Hmmmm, College Station, heffers and male cheer leaders, or ASU, awesome weather and some of the finest tail on the planet.
My understanding is that the loan was already repaid before any of this started. I think the exit fees will be lower, and they get a raise by going to the SEC, so that makes up some of it. But I bet the key is alumni donations - given how excited their fanbase is, I bet there was quite a spike this past year in donations. All it takes is a handful of very rich alumni to make some big contributions - maybe Coach Sumlin will have to be referred around campus as Coach Sumlin, brought to you by Robert Gates.
That's not my understanding at all. In fact, I read somewhere that there was some discussion of asking the university if they could defer payments to deal with the exit fees. EDIT: payment terms are 0% interest...$16 million dollar balance...$1.6 million per year to be paid over 10 years beginning in 2010. that's general fund public money being loaned out for 10 years at 0% interest. i wonder if the legislature had to bless that first or if A&M officials had the authority to act on their own to make interest free loans to their own athletic dept.
Interesting - no idea where I heard otherwise. I'd be curious to see how much the difference between SEC vs. Big 12 money is, though that depends in part on whether the SEC reopens their agreement with CBS. And I'm really interested to see if their alumni donations spiked or not. Lots of different dynamics in play there, with the richest/oldest alumni probably the most attached to staying with Texas, but the younger alums more excited about the SEC.
http://blog.chron.com/aggies/2011/12/byrnes-dismissal-might-come-soon/ Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne’s dismissal might come soon COLLEGE STATION – It’s been an ugly week around Aggieland, and one of the results might soon be the dismissal of athletic director Bill Byrne. An A&M insider told me Friday that Byrne is expected to be fired soon, in large part because of the Internet postings of his right-hand man in the athletic department, chief financial officer and senior associate AD Jeff Toole. Toole was discovered posting under an alias on TexAgs.com and ridiculing A&M president R. Bowen Loftin, describing Loftin as a “putz,” “hopelessly underqualified puppet” and “idiot.” Byrne also had almost nothing to do with A&M’s exit of the Big 12 – a league he helped form while at Nebraska – and entrance into the Southeastern Conference, and he also lobbied for football coach Mike Sherman all the way up until Sherman’s Thursday firing by Loftin and A&M’s regents. Byrne became A&M’s athletic director in late 2002. His contract runs through 2013, and the insider said there is no specific timetable on Byrne’s firing, but it could come within the next several weeks.
This was expected. It'll be a huge loss too. Byrne whipped all of the other athletic programs into shape, but football is all that matters.
I turned this on in order to rubberneck at L'Universite Agriculturel et Mechanique du Texas one more time.... I figure the way things have been going for them lately , pretty much anything could happen - like a bat from Kyle Field flying around the room and crapping guano on the Bowtie guy's moustachio....or maybe even an ACTUAL LITERAL TRAIN smashing into the press conference, Inception-style. Instead it's Aggies - Alcorn State basketball highlights.
Uh, no..it's not been paid off. I posted the terms of the loan, above. The first payment was not made at all until September 2009, and that was a $1.6 million payment. Here's an article from June of 2009...where they were just beginning to make the first payment. http://www.chron.com/sports/college/article/Texas-A-M-can-begin-to-repay-16-million-loan-1664843.php “We’ve been cutting back on our expenses and generating new revenue,” Byrne said. “So we’re able to start paying the loan back. We’re right on track to do that.” He also pledged that he will not put corporate names on stadiums to help pay the bills. Even if it meant covering the loan, scheduled to be paid in $1.6 million increments over the next 10 years. This article is from the Bryan-College Station paper in August 2009 and talks about them scrambling just to make the first payment, which was due in September 2009. http://www.theeagle.com/am/A-amp-amp-M-athletics-reworks-budget-to-pay-loan In late 2008, the Texas A&M athletic department was scrambling to meet an ominous deadline. The department had less than a year before it was to begin repaying a $16 million loan arranged by previous A&M President Robert Gates and athletics director Bill Byrne. The loan gave the department four years to use university money to shore up budget shortfalls, and the first payment was due in the fiscal year that starts Sept. 1, 2009. But the department was facing two more years of projected deficit spending, and finance officials expressed concern that something needed to be done, records show. Interviews with university and athletic department officials, along with e-mails obtained by The Eagle through a Texas Public Information Act request, depict the financial equivalent of a frantic fourth-quarter drive to get the athletic department into the black. Officials now expect a balanced budget for 2009-10, but 10 months ago they weren't so optimistic. It was later determined that the department would begin making $1.6 million payments on the loan each year for 10 years, beginning in September 2009. Here's an article from aggiesports.com just 5 days ago where it talks about the loan still being paid...and speculating that Sherman wouldn't be fired because of the financial obligations the athletic department still has to meet: http://www.aggiesports.com/football/2012-already-started-for-A-amp-amp-M-football-team--6802775 A bigger reason for no coaching change is economics. Sherman has completed four years of his original seven-year contract that pays him $1.8 million annually. All buyouts are negotiable, but does A&M have the money to part ways with Sherman and make an Urban Meyer-type hire? A&M's athletics department already is paying back a $16 million loan, and fans are tired of overpaying or paying for nothing. Former A&M coach Dennis Franchione received a $4.4 million buyout for a 32-28 record that earned him roughly $9 million total. Finally, here's an article from the Houston Chronicle's Aggie beat writer just 2 days ago: http://blog.chron.com/aggies/2011/11/why-mike-sherman-500-in-50-games-likely-will-be-back/ Keep in mind A&M will still have to pay an exit fee to the Big 12, and the athletic department is paying back a $16 million loan to the university. I realize there are grass roots movements among the SMAs and MMAs (Small Money Ags and Medium Money Ags, not to be confused with the Big Money Ags), and I’m a fan of grass roots. But those are going to have to be some serious movements in a fairly short amount of time. If that loan had been paid off entirely, A&M's athletic department would have issued press releases that would show up in Google searches indicating the loan had been paid off. That would be out there. The loan hasn't been repaid, it's BEING paid off in annual increments...but at most 3 payments have been made so far. At least 7 are left to be paid.
You love worrying about loans. Pretty sure it will not be an obstacle. The US owes loan monies, it still buys ****.
But damn, Sherman did confirm that he found out via telephone when he pulled into the recruits driveway, and that he was upset that his family knew before he did.
Slightly better than the rumor that the recruits mother was the first to tell Sherman during a meeting with that recruit. I feel bad for him. He's a nice guy.
