Revamp is a good move
If there existed a proverbial old gentlemen’s club within the
UT athletics department, its days are over.
First, the FBI crashed the party. Then, barging through the
doors came UT President Lloyd Jacobs, followed by every
variety of compliance officer and internal investigator
imaginable.
The FBI’s gambling allegations against Scooter McDougle lay in
legal limbo, as an internal investigation continues. A team
physician was almost fired. Most importantly, the department
was accused of allowing coaches and others to make
inappropriate use of tax payers’ money.
And in what’s becoming typical Jacobs fashion, the president
is keen on making swift and big changes to fix what he sees as
wrong, even if he has to tear the whole department apart, or
at least micro-manage it.
It’s safe to say the UT athletics department won’t remember
the start of 2007 favorably.
But we might.
All signs indicate that UT athletics found absurd ways to use
our tax and tuition money. None of the IC Editors are
accounting majors, but a $3,000 dry-cleaning bill for football
coaches’ game-day clothes seems a bit over the top, especially
when the athletics department is suffering a budget deficit of
$1.5 million. That bill is just one in the growing list of
unusual expenses hiding in the athletic department’s
accounting records.
Part of Jacobs’ plans to shape up the department will move the
sports accounting responsibilities from the shady realms of
the athletic department to the UT finance department. That’s a
good move.
There used to be some oversight within the athletics
department. Suzette Fronk was an assistant athletic director
whose job was to oversee business affairs and monitor
finances. She was, of course, fired.
Athletic Director Mike O’Brien initially explained her
termination as a result of the merger with the former Medical
University of Ohio (obviously due to MUO’s amply-staffed
athletic department). We didn’t buy it, either.
Later, in an e-mail to a Blade executive that he probably
regrets, Mike O’Brien let it slip that Fronk was really fired
because she was a “tremendous blow to [the department’s]
morale.”
Maybe there’s some truth to that. Not getting compensated for
those pesky dry-cleaning costs might be somewhat
disheartening.
But, rest assured, stopping this lax spending will hopefully
end the student fee gouges that would inevitably result from
the deficit. And saving that extra money will do wonders for
the morale of penniless college kids like us.