Michael A. Chihak: U of A athletics payback? It's time

University of Arizona athletics will pay back $87 million the administration lent it a few years ago. Good news, but when? Academics needs it now.

“... the department will repay its loans ...” UA Chief Financial Officer John Arnold said through a spokesman on Oct. 28. Arnold gave no repayment timeline for lending that began five-plus years ago.

His statement said Athletic Director Desireé Reed-Francois “has taken a disciplined approach to long-term financial sustainability, implementing structured budgets across every sport, increasing revenues, modernizing fundraising and fostering a culture of accountability.”

Good to know, because perhaps it means no more loans and because those steps plus bringing competitiveness to an average sports program with above-average expenses are why Reed-Francois was hired. UA officials tout her business acumen, paying her $1.25 million a year for it.

This is no easy time for athletic directors, having to raise millions to pay athletes, negotiating coaches’ exorbitant salaries and, of course, getting pressure to win.

Likewise, it’s no breeze for academics — why the university exists. Partly because of the loans made to athletics, the university ran up a big deficit, and that led to 328 layoffs, vacant professorships, some units eliminated and others consolidated.

Who knows if academic cuts might have caused UA to fall 18 spots in U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings, to 127th? For only the second time, Arizona State University is higher, at 117.

It didn’t hurt university President Suresh Garimella, who got $285,000 in bonuses this fall from the Board of Regents, atop his $810,000 salary, for meeting basic job criteria. He did erase the deficit that predecessor Robert Robbins racked up through mismanagement and an obsession with sports.

Might the prospect of monetary reward lead Garimella to the same obsession? His bonuses included $45,000 to make UA “a beacon of innovation and excellence in collegiate athletics.” That was to plan for innovation and excellence, not to actually achieve them.

Faculty and staff got 1.25% to 3% raises this fall; minimum-wage workers got 10%. More money would be available if athletics paid up.

The math: $87 million divided by 14,000, the approximate number of UA employees; the quotient is $6,214. Full professors average $130,000; the $6,214 would be a one-time, 4.8% bonus. Assistant professors average $88,800, for a 7% bonus. Garimella’s bonus was 35%.

Divvying a so-far nonexistent athletics payback is hypothetical, of course, while damage to academics is real. Blame Robbins’ financial failings. Now, Garimella, Arnold and Reed-Francois own it and must start payback if they want credibility and continuation of the media-fueled myth that athletics are essential to the university and Tucson.

Football especially holds Reed-Francois and the Star’s Michael Lev in thrall. “A winning football program lifts all elements of a university,” Lev wrote. Oh? Did football put Stanford or Cal Berkeley on the map? “It strengthens our community,” Reed-Francois said. Can it be strengthened by other than young men violently knocking one another to the turf?

In 1951, the University of Oklahoma’s president, with sarcasm, told legislators questioning his academic budget: “We want to build a university our football team can be proud of.”

No such sarcasm at the U of A. It rang true when ex-president Robbins called athletics “the front porch for the university,” rhetorically and fiscally relegating academics to the backyard. There it remains, in part because of Robbins’ as-yet unpaid $87 million in loans.

Athletics got regents’ approval last month to borrow $50 million for upgrading football and basketball venues. Based on the payback record so far, one must say, “caveat creditor” — let the lender beware.