Local opinion: How UA Athletics can repay: Donations surcharge

University of Arizona football recorded its sixth losing season in the last seven years. Should the head coach be fired?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. If he is, the UA would owe him $11 million for the remainder of his five-year contract. As it has for several recent multimillion-dollar buyouts of fired coaches, the Athletic Department likely would ask donors to pay.

What is another colossal boondoggle in UA athletics presents an opportunity: The university should institute a 10% surcharge on athletic donations, with the proceeds going to academics.

That would allow athletics to begin repaying $87 million that the former UA president gave it at the expense of academics. So far, talk of repayment is like the football team’s success: nonexistent.

Raising $11 million from donors to buy out the coach’s contract, with a 10% surcharge, would mean $1.1 million for academics.

There’s even more potential. The UA Foundation reported $24 million in donations to athletics last year. Ten percent would have repaid $2.4 million for academics.

The foundation skims 6% off the top of donations for operations, including more than $1 million for its top three officials’ salaries. So how about 10% for academics, which is why the UA and the foundation exist?

Let’s say $24 million is donated to athletics again this fiscal year. A $2.4 million surcharge would cover one year of tuition, fees, books and living expenses, averaging $30,000, for 80 Arizona students. Or one year of salaries, averaging $131,000, for 18 professors.

Or raises for the lowest-paid people on campus. Giving raises is something new UA President Suresh Garimella said he hopes to do. A surcharge would help him do that.

It also would mean athletics can begin repaying academics sooner rather than later – or sooner rather than never, as UA CFO John Arnold’s plan appears to call for.

The university is here for academics. No academics, no athletics. The previous UA president thought otherwise. He insulted many on campus, calling athletics the university’s “front porch.”

He tried propping up that sagging porch by giving $87 million of university money to athletics, confirming the long-standing falsehood that sports programs were self-supporting.

Meanwhile, in academics, faculty and staff were furloughed, classes fell off the schedule, and students struggled to get enough credits to graduate in reasonable time frames.

President Garimella, who by one account is intent on significantly increasing donations to the university, should institute the 10% surcharge.

If he doesn’t, the Arizona Board of Regents must use its influence – also known as its oversight responsibility – to require the UA to implement a surcharge repayment system for athletics.

Doing so might allow the regents to begin making amends for their complicity and lack of adequate financial oversight in the last half-dozen years. That includes the regents continually rewarding the ex-president’s misfeasance with a lavish salary and bonuses.

One more idea: Call it the Robert Robbins Athletics Surcharge, so when donors give to sports, they are reminded of that wastrel of an administrator and what he did to students, faculty and the community.