In Reply to: UCLA could distribute at least $20 million a year to its more than 600 posted by mh on May 29, 2024 at 11:16:37
Morgan Center went bankrupt and was preserved only through a debtor in possession loan from Ucla. Terms of these loans are onerous on the borrower until repaid in full. In essence, the creditors run the show and this financial servitude will persist at Morgan Center for a decade or more.
Ucla is, at heart, a government run social welfare program. They lack the will and the talent to compete in the explicitly capitalist and overtly competitive marketplace of college football. Oh, but we're passionate about it!
Payments to non-revenue athletes should be viewed as a university advertising expense. The off-prime visibility they generate puts the brand in a favorable, if narrow, light and likely attracts fresh applicants more broadly and deeply than any non-athletic pursuit could. The nutrition seems like a thoroughly valid cost of doing business.
The Calimony payment is pure grift. Besides lengthening Morgan Center's financial servitude, it provides more testimony to the demise of the once great UC system. UC was once a dynamic, enterprising, growth oriented university, but is now a politically hardened government run social welfare program given to securing sinecures for bureaucrats and doling out stipends and pensions to mostly ineffective, unproductive employees. UC now has 1 employee for every 2 students. UC is no longer a serious place.
So, while not as powerful as it might be, the $19.7mm cash injection each year might bring Morgan Center out of the financial ER faster than otherwise. We can see now that Morgan Center had no real choice in the matter of leaving the Pac12. It was an existential decision.
About the time Morgan Center pays off its debtor in possession loan, TV rights economics will further consolidate to a 2x or 3x NFL sized league of big money farm teams and another outer orbit of amateur programs clinging to life. Because streaming will replace cable, "TV markets" will cease to carry economic value and, losing this natural geographic advantage, Ucla's chances of being chosen as an NFL farm team are diminished. Besides, Ucla doesn't have the stomach for this.
This dark fate is reversible, but not by Morgan Center. It will become necessary for Morgan Center to distance itself from the crass mercantile world of CFB by outsourcing the football program to a management company, say, Wasserman-Aikman or something similar. Under new, talented, motivated and serious management, the Bruins may survive. At Morgan Center, their days are numbered.