As Lew Perkins and company continue to seek donations and other financial assistance to boost the financial profile of the Kansas University Athletics Department, a former KU quarterback’s agency appeared poised this week to come to the rescue.
To the tune of $19 billion.
“I’m all for it,” Steven Weatherford, president of the Kansas Development Finance Authority and quarterback on KU’s freshman team in 1973, said with a laugh. “That would buy a pretty good football team, wouldn’t it?”
The authority mistakenly published a legal notice this week offering to sell $19 billion in bonds to refinance KU’s debt on upgrades to Memorial Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse. The notice was supposed to offer bonds for $19 million.
The bonds, to be sold beginning Oct. 21, will stretch KU’s debt on recent upgrades to Memorial Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse. By extending the term on the debt by 10 years, KU will have another $1 million to spend on salaries, utility bills, travel expenses and other costs in the athletics department.
But a $19 billion issue would have poured another $18.881 billion into the department — and prompted a little wishful thinking atop Mount Oread and elsewhere in Lawrence.
Jim Marchiony, an associate athletics director, noted that KU’s budget suddenly would dwarf Texas’ $60 million.
“That would get us right to the top of the Big 12,” he said.
Sean Lester, another associate AD who handles construction projects, noted that the school could build 95 new state-of-the-art, $200 million football stadiums. “We could have a new stadium for every game,” he said.
Dan Watkins, a Lawrence attorney and KU law grad who chairs the authority’s board of directors, could foresee even bigger plans: “That’s twice the state’s annual operating budget.”
But officials acknowledged that there was a flip side to the wishful thinking. KU’s debt on the $19 million in refinancing bonds likely will be $1.5 million, down from the existing $2.5 million.
Paying on $19 billion would mean coming up with $1.5 billion a year.
Not even Perkins’ fund-raising might could tackle that task.
“It’s frightening,” said Theresa Klinkenberg, treasurer of the athletics board and chief business and financial planning officer for the university. “You have to be careful where you put that decimal place.”
The development authority plans to correct its mistake and run $19 million in a second legal notice in the upcoming days.
