Why Are We Broke?

Akinji07 said:
I don’t know dude. Fair concern but Batt was hired to fix the finances. So far it seems like he’s made decent financial decisions. We can’t keep going back to all the mistakes GTAA has made in the past as a reason to not give money. I’m hoping he will contact big donors with a plan and let them know what he needs and what he’s planning on doing with it. Our job meanwhile is to buy season tickets at the very least. That’s a small sacrifice to keep Tech football alive.
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Wonder how many times Batt looked at finances and this meme?

pjwtf.gif
 
travgt01 said:
Swafford is the main reason. Piss poor ACC tv contracts lagging $20-30M per school behind sec/b10. Should have joined b10 when Maryland did and should jump at the chance if given it again.
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You can't overstate this point, especially when we are trying to compete in the marketplace for a new coach against schools and conferences with much more lucrative TV revenue streams. We only look particularly "poor" and unable to put together major coaching deals when we consider the costs of high dollar coaching contracts that other conferences can afford. The worst part is that our financial disparity is only anticipated to get worse.
 
BrentwoodJacket said:
We need to hope FSU, Miami and Clemson find a way to get out of the GOR's deal and that the Big10 will still take us. That is the only way to generate the revenue we need to pay off our debt.
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I remember when Maryland was in such a bad place financially, they did the unthinkable and bailed into the Big 10 in 2014. I was thinking, no way Tech would ever be in that spot. At the time, it was considered Maryland's only good move; every other scenario would be more pain and misery for the athletic department. And this is not too far removed from their MB NC (2002).
 
JJacket said:
I hate to break it to you, but it isn't just the upper north of our stadium that is an aesthetic nightmare. Our entire stadium, including Wardlaw and the Edge, need razed and rebuilt.
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Yeah, sure. Just pile that onto the debt.

Tech really needs to stop letting whoever is planning stadium "upgrades" do stadium upgrades. In the meantime, there needs to be someone with a view towards aesthetics put together a long-term upgrade plan for BDS. IIRC, Stan raised nearly $200M to fund athletic renovations - can some of that be used, or at least escrowed to be spent over the next 20 years on BDS itself?

FWIW, here are my suggestions for that list. Leave the west stands alone. They are fine. OK, maybe upgrade bathrooms. The pi$$ trough is now very old. Tear down the UE and rebuild something like the UW, bringing it to the same height and angle as the UW. This may require a level or two of boxes (so give back the LE to the common folks!). Shear off the upper north (if structurally possible) to match the UW/UE and wrap to meet in the corners - or at least approach them (many college stadia have EZ stands that approach but don't connect with sideline stands), but the NEZ stands needs to match the height and angle of the UW/new UE. Tear down the Edge and move all GTAA offices to Wardlaw (they can rededicate the UE to the Edge family). At the very least, just tear down the corner that protrudes into the stadium and remove that dongle that dangles out of the UN. Then, finally (or maybe first off), reimagine and rebuild the front of the Wardlaw Building - and for Pete's sake line it up with the field! Plan these capital improvements over a 20-year horizon.

All in all, wrt seating at BDS, those changes are probably close to seating neutral. We might be adding a couple of thousand with the upper-level corner additions at the north end and maybe a little more box capacity in the east and south stands. Capacity might edge up toward 60K.

Write in stone that any further "enhancements" to BDS must be in line with the long-term upgrade plan for BDS. We have a historical treasure here... can we please act like it is one and stop doing these piecemeal "upgrades?"
 
JJacket said:
If the debt is cheap, you let it ride.
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The 42 million were on the hook for this year doesn’t seem cheap; or 10 mill a year in interest payments.

What’s cheap is how we fund our major sports programs with budget coaching hires, limited staff, and less resources than our immediate competitors.
 
I haven't read this whole thread, but surely someone has suggested that winning will likely fix our money issues, right?

And the thing is, in football, you just gotta win 7 or 8 games to keep the seats mostly full. In BB, just get a decent ACCT seeding and make the NCAAT every other year.
 
georgia_tech_swagger said:
The North Endzone was in the $40m range back in 2003. You don't get $200m in debt off that.

