Report: UCF loaned millions to athletic dept.

It's not really USF news, but I figured there might be some interest among readers here: The University of Central Florida may have inappropriately loaned its athletic department $7.4-million and provided $49-million in student fees without proper oversight, according to a report Monday in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The report is based on a routine operational audit by the state's auditor general, which you can read here. UCF has since discontinued the practices questioned in the audit, according to the Chronicle, and the university "has requested an updated plan of repayment" from UCF Athletics Association, Inc.; no penalty or legal action is expected to come from the findings.

Comments

[Mike Lakeland]

Stephen, please uninstall yourself from life.

[Ken]

Stephen, I'll assume you don't know much about the finances of universities, and perhaps there are others who would be interested, too.

Universities typically have not-for-profit "foundations" that manage the donation-type fund-raising--these are the tax deductible donations that can be made to 501(c)(3) corporations, of which USF and its foundation are examples. At USF it is called "the USF Foundation." It takes in donations from $1 a pay period from some employees through the "Faculty Staff Scholarship Fund" (and smaller than that, actually) up to the multi-million dollar donations. State money is that appropriated through the legislative budget process. If you've followed this, you'll realize that in the USF case it was not State money, but donated money that was loaned. In the UCF case, it was state money, tax money given to UCF to educate students (at least if the story from the Chronicle of Higher Education is right, and I'll bet a lot on--what has the Orlando press and indeed UCF had to say about it?).

I didn't look at all of the links you provided, but the salient phrase in the last one, the link you'd highlighted, was "...the Foundation loaned the USF athletic department...." The loan was from the donated money from the Foundation and NOT from the State money that is appropriated to the University.

Night and day--completely different things.

[Stephen]

oh and that illegal money you talk about, those are student atheltic fees. They would go to the athletic association anyway, so learn yourself some facts.

[Stephen]

Not too bright are you. I said what USF did is nothing different than what UCF did. The only difference is the athletic department at UCF is a separate non profit entity. Either way, it is a non issue because what UCF did is very normal, just not documented due to the legal status of the athletic association.

[J]

Wow Stephen, good job finding links. Too bad none of them illustrate your point at all. Yes, they all discuss funds that USF owed and had to borrow money for, but nothing about impropriety. No mention was made about borowing state funds without proper authorization or diverting funds from academics.

In fact, the only negatives about USF that were mentioned were based upon assumption. The articles mentioned how difficult it would be for USF to repay the funds (which were properly borrowed), but that assumed no National television games and 20,000 - 30,000 in attendance at each game. Considering the attendance has now doubled and we have at least 5 Nationally televised games a year, even those assumptions are no longer valid.

I give you a gold star for effort, but your links don't provide any facts to prove your point. Good try.

[Stephen]

http://www.michaelsokolove.com/michael_sokolove/footballissuckersgame.htm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE0DB173DF931A15751C1A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=6

http://media.www.usforacle.com/media/storage/paper880/news/2003/11/05/News/Usf-Joins.Big.East-1676670.shtml

http://www.sptimes.com/News/071501/Sports/Strapped.shtml

Wow that last one hit home, imagine from the the SP Times even.

[G.A.]

Go back and read the blog. We knew the Moffitts had separated, but felt there was no finality in that. When we learned he had filed for divorce and of the academic allegations, we wrote a story. I've gone through this a couple of times now.

[Mike Lakeland]

lol, sorry Matt. I like to think that some parts of humanity can be saved, but I sometimes forget who I am dealing with.

[Matt]

Mike Lakeland, save your breath. Anytime you ask a UCF fan for a link to back up their baseless accusations, they conveniently don't show up anymore.

Links are like kryptonite to UCF fans.

[Mike Lakeland]

Well, Stephen, since you *obviously* know these things, how about links to back up your charges? Oh, wait - you don't have them. You only have empty accusations. You're just an anonymous UCF troll trying to sling mud.

[Stephen]

Please, you flat out said in your blog that you knew the story in early November, yet it magically did not appear until after their bowl game.

