Wetmore over charging to use his facility

Santa Clause key element of the $22 contract

$5000 to rent Reggie Lewis in Boston for 3hour meet. With all the timing and officials.

Each coach comes up with their own strategy to allocate scholarships that they believe best fits their program. Georgia focuses on field events, USC on sprinters, some schools get top US talent and some have to look internationally. Given CU has natural advantage of altitude, it makes sense for that program to focus on distance. While I'm a CU fan (all sports), I'd have to admit that we are generally a bottom feeder in the big revenue generators like football and basketball. In that regard I'm sure Wetmore's distance focus is beloved by the athletic department, boosters, and trustees, as he is the only team consistently producing conference, regional and national champions in any sport. He does field full track teams with actually a quite good program for the multi's and his kids generally do real well academically. The distance heavy track teams also usually end up in the top 25 teams at nationals - while they are not a threat to win, they still end up the year ranked, as opposed to most of the other sports.

The state funding pays for about 5% of the CU budget. It's really a private university for all practical purposes, and so has no particular obligation to do charity work. Feel free to blame the voters of Colorado who decided they weren't interested in public goods. This is the free market that they wanted.

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

I love how you show up on any CU or Wetmore thread.

Athletes out of Wetmore's stable:

Culpepper's

Goucher's

Nelson

Slattery's

Torres'

Ritz

Simpson

Coburn

Kipp

Probably a few I forgot.

But he sucks. I haven't kept up. Have you posted the list of Olympians you've trained?

Culpepper’s what?

Goucher’s what?

Slattery’s what?

Thanks for the “laugh’s”!!

critic 100 wrote:

Never would take anything from the distance runners you mentioned. I just want you to name the jumpers, throwers, sprinters who have come out of Wetmore's program. After all, CU is fully funded.

Th only people who care about those “sports” are the people who don’t care about distance running.

AynWouldBeProud wrote:

The state funding pays for about 5% of the CU budget. It's really a private university for all practical purposes, and so has no particular obligation to do charity work. Feel free to blame the voters of Colorado who decided they weren't interested in public goods. This is the free market that they wanted.

You may be talking about operating expenses, but tell me how the campus was funded, the land, the buildings, etc.

Obviously the OP is a bit off the mark, however, Coach Wetmore has done very little to support the Boulder running community at large. This has been an issue for his entire tenure.

As the flagship Colorado school in a flagship “running”’town, he should do a better job in advocating better access for the community. Schools like Stanford, NAU, even Oregon have made an effort for the running community (and to an extent the elite athletes in the area) to have some public track privileges. I don’t count the crack of dawn hours Potts is open a few days a week.

Wetmore seems to just wash his hands of the matter and blame it on CU admin. With his stature, it wouldn’t take much for him to sit down with the AD and try to come up something that acknowledges the needs of the running community.

In a large part, Wetmore’s refusal to embrace the running community at large is the reason why post collegiate groups continue to fizzle in the area. There is simply no basic facilities - and that’s a shame for somewhere like Boulder.

You sound like a spoiled and entitled brat who thinks that everything that you want should be handed to you.

Post college - get off campus and figure out how the world works. Once you’re out the school doesn’t owe you anything. It’s there for current students.

If you want public facilities then go to the city, county, state or YMCA and get the ball rolling.

But don’t complain that the university owes you something because it doesn’t.

critic 100 wrote:

Never would take anything from the distance runners you mentioned. I just want you to name the jumpers, throwers, sprinters who have come out of Wetmore's program. After all, CU is fully funded.

They have had All Americans in those events you listed. Again, learn your history, Junior. Wetmore is a top 5 XC/TF coach in the NCAA.

I take it that no one told you only about 50% of D1 football programs make a profit, let alone act as a “crutch” for other programs. In fact, football tends to be so excessively expensive that it’s drains budget $$$ from other sports.

