do not pay much of anything. As a result they are entirely dependent upon donations, Pac-12 revenues (TV and NCAA revenues) and licensing rights. As it is they operate with a smaller budget than any other P5 school.

The ticket mismanagement, while a headline, represents only 1% of the $13M deficit for 2016. That is really chipping at the edges.
Quote:Auditors calculated that the discounts, in place since 2012, potentially cost Washington State over $130,000 in lost revenue for the 2016 football season.

The big costs was the football stadium and facilities renovations, which seem to have not have had the necessary donations. This makes one think about the donation cannibalism going on at EMU to pay for the $30M planned football facility when the athletic department is borrowing >$25M a year just to keep the lights on, yet claims it's all from donations (no single year of EMU athletics raised even $1M in donations).

WSU will probably wind up balancing the budget in a few years, but wont be able to pay back the money. Like Cal (recent decision by the Chancellor) I expect some the Institution will eat much of that and forgive the debt or a large chunk of it.

Overall I welcome the sunshine coming onto athletic spending (e.g., New Mexico). But I also think it was long coming, as the transfers and loans from the host institution have increased 5x to 10x in the last decade or so, and are no longer a small line item in the school budget. Auditors and regents are starting to ask what is happening to $5-25M being transferred annually, even as State's are starting to pinch school funding.

It's interesting to see this as I remember these ridiculous predictions by PAC 12 fans in 2010/2011 of dollar bills falling out of PAC 12 schools ears after they signed their new media deal with fox/ESPN/PAC 12 network...as if they had Ivy League money that was going to be a game changer that turned them into the SEC. I hate to say it but I feel like saying I told you so to those posters that thought that. Not Washington St posters in particular but the Larry Scott lovers. It's as if the thought was the new media deal was going to buy fans. It won't. It didn't.
The same lack of enthusiasm in PAC 12 land that was there pre 2012 is still there today and with 2 NFL teams in LA after a 25 year hiatus things will get much worse.
To be fair, that was the prevailing logic in 2010/11 when BTN was riding high and people actually thought the Longhorn Network was going to be not just viable, but lay to rest any and all parity in the Big 12. Very few people saw the impact cable-cutting and streaming would have on the sports landscape. If you would have told people in 2010 that Fox was going to try to get out of the cable TV game in seven or eight years, would they believe you?

What people were talking about then wasn't about fans, but networks being forced onto cable packages, and the fees going towards building up the conference. In theory, these conferences could break even fan-wise or even see the small decline in enthusiasm football as a whole has experienced and yet they'd still make more money because of people not watching their product and still paying for it. It wouldn't surprise me if this was the logic behind Moos's spending spree: it'll pay for itself when we win and PTN takes off.

In retrospect, it was all insanely short-sighted, and it could be argued that some schools killed the goose that laid the golden egg in the name of chasing those short-term perks. What we might be seeing here is blood on the water, and not just on a school level.
(This post was last modified: 05-06-2018 10:54 PM by Mav.)
05-06-2018 10:52 PM
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billybobby777 Offline
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
(05-06-2018 10:52 PM)Mav Wrote:  
(05-06-2018 03:58 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(05-06-2018 02:54 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  This doesn't surprise me. Wazzu is located in a small metro, far from most of their alumni in Seattle and Portland.

The school simply cannot generate any gate, as students, who make up much of their rather enthusiastic crowds, do not pay much of anything. As a result they are entirely dependent upon donations, Pac-12 revenues (TV and NCAA revenues) and licensing rights. As it is they operate with a smaller budget than any other P5 school.

The ticket mismanagement, while a headline, represents only 1% of the $13M deficit for 2016. That is really chipping at the edges.
Quote:Auditors calculated that the discounts, in place since 2012, potentially cost Washington State over $130,000 in lost revenue for the 2016 football season.

The big costs was the football stadium and facilities renovations, which seem to have not have had the necessary donations. This makes one think about the donation cannibalism going on at EMU to pay for the $30M planned football facility when the athletic department is borrowing >$25M a year just to keep the lights on, yet claims it's all from donations (no single year of EMU athletics raised even $1M in donations).

WSU will probably wind up balancing the budget in a few years, but wont be able to pay back the money. Like Cal (recent decision by the Chancellor) I expect some the Institution will eat much of that and forgive the debt or a large chunk of it.

Overall I welcome the sunshine coming onto athletic spending (e.g., New Mexico). But I also think it was long coming, as the transfers and loans from the host institution have increased 5x to 10x in the last decade or so, and are no longer a small line item in the school budget. Auditors and regents are starting to ask what is happening to $5-25M being transferred annually, even as State's are starting to pinch school funding.

It's interesting to see this as I remember these ridiculous predictions by PAC 12 fans in 2010/2011 of dollar bills falling out of PAC 12 schools ears after they signed their new media deal with fox/ESPN/PAC 12 network...as if they had Ivy League money that was going to be a game changer that turned them into the SEC. I hate to say it but I feel like saying I told you so to those posters that thought that. Not Washington St posters in particular but the Larry Scott lovers. It's as if the thought was the new media deal was going to buy fans. It won't. It didn't.
The same lack of enthusiasm in PAC 12 land that was there pre 2012 is still there today and with 2 NFL teams in LA after a 25 year hiatus things will get much worse.
To be fair, that was the prevailing logic in 2010/11 when BTN was riding high and people actually thought the Longhorn Network was going to be not just viable, but lay to rest any and all parity in the Big 12. Very few people saw the impact cable-cutting and streaming would have on the sports landscape. If you would have told people in 2010 that Fox was going to try to get out of the cable TV game in seven or eight years, would they believe you?

What people were talking about then wasn't about fans, but networks being forced onto cable packages, and the fees going towards building up the conference. In theory, these conferences could break even fan-wise or even see the small decline in enthusiasm football as a whole has experienced and yet they'd still make more money because of people not watching their product and still paying for it. It wouldn't surprise me if this was the logic behind Moos's spending spree: it'll pay for itself when we win and PTN takes off.

In retrospect, it was all insanely short-sighted, and it could be argued that some schools killed the goose that laid the golden egg in the name of chasing those short-term perks. What we might be seeing here is blood on the water, and not just on a school level.

Great post. The very first conference to create a conference tv network may get the last laugh ironically. The Mountain was created in 2006 and the MWC pulled the plug on it after the 2011/12 season. 13 years after the first one, the last one will start: the ACC dips its toes in the water in 2019. Good luck....aren’t they a bit late to the party?
05-07-2018 09:21 AM
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RE: Mismanagement found within Wazzu athletics during audit
Quote:the improper distribution of free tickets to football games.

20 to life in Leavenworth, just to be safe.
(This post was last modified: 05-07-2018 09:43 AM by Lord Stanley.)
05-07-2018 09:43 AM
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