As to the UCF story, funny how you never metion the school unless USF is playing them, yet you jumped on this story. Sad thing for you was, USF did the very same thing back in 2002 and I think they did it again with the entrance fee into the Big East. You are a reporter right, shouldn't you know these things.

[G.A.]

Stephen, I wasn't covering USF in 2002, so can't help you much there. And if my only goal was helping USF, why would I write the Moffitt story at all? How would I be the guy to put it out there first? Doesn't seem to make sense.

[Stephen]

Hey Greg, why didn't you report USF doing this very same thing back in 2002 when the school gave the athletic department $2,000,000 for the cost of joining CUSA. Guess what Greg, the money was never paid back to the school.

I guess you are still holding on to that nugget much like you held on to the Moffett story until he was done playing.

[Stephen]

congrats Greg, now if only you would do half the research on the team you pay to cover. What a hack.

[Paul]

but they run such a clean and honorable program, not like USF, how could this be? Whatever, UCF.

[Ken]

While you're at it, Greg, did this help build some of those facilities, or pay the coaches, or what? And exactly how and when are they going to pay it back (it is State of Florida money that was loaned to the Athletic Association). Just kidding--I don't really want to know. Let's drop it and get UCF gone from here.

[Tom]

Don't worry Greg keep feeding us their dirt, I know their program is not that clean. Their athletic department needs all the help they can get.

[Tom]

Don't worry Greg keep feeding us their dirt, I know there program is not that clean. Their athletic department needs all the help they can get.

[Mike Lakeland]

Real stories, eh? Well, ask and you shall receive. Ah, yes, this just came across my desk. Here is a story of a 103 year old Chula Vista woman who claims to have a recipe for the world's greatest meat loaf.

[G.A.]

Yep. Made it up. Got some friends at the Chronicle of Higher Education to post a fake story, with the hopes of boosting my traffic. You guys caught me. Guess I'll go back to real stories.

[ucfrocks]

This is really a non-issue. UCF has corrected the problem and we will be fine. Coach O'Leary runs a tight ship and this will create no blemish. We look forward to our date with you at Brighthouse and we will show you how nice it is to have an OCS instead of a rented stadium.

[ucf fan]

Maybe Greg made this up. He just wants traffic for his blog.

[SMH]

You have to be kidding. C-USA a better basketball conference. The Big East has 8 teams in the tourney compared to 1 from C-USA.

UCF didn't learn from the last time they almost sank their athletic department under a huge amount of debt. They are ready to do it again.

I can not wait until we are done with you next year.

[Dave W]

Nice write-up about us by the national writer on Rivals: http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=787039

As for this, it's not too surprising. They've spent a lot of money in the past few years with no discernable revenue increase until this season. The audit was interesting, but I don't know if it is really worth pursuing too much (we have our problems with audits, too).

[Matt]

UCF - home of the best public funds embezzlers in all of C-USA!

[knightsrule]

THE USF FANS ARE JEALOIUS.

[Reality]

Hey Knightsrule, If USF joined the peewee league like conference usa, it would be no contest (as last year's matchup showed). Yes, we were in conference usa once, but that was when it had men (USF, Louisville, Cincinnati, TCU) not little boys (UCF,..., I can't even think of the other ones). Good luck with your yearly goal of going to the Liberty Bowl and playing on the Sunshine network.

[peter cotton tail]

Pot meet Kettle.

[G.A.]

Yes, it's UCF Athletics Association. I type USF like two-million times a day, so it just spills over to other things within a letter or two of that. Thanks.

[Mike Lakeland]

Let's see how they spin this story.

Glass houses...

[paul wall]

greg i think you meant to Put UCF

[flsportsfn83]

hope this is added on UCFSCANDAL.com

[Brian]

Its 10 am ... I believe the drinkin' should of stopped by 2am in Orlando.

[knightsrule]

You Bulls will try anything to bring us down. You wish you had the sucess we have had in football. We have a conferense championship. YOU DONT. AND CUSA is better than the Big East in basketball. Look at Memphis.

[Brian]

Greg--"has requested an updated plan of repayment" from USF Athletics Association, Inc"

I think you meant to write the name of whatever that other school is there.