Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion College Alberts, Christensen leave unanswered questions

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Most supporters of UNO Athletics felt let down by the Board of Regents meeting Friday. And it wasn't just because of the unanimous rubber stamp decision to go Division I and essentially drop football and wrestling. No, most people were disappointed because of all the questions left unanswered before the conclusion of the meeting.

I have reached out to the community to find the questions that need to be answered. All UNO Chancellor John Christensen and Athletic Director Trev Alberts need to do is read them, think about them and type up their responses. They don't even have to leave the office.

Let's find a solutions-oriented, civil way to discuss these issues as adults.

1) Why weren't the coaches contacted to see if there was a possibile way of retaining their programs? They are most in touch with their alumni donors. Chancellor, you know personally how Coach Denney and his family will fight through any adversity you give them. Wouldn't it make sense to give them a shot to make it work?

2)Chancellor Christiensen, if Trev Alberts did not realize he was being hired to run UNO Athletics as a business, what made him such an attractive candidate for the athletic director position? What qualified him for the job at this time, in this current situation? He had no background in business, nor any background in athletic administration. When you knew this was the most difficult and defining time in UNO sports history, why did you hire someone with zero experience or preparation for this position?

3) What are the true profit/loss statements for football and wrestling? You have said they operate at a major loss, but government reports show otherwise. Why is there such a discrepancy?

4) How did the Omaha World-Herald know about the Summit League invitation and the elimination of both the football and wrestling programs before the teams knew?

5) How come the Alden Report only showed the results of UNO going to Division I and dropping both football and wrestling? A legitimate comparison throughout did not paint the pictures of multiple scenarios. Given a year's worth of work, a more thorough and detailed report should have been made with multiple options explored. If UNO students are held to a much higher standard for their business reports, why was the Alden Report acceptable in your eyes?

6) In your PowerPoint presentation given at the Regent's meeting, you carried out the current trends to the year 2016. There's two glaring holes there.

First, the expenditures continued to skyrocket, showing uncontrollable spending continuing by the athletic department. Why was there a $2 million spike from 2007-2010 in expenditures, and why would you continue to spend an additional $2 million in 2016?

Second, the revenues did not reflect the same current trends that expenditures and University support showed. This appears that you are either fitting the chart to your needs or you have no business management skills. How would revenues not go up at all, and why would you continue to add another $2 million in expenditures?

7) If the Summit League has a lower average budget than UNO and is competing in a higher division, how does this fit into the "Culture of Excellence" that has been your agenda? How does spending less money against programs with a lot more money equate to "excellence"? Furthermore, Mr. Alberts, you said at the Regents meeting that a lot of revenue would come from guaranteed money games in basketball.

You said, "Other than a demoralizing loss, there would be no real injury to the team." How does accepting demoralizing losses (you projected four per year in your numbers) equate to your "Culture of Excellence?"

8) How come the only people who spoke on behalf of your plan were paid employees of the University? Was any sort of public relations firm consulted throughout this process?

9) By taking away the booster bases from football and wrestling, how do you expect to increase your donations to the campus? Why would someone donate to Creighton basketball and soccer andUNO basketball and soccer when they are competing against each other?

10) How do you justify the loss of athletic/academic opportunities for Nebraska students at UNO as you move to Division I?

11) What is the actual cost (scholarships, loss of alumni support, travel, other Division I expenses) of going Division I, and where is that balance sheet?

12) Why, knowing this decision was coming, would you sign off on the hiring of a new assistant football coach and allow him to move his family here and buy a house?

13) Alberts, you said you didn't realize you would be running an athletics program as a business when you first started. Why, at that point, did you not seek the advice of some of the top business people in the city who also just happen to be the biggest supporters of your program?

Had you said, "Here is what it takes to go Division I, keep football and wrestling, give the Summit League a reason to accept us, and fall in line with Title IX," you would have had a team of passionate business men working tirelessly to find a way to make it work. If they couldn't do it, then it couldn't be done. There wouldn't be the backlash you see now.

You still have the chance to do that. You can still answer the question, "Given a magic wand and Buffet/Gates money, what would it take to move to Division I in the Summit League, keep football and wrestling, align with the Summit League and become Title IX compliant?" Give us that number, and let us run with it. If you aren't willing to give these athletes a chance, why would anyone believe you would give the chance to future athletes?

