My AD (Swarbrick) played a huge rule and looks like a bit of a turd.


NCAA saved money in case of a canceled March Madness. Then it spent it. Less than 50%

Quote:One month after the novel coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the lucrative NCAA men's basketball tournament, officials at athletic departments and college sports conferences across the country remain puzzled by one question: Why wasn't the NCAA better prepared for this?

While the men's tournament generates more than $800 million every year - more than 70 percent of the NCAA's $1.1 billion in annual revenue, most of which flows to dozens of conferences and hundreds of colleges and universities across the country - the NCAA's event cancellation insurance policy for the tournament covered just $270 million, the association revealed a few weeks ago.


As a result, a $600 million NCAA payout to conferences and schools this year will be reduced to $225 million, the first coronavirus-related budgetary hit that already has conferences and athletic departments imposing pay cuts and examining other cost-cutting measures.


"The [NCAA] has prepared for a financial catastrophic event like the one we face now," Ohio State President Michael Drake, chair of the NCAA's board of governors, said in a news release. "We would be in a far worse position had it not been for this long-standing, forward-focused planning."

But according to interviews with several former NCAA employees, the organization was much better prepared for a canceled tournament several years ago, when it built up savings of nearly $500 million to help mitigate the financial impact of a lost tournament. Then, in 2015, new NCAA leadership decided to spend more than $400 million of those savings without increasing the NCAA's insurance coverage, following a questionable theory about the risk of saving that much money.

"It was a managerial error," said one former NCAA employee who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private financial matters. "They made a decision to be exposed. . . . This didn't have to happen."


Donald Remy, the NCAA's chief operating officer, said in a phone interview that the decision to spend down the cash savings was made by university presidents on the board of governors - not by NCAA executives in Indianapolis - and that increasing event cancellation insurance on the tournament would have been too expensive.

"To suggest that the management made an error, I think, misunderstands our structure," Remy said. "It was a pretty prudent amount of insurance for an event that was likely never going to occur. . . . Clearly we got a pandemic, and it did occur."

Washington State President Kirk Schulz, who chaired the NCAA's board of governors at the time of these payouts, declined an interview request. Some of the financial details of these decisions were first reported by USA Today.

In the early 2000s, during the tenure of late NCAA executive director Myles Brand, the association's executives developed a plan to protect against the possibility of a canceled tournament through a combination of insurance and cash savings.

Though the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic had just occurred in 2002 and 2003, NCAA leaders were more concerned about rising unrest among college athletes over amateurism rules, according to one former employee.

"A pandemic wasn't on our mind," the former NCAA employee said. "It was more . . . might student-athletes at one point say, 'We don't want to play,' and then what happens?"

With that in mind, the association built up nearly $500 million in reserves from 2004 to 2014. The NCAA also purchased insurance that would cover roughly one-third of the tournament's annual revenue. With the insurance and the reserves, these employees said, NCAA leaders thought they could absorb the hit of a lost tournament with only minimal cuts to expenses.


But in 2015, as the NCAA and the wealthier football conferences felt rising pressure from antitrust lawsuits filed by thousands of current and former athletes, Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick was among some college sports power brokers who argued the cash reserves were enticing lawyers to sue, former NCAA employees said.

"Jack said: 'You're just inviting lawsuits. You create a pile of money; plaintiffs' lawyers come after it,' " one former NCAA employee said.

He was right about the attorneys. And there is also a real question about a non-profit piling up a bunch of cash. It can raise a lot of questions from the IRS.

And insurance to make you whole is pretty expensive. They covered 30% of it. They maybe should have done more, but they had a decent amount.

[quote='bullet' pid='16788602' dateline='1587511990']
He was right about the attorneys. And there is also a real question about a non-profit piling up a bunch of cash. It can raise a lot of questions from the IRS.

And insurance to make you whole is pretty expensive. They covered 30% of it. They maybe should have done more, but they had a decent amount.



I just like to call him a turd.

Going to a Notre Dame game this year, it was apparent how much Swarbrick has hurt the gameday experience. ND used to be CFB’s most unique experience and Swarbrick’s taken a lot away while pricing a lot of longtime fans out.

This is the time to break away from the NCAA. I noticed they didn't mention the two NCAA endowments that total over 1 billion. How nice.

