terrapinsanity.com

The Post headline announced “Maryland athletic department’s revenue can’t keep pace with spending”. To which we say, “duh.”

Athletic directors and coaches here are already among the state’s highest paid employees – and that’s before you count the matching funds provided by Foundations, all of which are not subject to the same level of public scrutiny. But it isn’t enough to pay that for any one coach. Today we’re paying for several contracts’ worth of coaching per sport, as the campus buys out the contracts of old coaches in order to pay top dollar for new ones. President Loh signed off on such deals only a couple months ago, and now announces a new commission to get to the bottom of our fiscal woes because he is shocked, just shocked, to discover the budget is not stable.

To find the whole recipe for fiscal woes, mix in the expensive facilities renovations – which contrary to PR are not generally available to the whole campus community – and flavor with the ‘special’ division of responsibilities between the state and foundation budgets. (Taxpayers are responsible for paying invoices and the Athletics Foundation is responsible for handling receipts. Sweet deal.)

If Loh needs to burn the time of 17 highly-paid colleagues to find out why his spending decisions ran us into a hole, then we’re sure in for a bumpy ride with him at the wheel. Of course he is a smart man and likely knows the answer already, which means he needs an especially large committee to study the matter for a long time and bury the answer. That means we’re really in for a bumpy ride.