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  • Alaska teams?

    With classes starting next month, Alaska is burning up both figuratively and literally. It remains to be seen how things will go down, but here's the short (super short) story. The governor is hell bent on cutting everything in the state as revenue from oil has continued to decline the last years in order to balance the budget rather than look for sources of revenue other than oil. He's also hell bent on giving Alaskan's a large PFD (our individual checks of oil money royalty) as our last gov. made them smaller as part of a solution to shore up budget problems. That has become a state constitutional crisis (over the "robbing" of our PFD) and now the legislature is divided about whether to pay a $3000 PFD or fund the state and university.

    The legislature can override the vetoes to these cuts if they can get 45/60 votes, but right now 60% of them are in the capitol trying to do that and 40% are in the town the Governor declared the location of the special session, so neither body has enough legislators to get much of anything done. They have till Friday to do it, but neither group looks ready to buy a plane ticket to the other location. The university reagents will meet on Monday to figure out what's next. If the cuts go through the University will probably declare bankruptcy and lay off thousands of tenured faculty, as well as potentially close a large campus. Forget about athletics if the cuts go through...

    Ryan McCarthy did write a nice opinion piece for the ADN which I'll attach. I saw the UAF volleyball coach at a rally the other night, but have not seen Sparling anywhere advocating for his team, school or players, or even his job. I hear he spends summers in Ellensburg...

    https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/07...get-otherwise/

  • #2
    Re: Alaska teams?

    Key question: how long can the GNAC wait before having to overhaul the various sport schedules?

    I just got through a huge hockey board discussion regarding the schools announcing their departure from the WCHA. To call this whole set of circumstances a cluster**** seriously undersells the range of problems in Alaska.

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    • #3
      Last edited by hoosierdaddy34; 07-13-2019, 07:06 PM.

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      • #4
        Re: Alaska teams?

        Originally posted by Pounder View Post
        To call this whole set of circumstances a cluster**** seriously undersells the range of problems in Alaska.
        Yep.

        Hoosierdaddy, Yes. Teams and players are preparing for the season(s) ahead. What else can they do? Maybe the governor will realize his approach was off, to put it mildly and he'll allow funding to come back into the state through the capital or supplemental budgets. Truly, I'm not an expert in finances, economics or politics, but apparently the waiting game may continue until the end of the month when the deadlines really, actually take affect. But if the University declares exigency next week, I would not hold my breath that either school will be fielding teams by the time basketball season rolls around. If they can lay off tenured faculty and cut programs for the spring semester, I don't think they would hold back on cutting sports either. Perhaps the exigency allows them to back out of whatever commitments they have to the GNAC as well. I suppose it's possible that sports as we know it would go on; I think it's just the magnitude of what he's proposing/slashing and the unknown of what that looks like that makes me and many others think that sports will be out the window very early in the trimming of expenses game for UA. Perhaps they are obligated to the students to at least go through with this season; who knows.

        I had read the stuff about the hockey teams basically getting the boot from the rest of the conference not wanting to deal with Alaska or Alabama; perhaps they saw the mess coming and were sick of dealing with such a backwards place. At this point, the laughing stock that we were in the Palin days is nothing compared to what we are becoming now.

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        • #5

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          • #6
            Re: Alaska teams?

            https://board.uscho.com/showthread.php?135573-Ak-uaa

            https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/buck...up-t99270.html

            Your view on the issue is the most optimistic I've heard Hoosier... I think this is way bigger than athletics myself. UAF is really important to Fairbanks, perhaps more important to Fairbanks than what UAA is to Anchorage. I just don't understand this governor with a degree from UAF, married to a woman from rural Alaska and slashing the things that have made his life better... The repercussions of this budget cut are going to keep on hurting for a long time after the actual dollars are gone.

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            • #7
              Re: Alaska teams?

              With all of this WCHA split talk, I see no way UAA and UAF hockey can survive for long as independents. The arena problems, the travel, the costs- the other conferences aren't going to add them.

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              • #8
                Last edited by hoosierdaddy34; 07-14-2019, 11:00 AM.

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                • #9
                  Last edited by hoosierdaddy34; 07-16-2019, 06:51 PM.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Alaska teams?

                    I listened to the "Talk of Alaska" today too and heard one of the last questions they took about athletics. I heard Johnsen's response to that question as a very different answer than he gave for questions about the nursing program, arctic research, climate change research, and education in rural Alaska. He pretty much said that nursing, and the international research that UAF does on climate change and arctic studies, education programs and engineering were pretty safe. When he answered the question about athletics, he was much more tepid, stating that the communities of Fairbanks and Anchorage love their athletics, but depending on funding, there will be very limited resources to disperse to many entities that can't all be funded.

