Seems Pitt sports is lacking in its private donations.
Here’s the deal at Pitt: In the fiscal year 2002-03, private donors contributed $3.2 million (a number that increased slightly, to $3.8 million, in the fiscal year that just ended).
Remember that figure: $3.2 million.
Now, here is what other selected schools garnered in private donations in 2002-03: Penn State, $13 million; UConn, $10 million; Ohio State, $8.8 million; Louisville, $6 million; West Virginia, $5.5 million; South Florida, $4 million; Rutgers, $3.8 million; Cincinnati, $3.7 million.
Translation, Pitt either hasn’t worked hard at wringing more money soliciting more donations from fans and alumni or the fans and alumni of Pitt are really cheap.
Money builds a program real fast.
Meanwhile, Pitt isn’t even able to fund all of its athletic scholarships. The baseball team, for example, is four scholarships shy of a full complement in a conference where it competes with the likes of Notre Dame.
Besides that, the track and soccer teams don’t have their own facilities.
Don’t care about those sports? Consider this: If Team Pittsburgh — the university’s fund-raising arm — doesn’t improve dramatically under Pratapas’ watch, Pitt’s success in football and men’s basketball could be compromised.
There are expensive facilities to be maintained, rents to meet, coaches to pay.
Can you say alarmist? I”m not saying this isn’t a legit concern for Pitt athletics, but this almost seems like a planted story from the Pitt athletic department to start laying the groundwork for some serious increases in mandatory donations. Consider it the collegiate level threat of a pro team threatening to leave if it doesn’t get a new stadium.
Bottom line: Sold-out stadiums aren’t enough to sustain athletic excellence anymore. [Mike] Pratapas[, the senior associate athletic director,] said that even powerhouse schools such as Michigan have begun to move toward more donor-based seating, which means you have to be donor to be eligible for a seat.
At Heinz Field, only 10 percent of the seats (all club seats) are donor-based. At Petersen Events Center, it’s 18 percent.
Pratapas said most schools shoot for 30 percent in football, higher in basketball.
Excuse me, I’m going to go hide my wallet.
Next, the issue of Pitt’s lack of, er, endowment.
He also said that many of the more successful schools have massive endowments to dip into. Stanford’s is $251 million. Pitt’s is less than $10 million, Pratapas said.
Okay. Stop. Hold it. That is a meaningless comparison. You cannot compare Pitt’s endowment fund to one of the most prestigious private university in the country. You are talking a vastly different base of alumni and kind of endowment. That is like comparing Salma Hayek to Gwyneth Paltrow. Both good actresses, but it really isn’t close…
Clearly, we can expect our “voluntary” contribution to Team Pittsburgh for our football tickets to be rising in the next year.
Now for some good news. The NCAA has approved new recruitment rules. Here’s what is one that helps Pitt and hurts the more rural schools.
But no more private planes will tilt the proverbial level playing field. Recruits must travel to campus solely by commercial aircraft. That’s fine when you are USC or Texas or LSU or Syracuse. But what happens to Kansas State? Iowa State? Penn State? If there are any commercial flights close to these campuses, there are only a handful, with long waits for connecting flights.
In a 48-hour recruiting visit, private planes afforded a recruit the chance to spend more time on campus. It’s the difference between a Purdue recruit landing in West Lafayette, Ind., at 9 a.m. Saturday morning, or flying to O’Hare, connecting to Indianapolis, and arriving on campus via car around, oh, 12:30 p.m.
The rural schools had asked that they be allowed to use private planes from the largest nearby commercial airport. In the end, by a vote of 11-3, the Division I Board of Directors decided to adopt the broad ban in order to establish, as Dr. Robert Hemenway, the Kansas chancellor put it, “a baseline. Maybe sometime in the future we can come back to it, if there is a serious disadvantage.”
The only bad thing for a recruit coming from Pittsburgh International Airport to the campus, South Side practice facilities and Heinz Field — dealing with the Parkway. Can you imagine the boredom recruits will face driving to Penn State after flying in to Harrisburg?