Most of that was Radakovich spending on a credit card.
New softball facility? Consume a parking lot, put it on credit card.
New indoor football practice facility? Consume half of Rose Bowl field, leave out an endzone, put some of it on credit card.
New tennis facility? Put it on credit card.
New basketball arena? Put some of it on credit card.... have Bud Peterson be so impressed by the lead donation by Zelnak he lets Zelnak hire the next AD. And that's how we got Bobinsquatch.

Now you've accumulated something much closer to that $200m mark in debt.

Radakovich also sidelined the A-T Fund for the creation of the TECH Fund. That's the anti-IPTAY move and dumb.
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My understanding was the North EZ was closer to the $80m mark and the main problem was the rolling over of interest that has now made it closer to $135m.

I thought the practice facility was mostly paid for by donors.
 
The Champ said:
If someone gave the AA 370 million would they use it to pay down debt, or build new things?
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If what @Liberty said was true and we restructured recently when interest rates were lower, it might be better to invest the majority of it into our athletic endowment. Stanford is able to pay its coaches salaries and housing costs from a well funded endowment.
 
yellowbritchies said:
I think the poster laid it out well. To your point, if we Tech fans want to see a better sports future and stability we need to shut up the bitching and pony up more donations!
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You can still bitch I’m not against bitching. I’m just saying our number one problem is money. Money is more likely to fix the problem than bitching.
 
JJacket said:
The football expansion wasn't "needless". It was necessary. GOL was HC when it was approved. Life would have been different had he stayed. Folks need to let the now 20 year old stadium expansion go.
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You just like it because there’s room up there for you and all your imaginary friends.
 
Liberty said:
Great post. Somebody else gets the financials and it’s literally the thing shackling our programs. Bad news- Clown tanked our biggest revenue stream. Needs immediate rebuild- Cabrera, Batt and Key got their hands full.

Good news- AI and we restructured our debt. Inflation will help too as long as revenue keeps up with us. 5.5% debt at 10% inflation makes your debt cheaper.
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can Tech lawyer up and sue Clown for some of the money back? Maybe say that he misrepresented himself by claiming to be a football coach, thus violating the terms of the agreement?
 
gtg970g said:
I don't think we had much choice but to switch funding methods for ticket allotment. It sucks because now folks can drop their seats without any fear that they won't be able to relocate to prime seats in the future. I remember going to pick out seats (pre Tech Fund) and we knew these were the best seats we could get based on donation history. If we gave them up they would be gone for good. Now all you have to do is "donate" $600 and you can sit on the 50 yard line.
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I always made my more significant donations immediately before the reseating events. Parlayed it into great seats. Now, I have no incentive to give them any more money. Not saying I don't, but I paused when Todd started doing stupid öööö and I told him so.
 
Akinji07 said:
I don’t know dude. Fair concern but Batt was hired to fix the finances. So far it seems like he’s made decent financial decisions. We can’t keep going back to all the mistakes GTAA has made in the past as a reason to not give money. I’m hoping he will contact big donors with a plan and let them know what he needs and what he’s planning on doing with it. Our job meanwhile is to buy season tickets at the very least. That’s a small sacrifice to keep Tech football alive.
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That was one of the very first things J did. A-T Fund has been scheduling meetings for him with all of them. They're going on as we speak. He has basically blocked out most afternoons for weeks to come for only this. I'm sure he got plenty of head football coaching advice these first few weeks.
 
The problem has been that a lot of money has been spent improving facilities that didn't increase revenue. We all know the Upper North expansion was a huge mistake, but McCamish renovation was also a huge investment. There was a big gift that paid a part of it, but we still took on a lot of debt from it as well. Do you think we've increased basketball ticket revenue vs. pre-renovation? Perhaps a little bit, but certainly not enough to cover the extra debt payments.

This really is depressing to think about because short of someone stroking a $200 million check, I don't know how we dig ourselves out of the hole.

Hell, we just did the biggest athletic fundraiser in our history and that money is earmarked for support offices. Sure, it is probably needed, but it isn't generating extra revenue or helping with our budget in any way.
 
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