Purdue's athletic department will get a considerable financial boost over the next three years.
The university has "spoken with actions, not words," athletic director Morgan Burke said Thursday when he revealed that president Mitch Daniels and the board of trustees will release $2 million back to athletics. The athletic department had been paying the university $3 million annually - part of the money it'd gotten from the Big Ten Network - for services that included utilities and payroll, among other things.
Burke said he "made a case" in the fall to Daniels and the Board about the current method of allocating the administrative charge to the university, saying the method put the department in a non-competitive position. The method was based on the percent of square footage the department used in relation to the square footage on campus.
"We said, if we went to a percent of gross revenue -- which seemed to be a more appropriate metric and as it goes up, obviously the charge would go up -- if we place ourselves at the median of the Big Ten (in terms of remittance of money given to the university), it seemed that would more than take care of the 'services we're consuming.' So we're still paying our fair share and yet it releases $2 million a year to us," Burke said.
"So that allows us to buy down the student ticket option, to create a more affordable package for the students, it also allows us to take care of cost of attendance until we can get the John Purdue Club growth to the point where they can help us with that. So that's a huge move. It's not rhetoric. It's action. Mitch's point to me and the board's point to me is we will invest in the intercollegiate model as long as there's students and athletes. We don't want to be viewed as a minor league for the professional franchises."
Cost of attendance, which begins next year, is $1 million annually. The change in student ticket packages -- from the VIP card to the Boarding Pass -- is a $500,000 hit. That leaves about $500,000 to help in other areas of the athletic department budget.
"We'll stay at this level for three years, so we now there's at least $6 million coming back to us. And when the next television negotiation is done, we'll update our 10-year plan and see where we go from here," Burke said.
We will have much more from Burke about the football "master plan," the reduced season tickets and more Friday morning but wanted to get this bit out there as soon as possible.
Thoughts?
The university has "spoken with actions, not words," athletic director Morgan Burke said Thursday when he revealed that president Mitch Daniels and the board of trustees will release $2 million back to athletics. The athletic department had been paying the university $3 million annually - part of the money it'd gotten from the Big Ten Network - for services that included utilities and payroll, among other things.
Burke said he "made a case" in the fall to Daniels and the Board about the current method of allocating the administrative charge to the university, saying the method put the department in a non-competitive position. The method was based on the percent of square footage the department used in relation to the square footage on campus.
"We said, if we went to a percent of gross revenue -- which seemed to be a more appropriate metric and as it goes up, obviously the charge would go up -- if we place ourselves at the median of the Big Ten (in terms of remittance of money given to the university), it seemed that would more than take care of the 'services we're consuming.' So we're still paying our fair share and yet it releases $2 million a year to us," Burke said.
"So that allows us to buy down the student ticket option, to create a more affordable package for the students, it also allows us to take care of cost of attendance until we can get the John Purdue Club growth to the point where they can help us with that. So that's a huge move. It's not rhetoric. It's action. Mitch's point to me and the board's point to me is we will invest in the intercollegiate model as long as there's students and athletes. We don't want to be viewed as a minor league for the professional franchises."
Cost of attendance, which begins next year, is $1 million annually. The change in student ticket packages -- from the VIP card to the Boarding Pass -- is a $500,000 hit. That leaves about $500,000 to help in other areas of the athletic department budget.
"We'll stay at this level for three years, so we now there's at least $6 million coming back to us. And when the next television negotiation is done, we'll update our 10-year plan and see where we go from here," Burke said.
We will have much more from Burke about the football "master plan," the reduced season tickets and more Friday morning but wanted to get this bit out there as soon as possible.
Thoughts?
