Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long met with the media after laying out the plan to increase donation requirements as part of a decade-long fundraising initiative.
Here is the transcript:
How much new money will this plan bring in for the program on an annual basis?
Jeff Long: We believe a conservative estimate is that it will generate $5 million new to the program annually.
How important is that?
It’s important when you outline where our budget is, as you can see at $60 million. We don’t need to be at the top of the SEC to compete and win, but we need to lessen between those ahead of us. That’s what we’re hoping to do.
Does this plan get us all the way there? No, but we feel like it’s a significant step in moving our program to provide us the resources to be successful.
You’ve said the goal is to get in the $70 million dollar range for the annual budget?
Yes, and the question remains how long it would take us to get there. It’s also a moving target, because if it takes us three-to-five years to get to $70 million, our competitors probably aren’t standing still.
Florida will probably be around $120 million (at that time).
Yes. And again, we don’t expect to reach them. We just want to lessen that gap and be in range to continue to compete and beat them, both on the field of competition and also in the classroom, because we are competing in the classroom and we need to increase our resources in that area as well.
Have you gotten initial feedback from fans and their response to having to give more to keep seats or get seats?
Yes, and the reception is mixed as you might expect. We think that the majority of fans, when they look at the information and see how long it’s been since there has been an increase and what others around the conference are paying, they understand it.
No one likes to have an increase. It’s not something we want to do, but we assess where our program is and where our fans want us to be, we’ve got to move in that direction. I think when they understand that, they’ll support us.
Of course there’s always going to be some that it does create a financial hardship for. We understand that, we appreciate that and we feel for that person. At the same time, we have to move our organization forward.
Is this what you need to give coach Petrino the tools he’s asked for?
I think it’s part of the answer, absolutely. There are some other things we’ll need to do in a comprehensive fundraising effort to help us get those needs, too. It’s clear to me that coach Petrino wants to have the tools to compete and win a national championship and so do I. I want him to have that and that’s going to mean a great deal for our program. “Answer The Call” is part of providing those resources to have a chance to compete and win.
There were 400 hours of discussion on this?
Yes, there were many hours of discussion and many plans reviewed. We felt it was important to take all those gyrations so that everyone involved understood the plan and its effect. There were a number of different ways we could have gone, but I do think we’re trying to reward the loyalty of that fan that’s been there for us for a long time.
Some of the plans call for people to automatically lose their seat. In our plan no one loses their seat unless they can’t meet the increase that we’re asking.
Have you see some schools do that where people automatically lose their seat?
Absolutely. I think there’s one right now that’s announced that they’re doing a total reseat. Based on your giving and rank, you’re assigned by that. That was certainly an option for us, but we didn’t think it fit the culture and fan base of Arkansas. We believed that updating the system we already had in place was the best option for us.
Is there a deadline to make your pledge?
Yes. That’s all laid out in the plans. Some people have asked, “Why now?” Some people think it’s because we have high expectations for our season. It’s fortunate for us that we have that, but the truth is, it’s the financial condition that we face was the reason that we needed to announce now.
We also wanted to announce now so our fan base has as long as possible before the 2011 season, because we know some will have some very difficult decisions to make about keeping their seats and keeping the number of seats that they have. We have a number of people that control 20, 30 or 40 seats in prime locations. They’ll have to make some decisions on whether they’ll keep all their tickets or some of them. We wanted to provide as much lead time as possible so our fan base could make those decisions.
(RSVP executive director) Chris Wyrick and his RSVP team will be available until January 2011 before the fans have to start making decisions about their seats for 2011.
It’s a decade-long plan, so do you have built-in increases along the way?
No, we have not built those in, but we will reassess and have the opportunity to move forward an increase going forward. I think part of the fact of where we are today is the fact that we have not had any significant or even small movements over the last 10-to-15 years. Really this first jump is a significant jump because we haven’t moved in so long.
Do you evaluate it every year?
No, as we announced in our packet, that we’re going to remain constant for the next three years. Certainly after that time period, we’ll assess. We’ll assess every year, but we said to our fan base, “Hey, this initial increase is going to hold for three years.”
