Maryland Minute - 11.15.11 - Debbie Yow Deserves Most of the Blame for Budget Woes

You might as well do your research first:

1. The timing of Yow’s departure coincides perfectly with Maryland tapping out its athletic budget. Circumstantial evidence, but fairly damning in its own right.

2. High Ranking Athletic Department Officials have basically said that Yow recognized the approach was unsustainable, but didn’t care.

“I can just tell you – and I’m not throwing anybody under the bus and I’m not trying to make a bad comment – but I think there has long in this industry been a philosophy of ‘Get me through the next 10 years and then it’s somebody else’s problem,’ ” Eaton said. “Things that we’re no longer doing here.” (Statement of Deputy AD Randy Eaton)

3. Furthermore, even Yow admits that she took on a model that could only be sustained by “pushing harder” to “generate new revenue.”

"You can have quality in two different ways," said Debbie Yow, who served as Maryland’s athletic director for 16 years before leaving in June 2010 to take the same position at North Carolina State. "You can cut 10 sports and have quality and just relax, pretty much. Or you can keep all the sports in place and push hard on the staff to continue to generate new revenue. And I will admit to you, that is a burden, that second thing. That’s tough. It wears on you. But that was the model I chose."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/a-closer-look-into-the-finances-of-marylands-athletic-department/2011/07/20/gIQAvsHmQI_story.html

Yow is well on her way to alienating many of the NC State boosters here in Raleigh. I recently had lunch with a significant NCSU booster. I mentioned that I was a Maryland grad, which prompted him to go on a 20 minute rant about Yow. He stated that it seems like she intentionally is trying alienate many of the major contributors to the athletic department. He said she her basic fundraising approach is “give us your money and shut the F up.” Now, I can understand not wanting major boosters to think that they are an assistant coach, but her abrasive personality coupled with a continued “give us your money, but don’t ask for any accounting/accountability as to where it goes” is beginning to wear thin on many at NCSU.

I’ll look for the actual article again, but there was a line from Yow along the lines of “it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment since I’m no longer the AD at Maryland.”

Bush’s fault.

I don’t see what successes in 2001 have to do with Yow’s actions later in the decade.

Also, I don’t think anyone is blaming our budget problems on the building of Comcast. That project predates our budget problems by a decade. The rennovations to Byrd happened much later. While I still think this project was ill-advised, it was still somewhat defensible since Yow couldn’t have predicted the economic downturn and coinciding dropping attendance figures when the project began.

What Yow is guilty of is not readjusting her expectations. By 2005 (earlier, really), our revenue sports both came back down to Earth and she continued to operate the bloated athletic department as if nothing was wrong. She used up our reserve budget and then jumped ship. Whether or not the former fact led to the latter is admittedly, conjecture, but at best, it’s very fishy. I’m not sure how the budget problems can’t be blamed on Yow. If they weren’t her fault, then whose fault was it?

She reported directly to Dr. Mote and apparently had minimal oversight. She is responsible for the expansion to 27 teams. I also believe she made the case for the addition of suites at Byrd using her projections. True, those projections were reviewed by other departments. Furthermore, there are administrators that pushed to have the expansion to 27 teams because of their own political agendas. So, there is blame to go around. However, Debbie Yow deserves a large share of that blame.