Kentucky Football: Who’s Your Sugar Daddy?
By Terry Brown
New Kentucky Head Football Coach Mark Stoops and his staff are making waves on the recruiting trail. And while not many experts expect Stoops’ first recruiting class to stay number one overall, finishing anywhere in the top 15 (highly likely), is a huge accomplishment for a program coming off of a 2-10 record. The future is looking brighter and brighter for the Football Cats. But, the program is going to need something, actually someone, with deep pockets to help it make the jump in the super competitive SEC.
Looking around the country, it’s not hard to see that the arms race associated with college athletics is getting more and more expensive as athletic departments and universities themselves are caught up with having state of the art facilities and the highest compensated coaches. And they’re looking to get more bang for their buck and a much higher return on their investment. However, with budgets getting tighter, it’s become imperative to rely on outside donations to make up those budget shortfalls and to turn mediocre programs into good and great ones and to make great programs championship caliber.
In today’s college athletic landscape, it’s important to have at least one big time donor willing to provide the financial backing to an athletic department to help it ascend to the next level. Whether it’s naming rights for a new stadium (Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium for one) or having an open checkbook (T. Boone Pickens at Oklahoma State, Phil Knight at Oregon), big time boosters are critical not only to the financial well being of an athletic department, but to its teams’ on the field success.
In 2006, St. Louis University made the decision to construct an on campus arena, mostly for its men’s basketball team, but it would also hold the school’s athletic offices. Up until that point, SLU was paying rent to play in the Scottrade Center. Not only was the university paying to play, but made nothing off parking, concessions or advertising. In short, it was a very bad deal for St. Louis University and the athletic and school administrations decided to make a move. During the course of fundraising, they noticed there was a sizable gap in what they had pledged and what the goal was. Enter SLU alum, Dr. Richard Chaifetz. Dr. Chaifetz donated the last $15 million to help the school reach its fundraising goal (he received the naming rights). With the influx of money, the school was able to hire head basketball coach Rick Majerus. Through hard work and improved facilities, the Billikens recently completed their best hoops campaign in school history.
I know most of the big time donors and boosters in the Big Blue Nation want to be associated with the men’s basketball team. I get that. It’s a known championship level quantity and the return on investment is very high. At some point, someone is going to have to step up and be the sugar daddy for football. Someone or multiple someones are going to have to take a leap of faith and invest in the Kentucky Football program. The time is now to build on the momentum that Coach Stoops and his staff are building. It takes money to be the best. So, who’s your Sugar Daddy?