It's time to get the hell away from the them and monetize our won tournament and pay out all funds minus overhead annually. No more tourney credits it takes 6 years to payout. See how well that worked out! I'll manage my own money thank you. And that should be the statement of every school.

(04-21-2020 06:33 PM)bullet Wrote:  He was right about the attorneys. And there is also a real question about a non-profit piling up a bunch of cash. It can raise a lot of questions from the IRS.

And insurance to make you whole is pretty expensive. They covered 30% of it. They maybe should have done more, but they had a decent amount.

In fairness, at least a couple of attorneys deny that:

Quote:Two of the lead lawyers on several of those antitrust cases said the NCAA's cash reserves had no influence on their decisions to sue.

"The word 'absurd' seems entirely appropriate," said Jeffrey Kessler, co-executive chairman of the international law firm Winston & Strawn. "This just sounds like frankly another NCAA fabrication to justify an action that didn't make any sense and now exposes them in the face of this pandemic."

"I never looked at the NCAA's savings balance sheet in any of the cases that I've brought against them," said Steve Berman, managing partner of Seattle-based Hagens Berman law firm. "When you have billions of dollars flowing into the NCAA and all of these conferences every year, we're not worried about a collection problem."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20...ts-wrapper

(04-21-2020 09:28 PM)JRsec Wrote:  This is the time to break away from the NCAA. I noticed they didn't mention the two NCAA endowments that total over 1 billion. How nice.

It's time to get the hell away from the them and monetize our won tournament and pay out all funds minus overhead annually. No more tourney credits it takes 6 years to payout. See how well that worked out! I'll manage my own money thank you. And that should be the statement of every school.

If that happened, It would just be the Majors, who right now average 39 of the 68 participants, plus invitees. That might include the dozen majors who go to the NIT, and a dozen others invited from conferences, mostly the WCC, A10, MWC and AAC. And they'd need them to get to 64.

... of course the Majors could just hold at 48, and not add anyone, since 8 games is already over-saturation on Day 1 and 2. And they could go to 52 and still have a first 4.

I can see a MBB and WBB "FBS" equivalent forming, with the 6 majors and 6 high mid-majors (named 4, big fight to be one of the other two). That could cause some realignment to get that 6.

Or if the Majors held their own, the NCAA might hold a top tournament of 32 invites to give schools like Dayton, Gonzaga, Houston, Memphis, Cincy, BYU, LUC, Liberty, and San Diego State a top tournament to go to.

This would be very interesting shake up. But I don't see it. P5 + Big East are not going to hold a Tournament of their own unless somebody waves a (much) bigger wad of cash in front of them.

(04-22-2020 12:32 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-21-2020 09:28 PM)JRsec Wrote:  This is the time to break away from the NCAA. I noticed they didn't mention the two NCAA endowments that total over 1 billion. How nice.

It's time to get the hell away from the them and monetize our won tournament and pay out all funds minus overhead annually. No more tourney credits it takes 6 years to payout. See how well that worked out! I'll manage my own money thank you. And that should be the statement of every school.

If that happened, It would just be the Majors, who right now average 39 of the 68 participants, plus invitees. That might include the dozen majors who go to the NIT, and a dozen others invited from conferences, mostly the WCC, A10, MWC and AAC. And they'd need them to get to 64.

... of course the Majors could just hold at 48, and not add anyone, since 8 games is already over-saturation on Day 1 and 2. And they could go to 52 and still have a first 4.

I can see a MBB and WBB "FBS" equivalent forming, with the 6 majors and 6 high mid-majors (named 4, big fight to be one of the other two). That could cause some realignment to get that 6.

Or if the Majors held their own, the NCAA might hold a top tournament of 32 invites to give schools like Dayton, Gonzaga, Houston, Memphis, Cincy, BYU, LUC, Liberty, and San Diego State a top tournament to go to.

This would be very interesting shake up. But I don't see it. P5 + Big East are not going to hold a Tournament of their own unless somebody waves a (much) bigger wad of cash in front of them.

It doesn't have to be a big wad of cash. It only has to be a much higher % of the cash the NCAA makes now. And that's very doable.

I dont understand. NCAA, Conf n schools all have endowments N Insurance. There like women, cry for money with their hand out