In Reply to: Still in a state of shock as to what was unthinkable posted by LakerFanForLebronNotKobe on September 16, 2024 at 03:29:13
Our system is broken. This 2024 team is a symptom. The disease is Morgan Center and their passive, bureaucratic mindset.
They drove athletics into bankruptcy requiring a debtor in possession financing from Ucla to the tune of $102.8 million by 2022. Bankruptcy is a time to purge and reorganize, to correct mistakes, to right the ship, but that didn't happen at Ucla or Morgan Center. The bureaucracy protects itself first and foremost.
So, the only visible change from this financial collapse was Guerrero's departure. Yet, he was replaced with a younger version of him, Jarmond, who, like Guerrero was a lifelong government services bureaucrat with no real world, practical business experience. The bureaucracy protects itself.
Protection, not performance is the main goal at Ucla and Morgan Center. Insulation against risk. Morgan Center, is successful because despite its demonstrable incompetence spanning nearly a quarter century, it remains intact, immune to market pressure or threat of serious economic consequences of failure.
Pleasing fans, winning games, generating revenue are of distant importance in bureaucracies but especially at Ucla athletics because the revenue at Ucla is a gift. It needn't be earned through performance. All Ucla need do to receive $75 million annually from the Big 10 contract is to exist, suit up and play the games. Being good and winning isn't necessary. It'd be nice, and Morgan Center has to give it lip service, but it isn't an existential variable in their calculations.
So, the incompetence is embedded in our system and at the very top of football. The Chip departure is just the latest incident where we see how Morgan Center fails us.
We probably can't eliminate Morgan Center but we need to cleave it away from football. Independent, football would be free to attract entrepreneurial business talent now called for in the increasingly overt commercial enterprise of CFB. Our current system leads to extinction.
Unless you're willing to sign a petition demanding that Ucla separate football from Morgan Center, or unless you're willing to boycott the program, its incompetence will continue indefinitely. Only when the B10 contract ends will Ucla be forced to choose between another bout of financial collapse, or a clean break from the economics of CFB.