PiPress: Gophers coaches told of travel budget error

[jamalo]

For those that are old enough to remember, Joel reminds me of the incompetent maintenance guy from Good Times ("Buffalo Butt"); potentially a brother from a different mother!!! Error should be docked from his salary; there are probably at least 2 or 3 DMV workers who are more competent than he is!!

 

[OSUfan]

Don't most major Universities own a plane or two specifically for this purpose?

I know OSU has their own jet. I have read a report from a former player who played both at OSU and in the NBA that the OSU basketball team jet is comparable to what NBA teams do.

 

[gopherphan]

Let's see now. This budget problem was identified and resolved rather easily in the athletic department about 2 months ago. It was probably resolved before either team had taken a single road trip. Relative to a $75 million athletic budget, the amount involved seems rather small. Nonetheless, Maturi addressed the issue with those affected and quite likely with those that were actually responsible for the error(s). Good management. Don't let the little things slide else they become big things.

Regardless, the nit-pickers and Maturi bashers here are not going to let any opportunity slide. They claim to be embarrassed by Maturi when they should be embarrassed by their own willingness to criticize with so little knowledge of what happened and who was actually responsible.

In almost 20 years of submitting annual budget proposals for my sales department I have never once held my manager or the president of the company responsible for any errors or discrepancies that occurred in the final budget that came back to me. Over the years a few errors have occurred. And yes, I've also had my budget cut (and worse, even cut in the fourth quarter) for reasons that had nothing to do with me or my department. You just suck it up like the coaches did here and be a team player. Kind of like when a teammate misses a free throw or commits a turnover at the end of a close game.

IMO this article and this thread are a big to-do about relatively nothing.

oh hey Joel, I didnt know you browsed gopherhole

 

[howeda7]

For those that are old enough to remember, Joel reminds me of the incompetent maintenance guy from Good Times ("Buffalo Butt"); potentially a brother from a different mother!!! Error should be docked from his salary; there are probably at least 2 or 3 DMV workers who are more competent than he is!!

When they make "Dithering Ranger-The Joel Maturi Story" I have to think the odds on favorite for the starring role is Sam Lloyd, who played Ted on 'Scrubs.' Of course though this movie will be announced in 2012, production won't be complete until at least 2025, so don't hold your breath.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=sam+...w=767&h=1024&ei=yTz_TqXpK-Hb0QHXgryhCw&zoom=1

 

[matt]

When they make "Dithering Ranger-The Joel Maturi Story" I have to think the odds on favorite for the starring role is Sam Lloyd, who played Ted on 'Scrubs.' Of course though this movie will be announced in 2012, production won't be complete until at least 2025, so don't hold your breath.

With contracts signed in 2032.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

I wonder if we had to pay a buyout to the pilot of the charter flights we didn't take. Paying someone not to fly us somewhere would go nicely with Maturi's usual game plan of paying people not to coach Gopher sports teams.

 

[Ope3]

Travel

While this is no big deal to you, when a recruit is visiting, let's say Wisconsin, and bo Ryan says: here at UW we charter every flight for away games. I see you have a MN offer too, how do you feel about flying coach? How do you feel about not being able to practice any time? Isn't our practice facility nice?

Things that are meaningless to the average person, may mean a lot to a recruit when deciding between two schools. This is bad press and makes the school look cheap and being cheap is a tough message to sell to an 18 year old.

Although it was several years ago, in 2004 I was actually on a red-eye commercial flight with the Wisconsin men's team from Los Angeles (LAX) to Minneapolis (MSP) from which they had a connection to Madison. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Badgers were coming back from a non-conf game against Pepperdine. Since they lost, they were pretty subdued. Tanner Bronson sat in my row, he's the guy who switched from Student Mgr to walk-on.

On Doogie's radio show Maturi addressed the situation and thanked the coaches for being flexible, and said between the women's 2 commericial trips and the one for the men, they were going to save $90,000.

 

[Pewterschmidt]

1. Why is the women's team flying charter at all? If you're not a revenue producer, you should ALWAYS fly commerical. That's the most appalling part of the story to me.
2. Michigan flew commerical to Maui for the Invitational this year. That's a long flight for someone like Josh Morgan. I would have thought Michigan owned their own jet given their athletic department budget.
3. Maturi comes across as a dimwit once again in this article. He's so flippin' tone deaf. This shouldn't have even been made public. The Athletic Department looks like a 2nd rate GD operation.

 

[tjgopher]

In general, universities do not own large jets for the purpose of athletic travel. In fact, I'd love to find a link to something that confirms that OSU owns a large jet for basketball travel. I doubt it.

The cost of owning, operating, maintaining, pilots, crew, storage, airport fees, insurance fees, etc. on a large jet is too high for most universities to take on. Heck, most pro sports teams don't own their own jets (although some do).