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Editor’s note: There are reports that Steve Patterson is expected to be fired, which means if correct, it’s already happened. This article was written in advance of that news.
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Even the prettiest girls, if they do the wrong drugs, start to look worn down.
Number-fudging is as American as apple pie.
“Yeah, I’m like five minutes away,” you tell your buddy as you’re whipping out of bed just about to get your jeans on.
“Pick up a six pack. I don’t have that many left to get us through the game,” when really you have about 24 — you’re just trying to be cautious.
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In Texas, depending on what side you’re on, numbers are everything. Yet, they still need to be fudged. They’re also a harbinger of a sudden requiem for arguably college football’s proudest program.
The numbers aren’t pretty, and they’re being fudged to make them unpretty at the expense of otherwise just being flat out horrific.
They read of over 10,000 season ticket holders not renewing their packages this year; they read of 25 to a staggering 50 percent increase for long-time season ticket holders; on the other end, they show that Longhorn football was worth a reported $131 million in 2014, tops among all programs; they fudged just over 86,000 in attendance this past weekend against Rice … when apparently that wasn’t even close to being the case.
The athletic department also raised season ticket prices on faculty for the first time pretty much since the dawn of Texas football. As one season ticket holder and longtime donor told me, to paraphrase, “he raised my ticket prices 25 percent … for worse seats,” before reiterating how irritating the faculty raise was to those around Texas.
“He,” of course, is the man responsible for these changes. The $131 million figure probably self-suggests to athletic director Steve Patterson that he’s doing his job appreciably well. To some, the bottom line is the only line. The rest of it is just bull spit on the way to getting there, and some of that bull spit is the collateral damage of trying to make money when it goes away.
When you’re raking in that kind of loot, you don’t expect to see many folks flying banners over your town calling for your firing.
Chip Brown of Horns Digest … one of the best in the business … wrote an expansive piece about Patterson and the loss of soul of the Texas program as the almighty dollar is chased, pissing off important people. Eventually, important people e-mail your boss, and usually, the important people win.
Halfway through the piece, I clicked the “back” button on the Internet browser. What the hell was this, a remake of a song I’ve already heard with different instrumentals? It was like reading about Michigan football over the last two years with the school and the names changed.
The similarities were unmistakable: you have an AD hell-bent on making sure that bottom line balloons, feeling that it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card when the time comes to talk about continued employment, never bothering to worry about the soul of the program if it doesn’t fit the fiscal narrative.
The problem is, as Michigan came to understand, that the soul of a program is what makes college football, and college sports in general. It’s not the bloodless world of professional sports or private corporations. The problem for the AD is that no matter what you think you’re doing well, when the fans and donors start barking to the president, you’re in trouble.
University presidents don’t want to have to answer for athletic things. This may shock you … even at Michigan or Texas … but it’s not the forefront of their concerns whatsoever, so when protests are being held on the president’s lawn (Michigan) or the inbox is filling with concerns … all about sports (Texas, until the protest thing happens) … they get frosty.
You can call fans not showing up with as much frequency “not supporting the program” all you want, but the “program” is more than just what goes on in the field of play when it comes to these sorts of things. If change needs to happen, fans … specifically the ones that donate large amounts of loot … actually have the power in college athletics.
Patterson has deeply angered a lot of people, beyond the point of a temporary nuisance or in isolated skirmishes that blow away and are easily forgotten. Whether he’s right, wrong, or otherwise, at some point you have to realize that and acquiesce — at least in a small way — to what’s bothering people. The customer is always right, and all that jazz.
At this point, Texas is just looking for reasons to let Patterson go. Raising ticket prices to athletic events (the mind-boggling percentages don’t help, but the act of raising prices matters more) is akin to being council president of your local town and signing off on raising taxes. It just doesn’t fly in this day and age.
That’s only part of the problem, as Brown detailed a laundry list of issues going on with the program over a sustained period of time. Patterson has done most of the life no-no’s, specifically:
1. Raising prices on people
2. Disrespecting his boss
What’s amazing about the UT situation is that normally an AD is judged by his hires and their wins and losses. Certainly, even in the case of Michigan and David Brandon, that was the majority of it. The remainder of it was just rallying around the carcass and being angry about things that if 11-2 seasons were happening, wouldn’t matter.
Patterson has so badly alienated people with Texas that he’s managed to get them to overlook the fact that he’s made two solid hires in the cash cow sports (football and basketball), and while Texas isn’t amazing at football yet and the jury is still out on basketball, the program at the on-field level is trending upward.
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Just a few of the indiscretions mentioned by Brown:
– Paying quality control staff poverty-level wages ($24K annually) and refusing to raise that figure
– Charging alumni for stepping on the football field because of things like “we have to turn the lights on”
– Cutting travel expenses in a variety of sports while traveling worldwide personally on the company dime
None of this is illegal, just like none of what Brandon did at Michigan was, but it shows a dim understanding that the logo stands for more than making money in certain cases, be it the Block M or the Texas Steer.
The job of an athletic director at an institution like a Michigan or a Texas isn’t easy, and it’s not all one thing or all the other. Sports are part of the identity of the university, right or wrong, and the hot lights burn brighter there than at Yale or Brown.
That’s why Patterson gets a cool $1.4 million and the guy doing it at Brown (Jack Hayes) probably doesn’t.
Texas fans should know that this story sometimes has a happy ending. Brandon needed to depart from his role at Michigan because it had turned into that girl you’ve always wanted to date, but then you do and you find out you completely don’t mix. Both sides are miserable.
Patterson, with his pro sports mindset and background, will most assuredly find work somewhere, probably West of Texas judging by his Pac-12 ties. Texas will move on to hire someone that knows about Texas, business be damned.
The amazing thing about all of this is that college sports remains the one place where sometimes, money isn’t unbeaten, or at least loses a few holes in match play. It doesn’t matter if they tick off you or me, Joe Fan. The issue becomes when you start making the rich people ornery, which isn’t easy because guys at that level are successful in part because they’re measured and not rash decision makers.
When you get those guys (and gals) angry, you’ve done something woefully wrong. You don’t get rich by being a hasty decision maker, but college sports remains the one place where people who in their real lives put the bottom line at top of the pecking order tend to move it down temporarily come Saturdays in the Fall.
The athletic department can make all the money its heart desires, but there’s a cap on where money raised meets the true soul of what you’re raising it for.
When it comes to Texas, that cap has been met and the soul is sufficiently punctured. Better days lie ahead for all, but there is a lesson here, one that makes college sports unlike the cold, calculated world of pro sports:
There are some things, no matter how badly you try, you cannot put a price on. The soul of the program has no dollar value, and it doesn’t come cheap. The eyes of Texas are sad, and it shouldn’t ever be that way.
