This is the new order of Kansas University athletics. No more business as usual.
Lew Perkins, the reigning athletic director, has yet to utter the famous words “It’s nothing personal, it’s strictly business,” but perhaps only because the expression has become such a cliche.
Not that Perkins is snatching baby bottles out of cribs, sucking pennies out of wishing wells or searching for coins under sofa cushions, but he has stepped on the toes of countless KU retirees.
Over the years, many KU professors and staffers have been rewarded for their long years of service on Mount Oread with a golden parachute that has included free tickets and parking spaces for football and men’s basketball games.
All those retirees received a letter not too long ago stating, in effect, that each would have the opportunity to purchase those tickets and be included in next season’s priority points program. At the same time, each received a bill for their football and men’s basketball parking spaces. To facilitate payment, a postage-paid envelope was included.
I have no difficulty conjuring an image of that letter and the postage-paid envelope being ripped to shreds and tossed into the nearest wastebasket. How would you feel?
Most of the retirees — and they include such notables as former longtime coaches and administrators Don Fambrough, Bob Timmons, Floyd Temple and Jerry Waugh — are naturally reluctant to talk about the letter. Whatever they would say would make them sound ungrateful for receiving something others have to pay for.
Still, you have to wonder why the recipients of these highly coveted golden parachutes wouldn’t be grandfathered in. They paid their dues, they were rewarded and now they’re being told the reward has expired like a magazine subscription.
On the flip side, many of these retirees receive three or four tickets to football and men’s basketball games. Do they really need that many seats? Wouldn’t two suffice? Or just one? In most cases, yes. I know of one retiree who received the letter and, after the inevitable initial indignation, came to the realization he didn’t really need four tickets, but believed he was entitled to two.
At the same time, even if that retiree receives two free tickets a year, it’s inevitable those seats — in Allen Fieldhouse, anyway — will be located somewhere near the top and probably in either the south or north ends because they won’t survive the priority points system challenge scheduled to go into effect in 2004-2005.
Seat location is less of an issue at Memorial Stadium, where there are more choice seats available and less of a demand.
What about the free parking? It goes without saying the retirees don’t want to give up those spaces because they’re mostly close-in. When you’re in your late 60s, 70s and sometimes 80s, the shorter the walk the better, particularly on a January or February night.
Should the retirees, most of them on fixed income, have to pay for that parking spot? Or should Kansas University stand by its unwritten word and continue to provide that perk?
In asking the retirees to pony up, Perkins is stressing the necessity to generate additional revenue to provide an optimal experience for the school’s student-athletes. Yet Perkins’ mandate rings hollow when the retirees see the new AD has surrounded himself with a cadre of aides earning salaries twice as high as some of them earned in their prime.
Until Perkins, the only KU athletic administrator earning a six-figure salary was the AD. Now at least three of Perkins aides have eclipsed that plateau — Larry Keating ($145,000), Jim Marchiony ($140,000) and Kelly Landry ($138,000). Perkins, as you know, is the highest-paid employee on the Lawrence campus at $400,000 a year.
You can’t blame the numerous retirees for harboring resentment over the matter-of-fact business-like approach adopted by the current administration. Yet it seems to me both sides can compromise. I don’t expect the retirees to have to go cold turkey, but I also think they need to realize no golden goose lays eggs forever.