Let me preface this thread by saying please don't let this break down into a slam thread against any member of the athletic department.

I remember when I first came to the school we were constantly told that our athletic department was losing money and that we just couldn't spend money on any non-necessities.

Now you look around and we have new signage, a new football field, new uniforms for all sports, a raise for Coach Miller, and numerous other "non-necessities." My question is: where did all this extra money coming from? Was Krebs able to surplus that much money or has Christopher been able to bring in that much in new donations?

And let me preface my post by saying I have NO knowledge on the matter. I am just speculating, nothing more.

Your first question (Krebs surplus-ing money or Christopher raising it) could be somewhere in between. From my understanding, Krebs was named AD with one of his directives being to balance the budget and Christopher was brought on board in part because of his fundraising background. So if both men did their jobs, then it could well be somewhere in the middle.

Plus, there would have been some Bowl money a few years back ('03 and '04, I think?). I have no idea if they would have spent all of it the next season, or dispersed it across a few years, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that it could have been dispersed over a couple of years if it wasn't used on one large project like the Sebo (I know that's not where the money went. It was just an example of a large project).

As for the new uniforms, that's not so unusual. One of the schools I previously worked for completely overhauled their uniforms and directed each team to order new ones that conformed. It put quite a strain on some of the smaller budget programs (field hockey), but the ones with larger budgets (basketball, hockey) got new uniforms every year anyway, so for them it wasn't as big a deal. The budget didn't go up at all, the teams just had to figure it out for themselves.

Haven't seen the signage yet, so I'm not sure what you mean. I'll be up to speed on Saturday. But signage sounds like one of those things that could have come from the university. As I understand it (and I could be WAY off base here) the university gives each department X amount of dollars every year for use only on one-time capital improvements. So stuff like uniforms, books or scholarships wouldn't count, but signage or new desks for offices would.

Or maybe they paid it off in Canadian dollars! (I'm impressed if anybody got the lame Dodgeball reference)

I think some of it is the trickle-down effect of the football boom of '03 and such. Not just the bowl money, but money and attention in general coming toward the university. Add in the Sebo Center, and I think there was probably a large sense of "wow, what can *I* do to help BG?" across the board.

That said, GC has really made a point of "pounding the pavement" to meet alumni and supporters, and I bet that hasn't hurt, either. And as was said, we could have been making money hand over fist in the Krebs years, but it wasn't noticed until we were back in the black (or, preferably, brown) with the budget.

I've got to assume the uniforms are replaced according to some schedule.

And the signage isn't expensive, it doesn't seem.

Playing games at Big 10 stadiums helps bring in money too...seems GC is doing all the right things.

Uniforms are generally replaced every 2-3 seasons. Even in the leaner years. Urban came and took the BOWLING GREEN off of the unis- we had those for 2001, 2002, 2003+MCB. Then we had the fang jerseys in 2004+GMAC, 2005, 2006 and now we have new uniforms in 2006....kind of. I am really curious to know if the orange jerseys are new or if they just patched the BG over the old LT falcon like the hockey jerseys patched adidas over the Nike swoosh......

The signage, like the BGSU Ice Arena brown sign, I *think* is not athletics funded.

It's even better when you get the money AND win.