Bucky’s Dark Money

The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department wants taxpayer money while keeping the public in the dark on how they’ll spend it. And the Legislature is rushing to give them both the money and the cover of darkness. 

In the 2023 state budget the Republicans cut the UW system’s budget by $32 million. To get the money back they had to reform diversity, equity and inclusion programs and even then the funds had to be spent on specific programs related to careers like engineering, business and health care. It was a long, drawn-out process, but eventually the money was restored — and the system just got back to the previous year’s funding levels, which amounted to a cut when you take inflation into account.

Fast forward to last week. With only a few days left to go in the legislative session, the UW Athletic Department got Republican lawmakers to introduce a bill giving the department $14.6 million every year, ostensibly to pay off construction debt. In reality, it frees up those millions to be spent anyway the department wants. They’ve suggested they’ll use it to pay players, mostly football and men’s basketball players.

But taxpayers (remember the taxpayers?) who are footing these bills need not bother themselves with just exactly how this money will be spent. We’ll be shielded from these pesky details by another provision of the bill which exempts name, image and likeness agreements from the state’s open records law. So we won’t know who’s getting paid what or which private individuals and entities are contributing to NIL deals.

So, this bill would do at least two very significant things. It would break precedent by providing taxpayer dollars to an athletic program that has long claimed to be self-sustaining and, just when the public has an even greater stake in this, it would carve out an exemption to our right to know what’s going on.

You might think a bill like that would get a thorough going over by our representatives. You’d be wrong. Only days after its introduction, the bill got its first public hearing in the Assembly State Affairs Committee and was passed out of that committee on a unanimous vote on the same day. Then it was rushed to the Assembly floor where it passed on a 95-1 bipartisan vote with no discussion. The only vote against it came from Rep. Dan Knodl, a Republican.

Let me pause here to ask a gentle question of my party: WHERE THE HELL ARE THE DAMN DEMOCRATS?! Aren’t we supposed to be the party of transparency? If so, how can we so casually allow a huge exemption to open records and on such flimsy ground (the flimsiness of which I’ll get to in a bit)? Don’t we fancy ourselves the party of education? And yet nobody objects to so nonchalantly handing over $14.6 million to sports when the UW has to fight for every nickel and dime for actual education?

Here’s the bigger picture. Thanks to a recent court settlement, the athletic department can fork over up to $20.5 million to players. But, in a ludicrous sleight of hand, they can only do so for use of the player’s name, image and likeness. They are specifically prohibited to pay a player for what they so obviously are actually paying him to do: to play the game.

This is all a ruse so that college sports can hang onto the long-discredited idea of the “student-athlete.” And that whole “student-athlete” myth exists for the purposes of not having to recognize the players for what they so clearly are: employees of the university.

In any event, on a $200 million annual budget, having to come up with 10% of that to pay the players — the people actually producing the money that pays everybody else — may not seem like a lot. But, in fairness, having put together eight city budgets of only slightly larger size, sure, 10% of a budget is a big deal. But the answer isn’t to run to the taxpayers. Even the city of Madison couldn’t because we were hemmed in by levy limits. Instead, they should increase their private fundraising (and there’s evidence that big Badgers boosters are already stepping up to help pay the players) and, crucially, they need to rein in their profligate spending.

The Badgers, and all of college sports, can’t go on paying coaches outrageous salaries plus perks and obscene buyouts. Wisconsin’s losing football coach, Luke Fickell, is getting paid around $8 million with an automatic $100,000 pay increase every year, no matter how his team performs. And if he were to be fired after this season he’d still be owed something in the neighborhood of $20 million in a contract buyout.

Moreover, they should be cutting staff both in administration and on the sidelines. Ever look at the bench during a men’s basketball game? There are literally as many guys in suits and ties as there are guys in shorts. What do all these coaches do?

And then there’s spending on facilities. The UW tore down the ragged and beloved “Shell” gym — which any community member could use — and is replacing it with a $285 million indoor football practice facility where the public will not be allowed.

But here’s the thing. The court settlement that has created this budget “crisis” was well along when the UW broke ground on its football palace. A prudent organization might have put the project on hold because it could see a big new budget obligation on the horizon.

But not the arrogant UW Athletic Department. It has no intention at all of changing its business-as-usual. It’ll keep on paying coaches too much, offering huge buyouts, needlessly growing staff and building the fanciest facilities it can imagine. Taxpayers can pick up the tab.

