Bishops, Cardinals and Trick Plays

I started working with kids in the summer of 1976 when I was the Assistant Summer Rec Director for the City of Chamberlain. Eventually I was the director and went on to coach baseball, basketball and football. I have worked with kids in some way ever since - some forty plus years.

When my wife and I moved from Omaha to Des Moines in 1984, I volunteered to coach a baseball team. The boys were 12-14 years old and we had a good summer. I enjoyed working with them and I believe the boys had fun. We were respectable - I think we were about .500.

Toward the end of the season, one of the fathers asked me if I'd be interested in coaching the St. Theresa's Cardinals. We belonged to St. Theresa's Parish and several of the boys on the baseball team would be on the football team so I agreed to coach them.

So later that summer, I went to an organizational meeting at one of the other Catholic churches in Des Moines. I could tell from the minute I entered the room that this was not going to be like my baseball experience earlier that summer. The room smelled like testosterone and I think I saw guys keep getting up and peeing in the corner!! This room was full of guys determined to relive their football glory days!

SDHSAA Fleeces Fans for Foundation Funds

Bob Mercer has written a story about the South Dakota Activities Association's new ticket pricing policy which steals a dollar per ticket from member school and places it under the "care" of the SDHSAA Foundation.

The net result of the new ticket pricing policy is a 40% increase in ticket prices for all sub-state tournaments. Despite this increase in prices, it is not uncommon for schools to lose money hosting these sub-state events. The SDHSAA gets their take from the gross proceeds while members schools are left to pay expenses out of what is left. In some cases, that is not enough to cover the overhead and so schools end up dipping into their own funds to make up the shortfall.

From Mercer's article:

School officials aren’t happy with the $2 increase, according to Sen. Larry Lucas, D-Mission. “So that message is being heard,” Lucas said. 

The groundswell against the $2 increase prompted a response from Carney earlier this month.
He sent a letter to school districts statewide on Nov. 8. He promised that money from the foundation will eventually flow back to schools.

The Aug. 29 vote called for a foundation committee to be established. Until those people are appointed, the association board will oversee the foundation.

The foundation committee is supposed to make recommendations to the association board and the board will make recommendations to the SDHSAA member schools for the April annual meeting, according to Carney.

Carney said in his letter that he’s working with Stephanie Judson, president of the South Dakota Community Foundation. Carney and SDCF’s then-president Bob Sutton signed the agreement in 2007 creating the activities foundation.

Records from the board’s meetings in 2012 and 2013 show Carney and his staff presented options for raising money for the foundation on several occasions.

The meeting minutes however don’t show any discussions or explanations about why the foundation needed the money or why the foundation should be used rather than the association’s treasury.

If the money from the foundation will eventually flow back to schools anyway, why does Mr. Carney feel the need to take it from the schools in the first place?

Does Mr. Carney believe the SDHSAA knows how to distribute that money better than the member schools do?

So none of the foundation funds will be used for SDHSAA “pet projects”?

Do you think fans would rather give the dollar to the SDHSAA or to their own member school?

Bowl System Needs a Good Flushing

Though I love college football (and have since my first Husker game against Oklahoma when I was ten years old), it is not a topic I have been compelled to comment on in this space. This article in the December 11, 2012 edition of the USA Today changed that.

In 1970, when I attended that Husker game, there were 11 bowl games. This year there are 35 bowl games. The proliferation of bowl games caused the NCAA to introduce a new phrase into the American lexicon - "bowl eligibility".

Under current regulations, in order for this to occur, a team must have a winning record, which may include one win against a Division I FCS scholarship-awarding opponent, or win their conference, and the team must not be on probation. This came in response to teams with sub-winning records accepting invitations to play in bowl games.

Most bowl games operate under the laws of tax-exempt charitable organizations. Some may actually benefit a charitable cause. But most benefit a small group of people who are squeezing the host city and the participating schools and their conferences for everything they can wring out of them.

As the USA Today article points out, the Outback Bowl in Tampa pays their game's president and chief executive officer, Jim McVay, more than $750,000 per year! I am sure Mr. McVay is a talented man and does a very good job but he's making over three quarters of a million dollars to oversee a football game for a tax-exempt charitable organization!!! Does anyone else think there might be a bit of abuse of the American tax code here?

The Outback Bowl is, by no means, the only bowl game that is doing this. Mr. McVay just happens to be the highest paid in a group of overpaid bowl game presidents. John Junker, CEO of the Fiesta Bowl, was fired in 2011 after the Arizona Republic exposed his abuse of power. Among Junker's (recipient of almost $600,000 in 2010) sins, he tried to convince investigators there was a legitimate business purpose for the $1,241 he'd charged to the bowl for a visit to a high-end Phoenix strip club on September 12, 2008. The Fiesta Bowl also footed the $33,188 bill for Junker's 50th birthday party, a four-day bash in Pebble Beach. Happy birthday Mr. Junker!!

If you have been wondering why we could not get a playoff system in college football rather than a beauty contest to crown the national champion before now, look no further than the bowl system. The college presidents have always been protective of the cash that they get from the bowls (in addition to the holiday season, all-expenses paid, balmy climate venue vacation that the bowl games afford them and their huge entourage).

I am looking forward to the college football playoff system in 2014 and crowning a real national champion. I am hoping that event will land a blow to the bowl system, their overpaid executives and the abuse of the "non-profit tax exempt" status they enjoy!