New Chancellor?
- Thread starter PittHOFs
- Start date
I think she's got a lot more important things to be concerned about right now than a football team. That isn't her job.
That absolutely is her job! Shes the Chief Executive of the ENTIRE UNIVERSITY! It’s been documented that enrollment and funds increase dramatically when you have a good football program. Go look at Colorado now.
Pitt has demonstrated for essentially a century now that it would rather struggle financially and have bad football (ideally none at all), rather than prosper with good football.
It’s irrefutable that everything about Pitt would be better off if we’d sensibly capitalized on football success in the late 70s, built and improved on it rather than tear it apart. Oakland would be radically transformed, for example; because in Pittsburgh, football success gives near infallible power.
Win a few more natties such as how Miami did at that time, particularly during a bad decade for the Steelers in the 80s, Pitt would have been given total control to do what it wanted in Oakland. South Oakland could have correctly been razed for better student housing and complimentary academic buildings. All you gals and guys loving the girl and short-short boy sports, there would have been ample money and space to build Non Revenue Heights. And there would certainly be a light rail line to Oakland. Plus, the overall school rankings would be higher. Lest we forget, schools like Ohio State, UNC, even Alabama are ranked as “better” schools than Pitt. Duke is DUKE largely because of basketball championships; otherwise Duke’s merely a really good school like us (but nobody thinks of Pitt as PITT). On and on and on. You don’t have to like these facts but you can’t deny them
The truth is that the football program will bring in about the same going 10-2 or 2-10. The new chancellors athletic mission should be trying to position Pitt for a potential invite to a more profitable conference, but ship likely sailed thanks to dipshit after dipshit after dipshit after dipshit in he Chancellor and AD roles for decades.
Football and sports funding is in no way related to university endowments. 2 separate issues.
You’re the clown that said I was making up chit - Google is your friend clown!
The Flutie Effect: Does a winning team boost college enrollment?
Successful athletic teams raise a university’s profile and might contribute to enrollment boosts
www.deseret.com
In his study of the Flutie Effect, Chung found athletic success has a significant impact on the quality and quantity of college applicants in the United States. Schools that go from being mediocre to great on the football field see applications increase by 17.7%.
Pitt would have exponentially MORE money if it had excellent football; donations for ALL university aspects would have gone through the roof after a couple more natties.
Either way Pitt has no political power to actually SPEND that money, at least on land and facilities. Pitt is so unpopular it can’t even get a dangerous and tiny stretch of street next the Cathedral permanently closed. The biggest employer by leaps and bounds, yet the city still tells Pitt to F off. This is thanks predominantly to mediocre at best revenue sports and resultant lack of civic popularity. Pitt is more of a running joke with most people vs. being admired. No wonder there’s zero political power. I’d tell Pitt to F off too.
Meanwhile, thanks to multiple sports championships (and not even very recent ones either), the Steelers and Penguins have carte blanche to take and do whatever they want in the city. The city has handed them some of the most valuable real estate in the city. And usually those teams get the city, state, or Fed’s to pay for what they do on it. Pitt not only would get to do everything it wants, it wouldn’t even have to dip into the endowment to do it!
Not sure where that list came from, but is not accurate. It does not include Texas, Texas A&M, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio State for starters that all have endowments larger than Pitt. To your point though, Pitt is in good company when it comes to largest endowments.
Endowments are only one source of revenue for the overall budget. To get to what that endowment figure means to Pitt (or any other school), calculate about 4.5% of the endowment total and that is approximately what contributes to Pitt's annual budget. Most of that is legally earmarked by donors to the med school and scholarship support. The bulk of the rest goes to fund Pitt's pension obligations. That total is still less than Pitt's annual appropriations from the Commonwealth of PA...which Pitt hasn't yet received for FY 23, which means its 2023-24 budget is currently about $180 million in the hole, and each month of delay causes that to go up as Pitt attempts to cover it from strategic reserves, which won't last forever.
Pitt is lucky, it doesn't have the same budget issues as Penn State which projected a $63 million budget deficit before state appropriations issue, which would now total about $420m. And of course there is WVU, which is an unmitigated financial disaster. So compared to these universities, financially, Pitt is doing well; but compared to peer universities in other states, there is more than enough nervousness.
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Penn State has budget issues? They are spending $700 million on a stadium renovation. That is probably three times more than what it cost to build Heinz Field. The Pitt athletic programs are in the dark ages.
Yes, PSU does have substantial budget issues as most of its 19 branch campuses are hemorrhaging. Unless you don't consider $60 to $100 million budget deficit projections an issue. So far, PSU has only earmarked $70m from the university for the Beaver Stadium renovation. The rest is expected to come from fundraising, naming rights, etc.
According to its unit by unit breakdown to the state, Pitt's athletic department was $41.8m in the hole in FY22 (ending June 30, 2022) and Pitt budgeted for $107.3 million for athletics with a projected $39.3m deficit in FY23. These are deficits in high water mark athletic years. The deficits are subsidized by the universities general operations. Despite revenues being higher than ever thanks to the ACC, Pitt is spending more of its own money on athletics than ever before, but if you are looking to match Penn State in expenses with a 107K stadium and Big Ten money coming in, and much stronger fan and booster support, you might as well quit now...it is never going to happen.
BTW, Heinz cost $512m to build in 2000 when adjusted for current 2023 dollars.
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LOL. You mean, she didn't interfere with a year long, codified student judicial conduct and appeals process her first few weeks on the job?
There's a lot of people back then, and apparently now, that jump to conclusions and still believe a lot of dumb, false stuff. It clearly isn't a phenomena isolated to the world of Pitt either. There will be plenty of time to evaluate her for things she'll actually have a hand in.
Field
Wikipedia states that the cost of Heinz Field was 281 million.
Yea I doubt it. Pitt wouldn't hire an athletics-friendly chancellor. And her first action was trying to sabotage the basketball team for kicking off a kid for something he did a year ago after he was already reinstated to the school and team
It's no use. The shortsightedness of Pitt fans never fails to amaze me, coming up with crazy "I heard this from..." crap and not understanding finances and budgetary facts.
