KU ? KU’s athletic director gives an audience a feel for college athletics in the Big 12.
Athletic Director Bob Frederick contemplated riding a bicycle to the Lawrence Rotary Club’s meeting.
“That’s why the two front tables were empty,” joked Frederick, who has survived two painful bicycle accidents since 1988.
The Kansas University athletic director appears to have rebounded from a crash in June, which left him with broken ribs, a punctured lung and a fractured scapula. He broke a clavicle and separated a shoulder in a 1988 spill.
Frederick felt good enough Monday to talk at Rotary about formation of the Big 12 athletic conference. In 1996, the Big 8 will tie the knot with Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor.
Spending on collegiate athletics will enter a new dimension when the conference expands, Frederick said.
For the first time, a conference school will have a budget higher than $20 million. KU’s budget stands at $12.5 million.
The well-heeled schools: Texas, $22 million; Nebraska, $19.5 million; Texas A&M, $15 million; and Colorado, at least $15 million.
Schools with a hole in both shoes: Kansas State, $10.2 million; Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, both $10 million.
Frederick said a ranking of each school’s athletic performance in all sports last year shows Texas on top with a No. 7 national ranking and K-State in the cellar at 114th.
KU was 28th, which would rank the Jayhawks fifth in the expanded conference.
“Of the 27 schools ahead of us … only one other school, and that’s Duke, is not at a place where they fill the football stadium or have great weather year-round,” Frederick said.
He said KU’s athletic department can’t significantly increase revenue from men’s basketball ticket sales and athletic donors.
“Football ticket sales is the key to the future,” he said.
The department is considering improvements to Memorial Stadium, the Jayhawks’ home field.
One idea is to install private sky box seating on the stadium’s west side. Revenue from the suites would finance restroom and concession improvements in the stadium, which is the oldest west of the Mississippi River.
“I’m constantly hearing … that the restrooms are terrible.”
