It’s hard to figure out how many students will care about a football game a year before it happens. But that’s exactly what the Athletic Department Finance Committee has to know when it negotiates with the athletic department for student seats at Autzen Stadium and basketball games at McArthur Court.
To further complicate the matter, next year’s football season will see six home games instead of this year’s seven, and the following year the number will jump back up.
In order to prepare for what committee chairman Kyle McKenzie called “a volatile increase” in the committee’s 2009 budget, the committee will request a zero-percent increase from the Student Senate for the 2008-2009 school year at Wednesday’s Senate meeting.
The ADFC is requesting the Senate approve a budget for next year of $1,414,643,-the same amount as this year’s budget – even though there is one fewer game. If the committee took a larger decrease to account for having one less game, the increase that would be required for the 2009-10 school year would be “an astronomical amount,” McKenzie wrote in a memo to the Senate last week.
ASUO Finance Coordinator Matt Rose agreed that a larger decrease to next year’s budget could hurt the ADFC in the future, and said the extra money the committee will have this year could be used to offset donation fees to the athletic department during the 2009-10 school year.
But the way the committee will use the extra funds – $209,216, to be exact – has not yet been decided. McKenzie said the money could go toward donation fees, it could be put into a savings account, it could be used to buy extra tickets the year after next, or it could be used on an electronic ticketing system that is supposed to be implemented by next season.
The first three games next year will be played before fall term classes begin. Those games typically draw a smaller number of students. So the ADFC bargained down the number of student tickets for games against Boise State University and Utah State University, and a slightly higher number for a game against the University of Washington. Rose, who serves as an ex-officio member of the committee, said estimating how many students will want to attend a game is hard because there’s no telling how well the teams will be performing in a year. Once the committee has bargained for a set number of tickets, the athletic department sells the rest, so there’s no way to hold extra tickets, Rose said.
The ASUO Executive, the branch of student government led by President Emily McLain, is also recommending the ADFC have a zero percent increase from this year’s budget. Therefore, not much opposition to the plan is expected at Wednesday’s Senate meeting.
“If they’re requesting zero percent, they’re requesting zero percent,” Sen. Steven Wilsey said, pointing out that there aren’t many senators who would disagree with not increasing a budget.
“I think everybody will be pretty comfortable with it,” Rose said. “I mean, the Exec and the ADFC are recommending the exact same thing for the same reasons.”
Rose did point out, however, that the ADFC is in a unique situation, and such cooperation shouldn’t be expected when the Programs Finance Committee and the EMU Board of Directors have budget benchmark hearings next week.
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