Editor's note: The Gateway invites Chancellor Christensen and Trev Alberts to respond to Editor-in-Chief Jasmine Maharisi at jasmine.maharasi@unogateway.com

Here is a note back from one of the folks who gave the rubber stamp guess they do not know what ROI means. These are his numbers so I thing they talk out of both ends. You know what I mean.

"Bob Phares" <bphares@nebraska.edu>
Just in case you are interested the UNO wrestling program has cost the University an average of $300,000 per year to maintain it.I agree it is as great program for the young men who have been a part of it and I wish we could afford to retain it.

Chancellor Christiensen and the Trev Alberts Club

The sweet 64 basketball tournament will not make the school millions! The school will spend more.

BCS conducts shallow probe as party rages on

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
6 hours, 18 minutes ago


tweet38EmailPrintThe Bowl Championship Series is so troubled by the graft exposed in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl corruption report that it appointed a special “task force.” Among the members is an athletics director who accepted a free Caribbean cruise from the Orange Bowl just last summer.

Yes, there’s nothing like having a guy – in this case, Southern Mississippi’s Richard Giannini – who takes lavish gifts from one bowl game to judge another bowl game for giving out lavish gifts.

The obvious news from Tuesday’s 276-page Fiesta Bowl report is that longtime CEO John Junker was fired and is in major legal trouble, in part because of the eye-popping way his bowl game was run – $1,200 strip-joint bills tend to generate news interest. The real issue is that the BCS is doing what the Fiesta Bowl originally tried to do: conduct a shallow investigation and hope the party is allowed to rage on.


Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker was fired after an internal report revealed improper activities, including reimbursing employees for political contributions.

(Rob Schumacher/AP Photo)
Tuesday revealed a bowl game involved in illegal political donations, massive kickbacks to college administrators and obscene financial abuse. In just one example, the Fiesta paid Junker’s membership at four separate country clubs in three states.

The BCS wants the problem to be seen as isolated. The task force has been empowered to “evaluate the bowl’s findings and its recommendations,” according to Penn State president Graham Spanier.

There is no mention of doing what common sense would suggest: asking what the heck the other bowls are doing and then examining their finances too. After all, the federal tax filings of some other major bowls show similar non-itemized expenditures, executive salaries and profit margins.

Spanier must belong to the popular Big Ten chapter of the Little Sisters of the Naïve if he thinks that, while milking a multimillion dollar cash cow, the only bowl executives who considered laying the corporate AMEX down at the gentlemen’s club or accepting a $27,000-per-year car allowance or throwing four-day $33,000 birthday parties were Junker and his crew.

The other BCS games? Nope, no need to even ask. Second-tier bowls which pay their executives even more than Junker’s nearly $600,000? Nothing to see here, folks.



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The BCS is not a system to determine a champion in college football.


Should the NCAA probe finances for all bowl games?Yes No View Results
It’s a system designed to continue to allow bowl games to operate and profit from the sport’s postseason. It’s the single-most illogical business arrangement in sports. Go find another company that outsources its most important and valuable product. Or go ask NFL commissioner Roger Goodell if he’ll let you run the Super Bowl and skim 60 percent of gross revenue off the top.

The BCS exists almost solely on the culture of cronyism. Its traditional defenses of “student-athlete welfare,” “academic concerns” and the “protection of the regular season” don’t stand up to facts and are just water-muddying tactics invented by well-paid public relations people.

The BCS wants the public to debate things such as TCU’s strength of schedule while ignoring that man in the garish blazer behind the curtain of the champagne room.






[Blog: Scandal-plagued Fiesta Bowl forced to justify its BCS existence]




What’s clear in the Fiesta report is that Junker was obsessed with showering gifts and services on any college administrator with his hand out. He’d even manicure the hand. As long as he could buy off the decision makers, he knew he could maintain his lifestyle.

Postseason reform, even in the shape of an expansive playoff, wouldn’t kill any of the bowl games (and thus take an opportunity from the players). All of these games are already subsidized – some overwhelmingly – by the schools, which struggle to break even on participating. The only thing a playoff would cause is a decrease in huge bowl profits.

If that happens, maybe the Fiesta isn’t willing to pay Junker’s $100,000 membership fee to the ultra-exclusive Whisper Rock Golf Club, where among the other selective 550 members were some guys named Phil Mickelson, Geoff Ogilvy and Gary McCord.