                    Yes, the regents are his boss, but I don't think that no teams get cut if the big cuts go through, given how many other things will get cut. Also consider how much they are talking about the accreditation of the universities and how they do not want to jeopardize that. Their first obligation are to students and programs to maintain those accreditations. The problem I see with one accreditation for the whole system is what I saw several years ago when they considered that; there could only be one athletic program and as for ball sports, UAA would probably win out over UAF in hosting those teams (sorry, ya'll know I like my ball just as much as you guys in Anchorage do; I'm not going to say you should get it just because the legislature decided you needed a ridiculous new arena for your sports). The other problem with that is that the GNAC is likely not going to keep working with UA if they have to drag teams up to Alaska every season to play just one team, instead of both teams.... I think the GNAC would bail on that idea as quickly as they could.

                    I don't know. I guess it's time to strap the seatbelt on and hang on for the rest of this month to see what they come up with... I sure hope that the one player that Sparling has signed is worth all 7 he lost to graduation at the end of last season. It's looking promising for this season that UAF will continue to circle the drain in the men's basketball department...

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                    • #11

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                      • #12
                        Re: Alaska teams?

                        Originally posted by northernGNAChoopfan View Post
                        I listened to the "Talk of Alaska" today too and heard one of the last questions they took about athletics. I heard Johnsen's response to that question as a very different answer than he gave for questions about the nursing program, arctic research, climate change research, and education in rural Alaska. He pretty much said that nursing, and the international research that UAF does on climate change and arctic studies, education programs and engineering were pretty safe. When he answered the question about athletics, he was much more tepid, stating that the communities of Fairbanks and Anchorage love their athletics, but depending on funding, there will be very limited resources to disperse to many entities that can't all be funded.

                        Yes, the regents are his boss, but I don't think that no teams get cut if the big cuts go through, given how many other things will get cut. Also consider how much they are talking about the accreditation of the universities and how they do not want to jeopardize that. Their first obligation are to students and programs to maintain those accreditations. The problem I see with one accreditation for the whole system is what I saw several years ago when they considered that; there could only be one athletic program and as for ball sports, UAA would probably win out over UAF in hosting those teams (sorry, ya'll know I like my ball just as much as you guys in Anchorage do; I'm not going to say you should get it just because the legislature decided you needed a ridiculous new arena for your sports). The other problem with that is that the GNAC is likely not going to keep working with UA if they have to drag teams up to Alaska every season to play just one team, instead of both teams.... I think the GNAC would bail on that idea as quickly as they could.

                        I don't know. I guess it's time to strap the seatbelt on and hang on for the rest of this month to see what they come up with... I sure hope that the one player that Sparling has signed is worth all 7 he lost to graduation at the end of last season. It's looking promising for this season that UAF will continue to circle the drain in the men's basketball department...

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                        • #13
                          Re: Alaska teams?

                          Thanks a lot for posting this Hoosier! I really respect you for speaking up about this. I've made a lot of noise about this and other inequities between UAA and UAF athletics over the years and I typically get some backlash from UAA fans on here. The UAA coaches also regularly make almost double what UAF coaches make in their same sport colleagues. It's very, very hard to compete with that disadvantage I would say. The rivalry between the schools on the court is awesome, but the rivalry off the court is super annoying. I don't wish UAA any less, I just wish Fairbanks was given an equal chance to compete in every aspect. Money goes a long ways. Yes, the UAF non-hockey playing athletes have raised the question over and over again about why hockey gets so much $ and other sports not. The difference between what the UAA men's team gets vs their women's team is also embarrassing, especially given title IX and how much better the women's team does with their lesser funds....

                          Again, I really appreciate the post! I'm going to lay low for a while till a more concrete answer and picture emerge from Juneau. I did hear that the faculty senate at UAA today said that the budget problem could be fixed by just closing UAF... Wow. Throwing gasoline on the fire here at UAF huh? Way to go UAA faculty senate, way to go! That'll win you respect and rapport from your UAF colleagues!

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                          • #14

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                            • #15
                              Re: Alaska teams?

                              I hope the Alaska teams can still be in the GNAC, still be thriving universities, and so forth. Cutting back on higher education has proven to be an enormous mistake historically. Graduates of universities get better jobs, pay higher taxes, are good citiizens, create businesses, grow businesses, and conduct important research. It's never good to make massive cuts to higher ed.

                              I also think it's cool the GNAC has two Alaska teams, just adds some variety to the league. I like it. There's some odd fans out there who will be negative. Couple years ago someone started a rumor that WOU would be cutting football, definitely not the case. A Linfield fan came in and said that would be a good thing, not sure why someone from D3 would opine on that. A Simon Fraser fan was championing WOU dropping the sport, which is odd, considering the GNAC needs more football teams, not less. There will be haters out there, even on this site.

                              Anyway, I want both Alaska universities to thrive and stay in the GNAC.

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