The Deficit Rumor at UND on Siouxsports.com

[Haldersham]

There is a interesting thread over on SiouxSports.com. It appears to be rumor so far though the orginator of the thread has a friend in the UND Accounting Dept from whom he is getting his information. There appears to be a 850k deficit in the UND athletic department. I would hope everyone will receive this as more of a headsup than fact. If true, I think it would be very hard for UND to go forward to D1, but the deficit number could rally the alums to straighten out the finance mess with donations. The big donors in Omaha are making noise about not being informed of their problem. Maybe the same will happen at UND.

 In this thread there is also mention of tuition waivers for women's hockey for the past five yeras. In this day where even state assisted institutions are very tuition and fee driven, its seems sucide to waive tuitiion for student athletes if funds for the waiver are taken from academic purposes and/or from funds appropriated by the legislature. None-the less here is the post.

I have downloaded all the UND documents related to the D1 Study, but have not looked at them that closely. I need to do that and if there are some clues, I will share them with you.

Here is the link

http://siouxsports.com/forums/index....p;#entry179820

[tony]

Re: The Deficit Rumor at UND on Siouxsports.com

UND always used to play their budget numbers close to the vest. For example, I remember Roger Thomas being asked point blank what UND's athletic budget was and he said he had that no idea since he had only been on the job for four months or so. Since it was during half-time of a football game, I guess UND wasn't operating under a budget that year

The difference with UND now is that they have a more professional AD. If there is a deficit, the Herald and UND fans might try to pretend it doesn't exist, but UND won't be hiding it (and that's a big change from the way they used to do things).


http://www.und.edu/org/iac

I went through each of the minutes looking for the word budget - here's some of what are I found...

May 2003 - "With salary increases, increased insurance costs and higher tuition, he expects the new budget to be over $5 million"
Sep 2003 - "Budget:  John Sirignano passed out a copy of the FY 2004 budget.  He indicated it was about one million more than FY 2003"
May 2004 - "He reported that most team budgets stayed the same or were cut. "
Feb 2005 - "Roger Thomas had a budget sheet for the IAC to review.  He indicated copies would be made available to IAC members upon request.  Sue Jeno asked if there were particular areas where revenue fell short."
Sep 2005 - "Athletics is anticipating a budget shortfall of over $250,000 for FY05"
Dec 2005 - "Tom Buning passed out information on the 2005-06 budget to date.  If no changes are made, a $680,000 is projected.  He is working with the Athletic Business Manager and the Budget Office to find ways to cut the budget.  Five positions have been eliminated with a savings of $250,000.  All of the sports have been asked to cut 10% from their operating budget.  It is projected that the balance will be made up with increased giving through the Fighting Sioux Club. "
Jan 2005 - "Tom Buning said the Department of Athletics started the year with a projected $700,000 deficit."

BTW, what a great resource - my hat is off to UND on this one! I wish NDSU did something like that because I want to know if there are problems.

One thing that is obvious: The talk about UND's budget being $10 million is complete BS. To his credit, Buning uses the $6.2 million figure but the Herald consistently prints $10 million and just about everybody on the UND DI task force did too.

Anyway, if there are problems, the Grand Forks Herald, the DI task force, and UND fans might pretend they don't exist, but UND won't be hiding anything. One way or another, we'll know pretty soon.

[Haldersham]

Re: The Deficit Rumor at UND on Siouxsports.com

Thanks Tony for your run down of findings. It is wierd to say the least. I looked at the most recent set of meeting minutes and found this
excerpt:

Deficiencies:  Deficiencies have been mailed out and only 24 student-athletes have two or more F’s.


ONLY ;D
My goodness, academics and finances seem to have their flavor of denial.

Also I studied the report of the D1 committee. Its not close to a Carr Report or at least the one that Carr prepared for SDSU. If SDSU had relied on this much surveying and convassing, the decision to go D1 would never have been made and we would be thinking NCC championships and D2 playoffs.

The committee relied so much on surveying Season Ticket holders, Faculty, Students and others. Not once are they taking time to look at their current state of resources and trying to figure what needs to be done and where do we go from here. UND going D1 is a long ways from a done deal. Just ask Roger Thomas.