The reality that the ACC is down to just hope now.
https://floridastate.forums.rivals.com/threads/jimbo-article-on-sports-illustrated.220514/page-6
https://floridastate.forums.rivals.com/threads/questions-about-seminole-boosters.220648/page-4#post-3735131
Here's a long answer to a short question because there's a number of reasons, all of which make money and provide benefits to our donors, athletics or the university.
1. Some are strategic holdings for the university's needs for future campus expansion. If the parcel makes sense for us to use for gameday parking, we will buy it and hold it until the university has a need it. Everyone benefits.
2. Parking lot 10 is a good example of a donated parcel of land we have used for years for parking. We have used it for years for parking,. Some day it will be sold and we'll realize a large gain. The RV parking is another example. They serve a donor need which encourages people to join as a Tomahawk or above and stewards those donor's game day fun. That parcel is appreciating greatly as result of a real estate strategy on Gaines Street and College Town. One day, it may make sense to sell it to the university or an investor.
3. We own Champions Hall, which is an apartment complex which rents units: 51 percent students and 49 percent football players. The money generated by that complex funds athletics. The football players receive their scholarship checks but have to pay rent somewhere so this gives the coaches a great place to recruit, supervise the players and the rental revenue -- which must be fair market value -- benefits athletics.
4. In the late 70s and early 80s we owned a complex on Hayden where we housed football. It was a stick built complex and they were hard on it. When the apartment complex on Pensacola and Hayden became available to us, we sold the stick-built complex (Now called Legends) and moved football into the concete block fortress we named Burt Reynolds Hall. We still own Burt as it generates a lot of revenue from regular students and is in a strategic location for the athletics complex or for the university or a future investor.
5. We have many parcels of land donated to us around town, the state, even out of state. Sometimes they are second homes, or vacant lots. We have some donors, who can't give us cash but will donate even their primary residence with a life estate, maybe even with a charitable gift annuity agreement.
We appraise the property and our real estate advisors make the decision whether to accept the gift. We may choose to immediately sell the asset and turn it into cash. Or, in some cases, a donor will want to contribute to the endowed scholarship fund and our endowment investment committee will choose to keep it as part of a managed fund which is partly in real estate. A good example of that would be the blighted land that was donated to us on Madison Street. The donor wanted his gift to go to the scholarship endowment. We could have flipped that land for very little and put the cash into the endowment or kept it and allow it to appreciate, The decision was made to keep it as the investment committee liked a strategy with the City of Tallahassee's redevelopment of Gaines Street and we now call that area College Town which has led to tremendous appreciation for everyone including the scholarship endowment. The old Hogly Wogly convenience store was donated to us years ago. Largely because of what is happening on Gaines Street and in CollegeTown, it became highly desirable to many and t is now the site of a CVS store. Occasionally it makes sense to the investment committee and our board to sell one or more of those parcels, sometimes to FSU.
The Boosters are blessed to have a lot of FSU alumni, who are experts in their fields (brokers, money managers, developers, accountants and attorneys), who volunteer their expertise to serve o
https://floridastate.forums.rivals.com/threads/jimbo-article-on-sports-illustrated.220514/page-3
Yes.
What's interesting is when we joined the ACC, it was the ACC who had the most television revenue and vision. I think we all had a good feeling about Gene Corrigan who was the commissioner. He was the guy who recruited FSU and had Notre Dame -- not Tobacco Road -- ties.
Then he retired.
At the time, the SEC had Roy Kramer and when he made the visit to FSU he looked like he would have preferred to be anywhere else. And he certainly didn't appear to be the guy who would lead his conference where it would eventually go. You thought that would be Corrigan and the ACC.
I don't have a clear memory of how much of the SEC's network was Kramer. My memory is it was the next commissioner Slive. But who knew then.
Bob Goin was AD at the time and he and Bernie Sliger had solid reasons for choosing the ACC albeit there were solid arguments on the other side as well. Hindsight is 20/20, right?
I do recall our next AD, Dave Hart, telling me about what the Big 10 was doing with cable, owning their own rights. Everyone in athletics said the Big 10 commissioner had lost his mind but Hart very accurately predicted we'd look back in 20 years and see the Big 10s gamble would pay more than anyone else without losing any rights.
He looks like a prophet now. Its too bad the ACC didn't have the vision or the ability to make it happen.
I wonder what we'll think in time if Cable begins unbundling and I have the option as a homeowner to drop the Big 10 or SEC networks to lower my cable bill. I will do it in a heart beat.
My wife and I love the fire stick and are ready to drop cable. As more and better options become available and more people drop cable, we may see unbundling and the Big 10 and SEC models paying less over time.
I will be interested to see what the ACC Network generates and will be cheering for them. What we may see is the gap narrowing not so much by our revenues growing but by SEC and Big 10 models shrinking if the cable providers ever feel the pressure to unbundle.
In the meantime, yes, Seminole Boosters has to find new and creative ways to raise more and more money, either from donors or from revenue-generating entrepreneurial projects.
Good times.
We have an IPTAY. Its called Seminole Boosters, Inc. and its structured almost exactly the same as IPTAY and generates similar dollars.
BTW... Did you know that FSU's athletics revenues is top in the ACC, more than Clemson? Football budget is more than Clemson's.
Did you know our athletics teams have averaged a ranking of No. 11 in the nation in the Director's Cup the past 12 years -- including a top 10 this year -- and Clemson's program has averaged a ranking of about No. 40 over that same period of time.
They are on top in football the last couple of years. But we have nothing to apologize for and we will be on top in football once again.
Please excuse the length of this as I'm trying to respond to a lot of great posts at one time.
BTW I found the SI piece largely correct and well written. And I really don't mind responding - or sharing my perception -- on some of the items you all have questioned.