Yep, it’s all about the student-athlete experience.



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NCAA president Mark Emmert is getting beat up this week by PBS and HBO on the subject of pay for college athletes. It’s a worthy topic, although many fans have no problem with coaches making millions of dollars.


NCAA president Mark Emmert should be furious right now with the details of the Fiesta Bowl report.

(Darron Cummings/AP Photo)
At least a guy like former Florida coach Urban Meyer earned it by working 100-hour weeks to the detriment of his family and his health. Most bowl execs run one game a year and then apparently spend the rest of the time working on steak, scotch and their short game.

If Emmert is any kind of leader, he should be furious right now with the details of the Fiesta Bowl report. Bowls’ ability to buy favor with administrators is indefensible. He should demand a full investigation into the bowl business and seize control of the sport’s postseason from these third-party businessmen.

After all, where does the Fiesta get all this money to waste? From the schools, of course (and then, in part, taxpayers and student fees).

Connecticut, Oklahoma and the Big 12 Conference combined to spend $4.9 million on mostly unsold tickets to the 2011 Fiesta Bowl, a boondoggle of a deal that shouldn’t be tolerated. Yet it is by administrators, some of whom attend the “Fiesta Frolic” or get Thanksgiving gifts or comped hotel suites or anything else they dream up. You can hardly fault Junker for believing he was untouchable; the man figured out how to make millions on empty seats.

The BCS cuts to the very core of what’s wrong with college athletics – the arrogance and entitlement of the people in charge.

Put it this way: Junker spent $95,000 to get Jack Nicklaus to play a round of golf with him. Among the people he took along in the foursome was an associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. (The then-Big 12 commissioner dropped out at the last minute).

So Ohio State’s Terrelle Pryor gets a five-game NCAA suspension in part for selling his Fiesta Bowl “sportsmanship” award for hundreds of dollars. Yet the Fiesta can drop nearly 100K so some associate commissioner can play 18 holes with the Golden Bear?



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Giannini, the task-force member, was one of more than 40 administrators (plus spouses, of course) who accepted the Orange Bowl’s “complimentary getaway” to the Caribbean in June. He was pretty much just following the crowd. (He has not responded to attempts seeking comment).

According to records obtained by PlayoffPAC, there wasn’t a single business meeting scheduled for the entire trip. The brochure did note that attendees would have time for things like a day on the private island of CocoCay, which “offers activities for everyone, from parasailing to sipping delicious ‘Coco Locos’ on a hammock.”

PlayoffPAC has filed an IRS complaint against the Orange Bowl, claiming that the trip – among other expenditures – violated various not-for-profit rules. The Orange Bowl says it’s on the up-and-up. Of course, the Fiesta Bowl used to say that as well when PlayoffPAC complained.

Among the attendees, according to Orange Bowl documents, were administrators from eight Atlantic Coast Conference institutions plus two from the ACC office.

How does the Orange Bowl reward its “partner” conference? By forcing participating teams to buy 17,500 artificially inflated tickets (up to $225 a seat) they have no chance of reselling (for last year’s game, you could buy online for $15). Then they get locked into exorbitant travel costs (nearly 500 high-end hotel rooms at up to $319 a night).

It’s a sure financial loser – as are most bowl games. For playing in the 2009 game, Virginia Tech and the ACC lost $1.7 million. In 2011, they returned to lose $1.6 million more. The Orange Bowl continued to roll in cash. The Coco Locos continued to flow.

Should the same administrators who sign off on such deals accept free cruises from the people who benefit from it?

“Could be seen as a conflict of interest,” N.C. State athletics director Debbie Yow told the Greensboro News-Record. “Maybe it is; maybe not. But I have always declined.”

Guess who isn’t on the task force?

or just send the douchebags this email!

Just wanted to thank you again for dropping wrestling at UNO. Now we can have men’s golf and soccer.. great idea. And I cant wait until UNO basketball team has a home and away with Duke or UNC.. Have you talked with your friends coach Denny or Ronny Hidgon.. How many new donors did you get when you dropped football and wrestling ?? Thanks Trev and John class acts..


Please email these two and let them know how happy you are that we are going to the Summit league and getting golf and soccer..
johnchristensen@unomaha.edu
trevalberts@unomaha.edu