John Utah wrote:

AynWouldBeProud wrote:

The state funding pays for about 5% of the CU budget. It's really a private university for all practical purposes, and so has no particular obligation to do charity work. Feel free to blame the voters of Colorado who decided they weren't interested in public goods. This is the free market that they wanted.

You may be talking about operating expenses, but tell me how the campus was funded, the land, the buildings, etc.

Certainly the voters of a century ago valued the public good and invested a lot; and obviously legally it's all publicly owned. But more recent buildings, most importantly including the building in question, were not financed by the public at large. Without a doubt the need for the school to pay off the debt for this new building is a driving force behind the the high rental cost. And the current taxpayers have made it very clear that CU is on its own to figure out how to cover its costs and decide where to put its money. They expect CU to run like a business which means paying attention to future paying customers (i.e. students, rich alums, researchers who can bring in grant money) and not past customers (the citizens of the state). So this is very much a natural consequence of the public disinvestment (which given the sunk costs of their earlier investments may indeed not be the wisest idea).

Armory is around $1500 an hour and ocean breeze I believe is more like $1000. This does include timing but does not include the cost of officials.

The building in question is called the CU Indoor Practice Facility. i.e. it was built for and controlled by football and the track just happens to be in there. So, it would be more accurate to say Mel Tucker (new CU coach) is charging $22k.... thought I bet the price/policy was set before he arrived.

Flounder wrote:

You sound like a spoiled and entitled brat who thinks that everything that you want should be handed to you.

Post college - get off campus and figure out how the world works. Once you’re out the school doesn’t owe you anything. It’s there for current students.

If you want public facilities then go to the city, county, state or YMCA and get the ball rolling.

But don’t complain that the university owes you something because it doesn’t.

This.

And the OP looks like a slow-footed/head-case former walk-on who was denied the scholarship he believed he deserved. Probably got beat like a drum by Metro, UNC, Mesa, Colorado College sprinters. Clearly wasn't in line for academic scholarship, either. Or the over-involved parent of that sort of special princess.

ALL RISE wrote:

It pisses me off how much Aaron Judge charges for tickets at Yankee Stadium

+5

Addressing a few statements on this thread. I coached at the ncaa D1 level for 17 years. It is very likely that neither Whetmore nor the football coach has any control over the pricing for renting the facility. Our admins always controlled that, even though we told them they were way over charging. Next, just because it is a public school doesn’t mean that tax payer dollars are paying for it. Couldn’t be further from the truth. At least in our state, all athletic department facilities and, in fact, the entire department budget, came from student fees and privately raised money. No tax dollars, no tuition. The general public was always arguing for free access to our track, which I really didn’t object to, but their argument that their taxes paid for it so it’s theirs was incorrect. Private funds built it and student fees maintained it. And that stat of 50% of d1 football teams making a profit is way off. Saw stats several times and it’s more like less than 20 schools total that make more than they spend. Unless you are selling out an 80k seat stadium each home game, you are spending more than you are bringing in. Now, the intangible value they bring in other ways is hard to measure.

All that said, 22k to rent for a meet seems rediculous and I’m guessing they are basically saying “we don’t want to rent”.

Our school district funds athletic programs a total of $0. All uniforms, transportation, meet entries, etc. must be funded by fundraising.

How does a school pay $5,000 let alone $22,000. Insane! Colorado should just build them at public school sites.

Then you should pay Adams State or Air Force to host the meet instead (pretty much all of the indoor meets are at Air Force anyhow). Those are both quality facilities, even though they are both about 7800' above sea level. You should not pretend like there are not other options. If the meet you want to host is anything like the old USWEST invitational (which took place over two days and probably had about 1,000 competitors), you would be looking at about $22 a person. If you could find a sponsor to cover part of that and some volunteers, you might even make a profit. They might have to set the price at that level so that when the Bolder Boulder or concerts use the facility, they cannot claim that they are being charged a higher price than other prospective users (for the Bolder Boulder that ends up being about $0.41 per runner), which is quite cheap considering the cleanup costs and restrooms that have to be maintained for that number of people.