Let me lay this out as best I can:
1. There is a very accurate paragraph in the article where it says Jimbo got tired of having to fight for every thing he got. I think that's absolutely true. What seems to be lost in translation is WHY. This "fight" between Andy and Stan and Jimbo wasn't personal; it was financial.
Jimbo won't have to fight for things at A&M because they have money -- some $90 million a year more than FSU -- so they can make stuff happen quicker than we can.
As you guys know, the SEC Network is pumping more than $20 million a year MORE into their member schools than the ACC. Forget everything else, if we had that extra $20 million revenue stream each year, it would have been much easier on Jimbo, Stan and Andy.
But the reality is a financial institution will not loan you money to build a building like the football building or the IPF if you don't have a revenue stream to fund it or the bonding capacity.
And we don't. So we have to go and raise the money and that takes time to do. Not only does it take years to raise $50 to $100 million in pledges. Worse, our experience tells us most of those pledges will be paid over five years. And even worse, life changes and only about 70 percent of the money pledged will ever be paid as the people who make those pledges sometimes die, get divorced, lose their net worth or their interest in fulfilling their pledge. So, if you want to be financially responsible -- which we do -- you really need to raise $125 million for a $100 million project.
And those of you who have a home mortgage know the cost of interest. You will pay far more than $100 million over the course of the loan.
So in summary, we share Jimbo's frustration about having to "fight to get things". It ain't easy.
Also, I don't think that statement -- that we prioritize fan facilities over the football facility -- is correct according to my timeline. My recollection is the Board of Trustees had approved the design and construction of the Champions Club and renovations to Doak long before Seminole Boosters heard about a football building. Its my understanding Jimbo brought that need to Stan after the fan projects were well into design and maybe even construction. So as far as my timeline is concerned, the Boosters, AD and President had chosen to do the fan projects right after building the IPF and long before we had heard about the football only facility as the SI article implies.
3. I've written it before on this message board but it bears repeating: The Seminole Boosters organization -- a Direct Support Organization for FSU charged withraising money for Athletics -- is not so different from other universities. More than 25 percent are structured similarly. We are also NOT autonomous. We report to our Board of Directors, the University President and ultimately the Board of Trustees. The Athletic Director, who is a vice president of the university, sits on our board.
4. Again, it bears repeating: Seminole Boosters is in the business of raising money and we are NOT in the business of deciding how the money is used. That is decided by the athletic director, the president and ultimately the board of trustees. Even within the Boosters, Andy Miller does not have autonomy. He has a board of directors who must approve anything he or I have ever dreamed up.
What Seminole Boosters does have is a seat at the table when it comes to HOW and HOW LONG it will take us to fund whatever it is the AD and the president want to do.\
For example, when Jimbo came to Stan with the request for the football only facility, Stan agreed to add it to his projects plan along with other projects he had already prioritized for baseball, basketball, golf etc. Once the project is added to the plan, and even before we know the specifics of what that football facility will be, Seminole Boosters then adds it to the projects we are talking about with donors capable of making large leadership gifts.
This is exactly how it went down.
As soon as Stan added it, we began talking about it and have raised $7.5 million in pledges for it already without even knowing what it will be.
We have made it very clear that we are totally on board and feel certain we can raise $30 million by next year. We have been completely can do within what we believe is realistic expectation considering all the projects we are raising money for now and considering the $250 million in facilities we've built over the past 15 years and are still making $10 million a year in loan payments.
That is a significant fact that is continually glossed over.
5. The reality is neither the head coach, the athletic director or the President ultimately decide which projects get built and when. The AD and President decide which projects they want to build, the Boosters go out and pitch the projects to donors. But ultimately, it is you, the donors, who decide which project gets funded first.
6. There's a remark on this thread about the golf course. Golf is getting funded first because there are donors who have chosen to give to the golf project rather than to a football project and because there are other sources of revenue coming into that project limiting the amount we have to raise to $6.5 million and not $100 million. There's a lot more to the golf course than a golf course as well which has the president's priority. The golf course will help create a south Gateway to the FSU campus, which will one day be lauded. There are also people who have chosen to give to the baseball and basketball projects rather than to this football project. And that will continue no matter what. Fundraising must be donor centric. Much as we may want to prioritize the football building, we can NOT tell a donor how to give away his money.
7. There's also a statement in the article which has been discussed on this board that Andy Miller or the Booster Board can block projects planned for by the AD or head coach. In addition to what I wrote in 4 above, I think sometimes we are the proverbial messenger who gets shot but not the shooter.
Let me give you an example with the Football only facility. Seminole Boosters has developed what we call a donor pyramid with the names of all the people we know who have the interest and capacity to help football. We've been out to meet them, talk about the project, gauge their interest and their timeline for giving. Our fundraisers believe realistically our donors will pledge $30 million toward the football facility in the next 18 months given the other projects with payments over five years. Sure, we will meet new donors between now and then and may even be able to cultivate another $5M or $10M more but our responsibility is to report our best estimate to the AD and the President now. Can we do $50 million? Sure but that will likely take 3 to 4 years. Willie may be happy to wait. $100 million? Maybe. But that timeline is difficult to guess and I'm sure Willie isn't that patient. I'm not.
Our responsibility is not to fund the entire cost of the project but to give the AD and President a realistic number we expect to raise within 2 years, 3 years, that they can plug into a formula that will have to include athletic revenues from existing re-prioritized budgets, the known upcoming increase in marketing revenues from the IMG/Leirfield contract and conservatively-estimated increases in ACC Network revenue (if any).
Frequently, when Seminole Boosters makes our report of the money we CAN EXPECT TO RAISE within a given timeframe, there are coaches or admin
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