Now, I promised you more on the open records exemption. Athletic Director Chris McIntosh, a word salad chef if there ever was one, offered a barely understandable explanation for the need. In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal’s Jim Polzin, McIntosh claimed that the Big Ten wanted more transparency. So, Polzin asked him why he was asking for an open records exemption. His answer:

“The question you ask is really just a reflection of, an evolution of college athletics and, in this case, college football,” McIntosh said. “We’re operating in an environment now in which we seek to preserve every competitive advantage that we can, and that includes but isn’t limited to our rev share agreements with our student-athletes, the contracts we enter into with them, our allocation — take, for example, in football on a position-by-position basis, or player-by-player basis, our strategy or evaluation.… That’s information we think preserves our ability to be competitive. While I recognize for many it’s a challenge, from my perspective it’s necessary in order to give us the best chance to be successful.”

Yeah…well…pass the croutons and the bacon bits. As near as I can figure out, McIntosh is trying to say that how much they pay, say a tight end, and who is helping foot that bill amounts to a trade secret that would give, say Indiana, an unfair advantage if they knew the details. Now, what the national champions or Ohio State or Michigan or virtually any team in the Big Ten has to learn from Wisconsin’s losing program is lost on me, but there you have it.

Even more troubling than McIntosh’s intentional or unintentional opaqueness is the attitude of the UW’s chief lawyer. Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Nancy Lynch told the State Affairs Committee that she’s been denying records requests for NIL deals on the argument that these are student records. Of course, the student records exemption was intended to shield academic records, not business deals like these. So, unsure of her legal basis for denying the requests and afraid that a court might overrule her, she now wants an explicit exemption. What’s so troubling about this is that Lynch is a lawyer who is supposed to be serving the public, which pays her salary. Wisconsin’s open records law specifically states that there should be a presumption of openness. Lynch’s job is to work on behalf of the public for openness, not on behalf of McIntosh’s penchant for secrecy. She should be advising McIntosh that he can’t skirt the law; instead she’s helping him sidestep it.

And let me point you to some data that may raise more questions about that argument. It’s the payroll of the Green Bay Packers, which is accessible to anyone right here. Now, let me freely admit that the Pack was at a gosh-darn competitive disadvantage against the freaking Chicago Bears in two of their last three games last season. But they didn’t lose because the Bears knew how much Jordan Love was being paid. They lost because they didn’t bother to show up for the second half.

But this is the way McIntosh’s team operates. The State Journal does yeoman’s service in covering the athletic department’s budget, but every one of those stories is built off data pried from the department through open records requests. That’s been true for years.

Let me offer two more reasons to hate this bill. The first is that that $15 million or so is no accident. That’s about what Madison’s athletic department still owes on a $20 million interest-free operating loan that it got from the state during the pandemic. The department has made no payments on that loan for the last two years and clearly will soon demand that the remainder of the principal be forgiven.

The other reason to oppose this bill is the ludicrous argument from the UW that the bill is designed to prevent “predatory” NIL agreements. My God, these people cannot be serious. For a century or so the UW and every other big time program has preyed off their players who they have fought tooth and nail to keep as unpaid indentured servants. And now they’re going to protect them from predators? Really?

This bill is now in the Senate, which will meet just one more time in March. The Assembly has already adjourned, so if the Senate doesn’t approve the bill or amends it to, for example, take out the open records exemption, it’s probably dead. I’m told by one insider source that Gov. Tony Evers — incredibly — has already agreed to sign it as currently written.

I hope that’s wrong. Either the Senate should kill the bill, which is Assembly Bill 1034, or Evers should veto it. 

Arrogant. Secretive. Stubborn. Tone deaf. Slow to adapt. All of those things describe this athletic department. The Legislature doesn’t have to enable that by shoveling taxpayer money at them to help preserve the same old awful system. Better to make them deal with their budget problems internally because it would force them to change. And, in this case, any change would be positive.

A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.

That’s all for this week, sports fans. Why do I think I won’t get invited to Chris McIntosh’s box this season? Have a good weekend. I’m making venison roast for a dozen fellow deer hunters on Saturday, a tradition we’ve carried on for, I don’t know, I guess about 30 years. Some years I nail the roasts. Other years… well, my mushroom sauce always turns out perfect and there’s dessert.