Report takes deep dive into FSU coaches’ expenses

[bchampy]

Report takes deep dive into FSU coaches’ expenses | Tallahassee Blogs

If all you care about is the number of wins the football team gets each week, you won’t need to bother reading the upcoming Sunday Exclusive. It is all about accountability within the Florida State University athletics program, without measuring wins and losses.

For months, our award-winning sports team has examined how FSU’s coaches spend public money while traveling on university business. We used public records requests and pored through mounds of documents to examine the expenses coaches incur.

With a $2.4 million shortfall in the athletic department budget for next year, forcing the university to make difficult decisions about dipping into reserves or cutting into programs, we think the reason our examination is important is evident even to the most ardent sports fan.

We are cognizant that we are messing with the ultimate sacred cow in these parts; to the best of our knowledge, no newspaper or member of the public has looked at athletic coaches’ expenses in this level of detail. Quite frankly, that’s because no one much cared how coaches spent money, as long as the stands were full, the money flowed in and the teams’ records were good.

Most of our focus in following the money, of course, has had to be on football. It is the golden goose, or at least it was until recently. Things have changed: The stands are not nearly as full, there is a new regime and way of doing business, and it has been a long time since FSU has fielded a championship team. In fact, almost everything is different.

In truth, the athletic department and football programs that existed during the heyday of the Bobby Bowden era were nothing like the programs of today.

The reality is all of college football has changed and become all about the money. We are seeing that play out as FSU maneuvers for the best possible deal for a conference, with no one seeming to talk about or care what’s in the best interest of the fan, the average Booster or a typical mom and dad trying to take their kids to see a game. How could they, with so many zeros following the dollar signs?

Still, there will be those who won’t care what our report says – seeing whatever reporting we do only as an intrusion on fantasyland. The team is looking good and, coupled with an especially weak schedule, seems ready to take its place again among the nation’s elite.

That is why we are publishing our stories now, well before the football season begins, even as spring sports began to wind down. With so many millions of public money in play, we think it is essential that someone be a watchdog on how that money is spent and that the people entrusted with that money be held accountable for how they use it. Still, once the games start, the focus should be on the players and their accomplishments.

We asked ourselves if FSU coaches were behaving differently from coaches at competing programs. We know that some will bring that point up. But then we were reminded of that favored saying of mothers everywhere – that if everyone else is jumping off the bridge, should we, too?

And – though it is yet to translate into a football championship — we acknowledge that FSU has had success in the recruiting wars, at least according to annual rankings by sports writers and other so-called experts. And acquiring the best recruits is one of the reasons coaches travel. Even so, we believe our report is both fair and accurate, and raises important questions.

In the end we decided that the public has a right to know how its money is being spent.

We leave it to readers to decide what they think about our reporting and whether the time has come, given the economics of the current era not just in athletics but also in all of higher education, when we can’t continue to afford to not pay attention to how they spend the public’s money.

 

[goDAWGSsicem]

FSU is a big "name brand", how are they losing money?

 

[bone3421]

FSU is a big "name brand", how are they losing money?

acc's terrible tv rights contract

 

[BadMotoWeazal]

Because no matter how much money you bring in you still need to operate within a "budget"..... Are you listening W-DC?