Why Are We Broke?

On a side note, I just made another donation to the Competitive Drive Initiative and was told they were up over $2.4 million (on the $2.5 million goal). If you are planning on making a donation and getting the benefits of the extra points, you need to act quickly.
 
On a side note, I just made another donation to the Competitive Drive Initiative and was told they were up over $2.4 million (on the $2.5 million goal). If you are planning on making a donation and getting the benefits of the extra points, you need to act quickly.
You made a $2.4M donation?
 
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.
The last I heard from sources that would/ should know was the AA was days or weeks away from inking the refinancing. That was a year or more agoI think. The payments coming due was a well known, understood risk and getting it done was an extremely high priority. I can’t imagine it not happening and it was prior to all of the unsavory interest rate hikes that have transpired since. I just never got told, yeah it’s done not that anyone had any need to let me know not did I feel the need to probe. It was a no brainer. I don’t have anywhere near that level access where I’d get updates like that, I have to ask and my opportunities are sporadic at best. If it never got inked someone needs to find Re-Todd and abuse him royally. It would be a worse crime than hiring the Clown if you can believe that.
 
On a side note, I just made another donation to the Competitive Drive Initiative and was told they were up over $2.4 million (on the $2.5 million goal). If you are planning on making a donation and getting the benefits of the extra points, you need to act quickly.
The foundation is prepared to up the match if the goal is exceeded.
 
Really crappy GTAA management going back two decades. Far too much debt load for the equity they have. To frustrate even more, now we're playing several of our best games in MBS - and covering up seats there. SMH. Add to that the incredibly stupid contracts to marginal (at best) coaches, leading to huge buyouts, and the associated futility of the major men's sports and you get what we have. They've been tossing good money after bad for 20 years or more. Hewitt's buyout in MBB was so bad that it has caused us to stay with marginal to slightly above coaches for over 10 years now. Stan, in all his wisdom, signed an experiment yet gave him a contract with a ludicrous buyout - so that if he plinked in year 4, he still got an 8-figure buyout. Geeze! It's no wonder the big donors finally said, "Enough!" and kicked him out, too.
I wonder if we can cancel the MBS contract without eating a big penalty now that ReTodd and Gef are gone.
 
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.
McCamish renovation damned sure didn’t make our team better.
 
Fundraising at GT would be easy. Just do two things.
1. Admit students that like American football.
2. Increase undergrad population by one order of magnitude.
 
Fundraising at GT would be easy. Just do two things.
1. Admit students that like American football.
2. Increase undergrad population by one order of magnitude.

If we're going to have a quarter million undergrads we'll need a bigger stadium. Do we have the money for that?
 
Scooter is my Golden Retriever. Leave him out of this

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Wow!!! Those are some really nice, upscale, luxury his/her outhouses you have in the background, there, JJacket!! With Tiki Torches, too!!

Scooter looks like an awesome friend, too.

Merry Christmas, Go Jackets and God Bless!

M39Buzz
 
I can’t imagine it not happening and it was prior to all of the unsavory interest rate hikes that have transpired since. I just never got told, yeah it’s done
This was where I was at as well. I had seen somewhere that we were restructuring, but I never saw confirmation it was completed. I also can’t imagine the colossal öööö up required not to have completed it knowing what payments were impending.
 
If we're going to have a quarter million undergrads we'll need a bigger stadium. Do we have the money for that?
Check ur numbers. I don't think we need more than 160,000-something. But what is a crowded campus compared to a fully funded Saturday experience?
 
The design for the expansion stunk. The upper north sticks out like a sore thumb, it takes away from the character of the stadium. Why they didn’t just connect the west, north, and east stands and keep them about the same height I’ll never no. I’m guessing it would have made our seating capacity somewhere around 51k-52k.
 
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The article is from 2 years ago, so maybe Todd did some refinancing at some point. Regardless, apart from ööööty coaching contracts, we have 300m in debt. If we indeed didn't restructure the debt, we are on the hook for 42 mil this year plus needing to hire a new coach.
But that interest :eekfacepalm:
 
The design for the expansion stunk. The upper north sticks out like a sore thumb, it takes away from the character of the stadium. Why they didn’t just connect the west, north, and east stands and keep them about the same height I’ll never no. I’m guessing it would have made our seating capacity somewhere around 51k-52k.
I believe there are restrictions to what we can do to the rest of the stadium without bringing it up to code, which would basically require demolition.
 
I believe there are restrictions to what we can do to the rest of the stadium without bringing it up to code, which would basically require demolition.
We’ll do that after we get into Big10 and they shower us with bags full of Danegeld.
 
With the resources we have on campus and in our alumni base, why don't we have cost-effective state of the art facilities? In addition we should have the best analytics in college athletics.
 
This was where I was at as well. I had seen somewhere that we were restructuring, but I never saw confirmation it was completed. I also can’t imagine the colossal öööö up required not to have completed it knowing what payments were impending.
Almost makes you think something is fishy and fear the worst. Hmm.

If anyone knows anything please let us know.
 
I believe there are restrictions to what we can do to the rest of the stadium without bringing it up to code, which would basically require demolition.

It was this. Very limited on what could be done w/o taking it all down and starting from below ground up. And that is a HUGE undertaking taking years of planning, design, reviews, approvals, funding, infrastructure improvements and construction.

That's why a lot of these structures aren't physically connected so it could be done piecemeal through the years without all of these hurdles. It's basically a Franken-stadium at this point and ideally the whole thing should be leveled and rebuilt with fewer seats IMHO before any more money is put into it. But that isn't what is planned to happen.

The Edge building project received BOR approval earlier this year and I would expect is moving forward. https://www.ajc.com/sports/georgia-...-board-of-regents/ODHTT4ZGWRD37FTUDGZZZAQWH4/

Franken-stadium grows more monstrous. Maybe change of AD will give pause for reconsideration. Who knows?

As always, just my 2¢.
 
With the resources we have on campus and in our alumni base, why don't we have cost-effective state of the art facilities? In addition we should have the best analytics in college athletics.
When they went through the last round of upgrades, they brought a group of alumni in to ask their opinions. I told them that it made the most sense to use design and construction firms with experience in sports facilities that had GT alumni working there. They were the ones living the experience, season ticket holders, potential or current donors. They knew the buildings and shortcomings, where the bodies were buries, etc. Danny Hall was in that meeting and told me it was crazy talk. They need to go to the top national firms and take the lowest price, because they would all be equal. That's how you get premium seats facing the sun and cutting off the lower bowl, and north endzones to the sky.

At McCammish, they took the low bid. Found out that the firm hadn't researched the facility effectively and had a bad plan. Then, they went to the next bidder (a GT-run company) and coerced them into giving their design to the low bidder.

It's not the alumni base that is holding us back.
 
I believe there are restrictions to what we can do to the rest of the stadium without bringing it up to code, which would basically require demolition.

Yeah, can’t build the east stands out over Techwood (City of Atlanta thing, I think), and can’t modify the west stands without losing that ADA grandfathering, IIRC.

All things being equal, it would be awesome to start over on BDS, but it’s basically OK and it would be a nightmare to redo it. (Plus you know we’d have to cheap out and end up with something like UCF’s aluminum trailer park stadium.

I do wish we had built the club seats elsewhere. Other more recent club areas in other stadiums indicate that you can put the club just about anywhere (end zone, top of the stadium), because people are there for the club and not the seat location. No good way to fix that mistake that I can think of, though. Maybe move the club to the upper east and provide good elevator access down into the club lounge?

JRjr
 
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