How do you compare dollars from 1965 to now?
It’s very interesting to me as I looked at the history, coach (Frank) Broyles was really on the cutting edge in approximately 1982 when he formalized the priority seating plan, as I understand it from the Razorback Foundation. I believe it was Alabama that didn’t do their (plan) until like 1988 or 1989, so he was significantly ahead.
But then over time, we didn’t adjust those seating values and priorities much during that 28-year period, while others adjusted along the way. We find ourselves in a position where we have to have a significant adjustment and then going forward, we don’t expect those adjustments to be as dramatic.
You guys are still in the lower-half of the SEC.
If you look at where we stand, this movement doesn’t put us in the middle of the pack, it just gains us on some of the schools at the lower end. If you look at some schools, like Georgia, and you see $400 for their 50-yard line seats, there is more to the story. You have to look. You also know if you look at Georgia’s situation, they have $60 million in reserve and they have an endowment of $60 million. The pressure for them to generate money from their seat plan isn’t there like it is here, but they are $400 a seat and they’ve been $400 a seat and higher than us for some time and it’s allowed them to build that reserve.
You say you’re shooting at a moving target. At the end of the decade, what is your goal for where you want to be?
To be honest with you, we haven’t pegged a number on that. A lot of it depends on where our program goes. A lot of it depends on the success of our program. It’s really a chicken-and-egg concept, you need more resources in order to make sure your team wins more, but you need more winning from your teams in order to get more resources. We haven’t set a hard-and-fast number that we expect at the end of the 10-year period.
You mentioned in the video how you want to be able to keep great coaches here. Can you expound on that?
Obviously, I think we have a great pool of coaches here. When you have great coaches, there will be interest in them from other schools. We certainly want to be competitive and keep the great coaches here, and you need resources to be able to do that. If you look at our coaches’ salaries, some of them are middle-of-the-pack in the SEC, but we’re not at the top – even in some of our most successful programs.
When we’re in that situation, we want to respond to the market and respond to the other schools who have interest in our coaches. We want to be able to respond in an appropriate way to keep those great coaches here.
How much does it help when you’re trying to raise funds, to have the excitement you have about football right now?
Oh, I think it certainly helps. Certainly. No question about it. We hope that our fan base will rally behind the success of our team this year and step up and help us as they can. What we’re asking from our fan base is to do what you can for us. Some of that is significant. Some of that is buying season-tickets; some of that is buying single-game tickets. We understand there’s a broad way to answer the call and we want our fan base to answer the call in whatever capacity they have to do that.
You’ve worked at Michigan, so you’ve obviously been around some great football. What’s your feeling about the excitement entering this season at Arkansas?
I’m very excited. I’m trying not to get too excited myself. I have cautious optimism, but it’s great for the fan base. I love the fact that Bobby Petrino embraces those expectations. He doesn’t shy away from them, but he’s smart enough to use those to motivate his team and make them better. I think what coach Petrino is doing in that area is excellent and I applaud him for it.
Coach Petrino said in the video that they try not to let the recruits see the locker room. That’s pretty blunt.
Coach Petrino is to the point and he says what he thinks and believes, and I can’t disagree with him. I think we have slipped behind the competitors in the SEC. If you look at our infrastructure for football, we might be at the bottom or next to the bottom. Since 2006, virtually every SEC school has put in resources for their football infrastructure in some way shape or form they’ve done that. Now it’s our time.
When Petrino talks about the program having curbside appeal, he means the stadium and the weight room?
The weight room is spectacular; we’re very proud of that. Our locker room, our training room and our meeting room are (not sufficient). We want to focus on our student athletes. If you look at what we’ve done the last two or three years, we’ve put resources into our athletic training and sports medicine, our strength and conditioning, our academic support and our life skills personal growth and development. We’ve put staff and resources in there.
To me, that’s No. 1 the obligation we have to our student-athletes, but No. 2 it also helps us compete and win, because those students are here having a great experience and they’re not leaving the university before they have a chance to be juniors, seniors and fifth-year seniors.