The University has undergone 10 years of unprecedented and unparalleled athletic expansion, and former Oregonian investigative sports reporter Rachel Bachman said Friday afternoon that it was symbolically kicked off by the billboard extolling former Ducks quarterback Joey Harrington’s candidacy for the Heisman Trophy in 2001.
In a presentation to the City Club of Eugene titled “Football & Sports Culture in the Land of the Ducks,” Bachman went over the past decade in University athletics, giving an overview of the recent history of a department with a budget that has more than doubled in that span,  reaching $75 million in 2010-11.
“I guess I want to make sure that (people) have been aware of some of the changes in college sports and the business of it, and to just contemplate them,” Bachman said after the event. “Oftentimes, we read stories and then forget about them a few days later, but I really wanted to talk about this topic as a cohesive whole and about how all these individual forces are changing this big community institution.”
Much of  Bachman’s presentation was centered around the University’s increased athletic spending and its effect on the national profile of the school. Bachman, who begins at the Wall Street Journal in two weeks, started off by talking about the billboard and what it signified about the University’s intentions and how it was interpreted outside of Oregon.
Bachman quoted a sentence from a New York Times editorial published two months after the billboard was erected, which said “It dramatizes the skewed priorities of high-powered college athletic programs.”
The long battle over the eventual construction of Matthew Knight Arena was another central discussion topic for Bachman. She discussed how the plans were shelved multiple times early in the 2000s and not rekindled until former athletic director Bill Moos resigned from his position and was given a $500,000 buyout from Pat Kilkenny, who eventually succeeded him in the post. According to Bachman, Kilkenny, a former insurance executive, then became the only Division I athletic director without a college degree.
During the Q-&-A session after her speech, Bachman fielded questions from City Club members, the first of whom — former Oregon offensive and defensive lineman Michael Rose — asked how the University could get out of the cycle of big-budget athletics seeming to loom over its academics.
“I think it begins with what you’re doing today, educating yourself,” Bachman replied. “The power of money has become overpowering in college athletics.”
After the event, Rose commented on why he chose to take part in the discussion.
“I personally believe that the academic part is very important, and I am concerned about some of the changes that are happening in athletics that detract from the students’ ability to be a student,” Rose said.
Rose lauded Bachman’s speech, saying “I thought she gave a good background of what’s been going on the last 10 years, and I think she’s very thoughtful about the subject. I don’t think there’s any easy solutions. We all want easy answers, but there aren’t any in this question — it’s too complex.”
Bachman also fielded questions about the University’s increasing athletic profile and how it affects its reputation as an institution.
“In terms of outside the state, I think it’s depending increasingly on athletics,” Bachman said. “It’s very difficult to measure, but the view from far away is that many of the people I talk to know the University through its football team.”
After the discussion, City Club program committee member Randy Prince said the depth of Bachman’s investigative work during her time at The Oregonian is why the organization brought her to speak Friday, a day after Oregon’s football team beat Cal 43-15 at Autzen Stadium.
“We felt that it needed more investigation than we had been getting from local journalists, because it is a unifying thing for everybody to be completely supportive of our local teams,” Prince said. “This is something that really deserves a serious look.”
For Bachman, the University’s innovation in its athletic department was what she wanted to highlight in her presentation.
“The things that have happened at Oregon are so unusual and groundbreaking in a lot of ways that they deserved more discussion and review,” Bachman said.
The hour-long discussion will air on KLCC at 6:30 p.m. Monday for those who want to hear the presentation in its entirety.