It is common knowledge that those involved in Marquette’s Basketball program enjoy a number of perks for their considerable contribution to the Marquette community. Details on the perks however, are not usually disclosed. A recent sighting of 7 brand new, shiney yellow Hummer H3s in the parking lot outside the Al McGuire Center sparked even more interest in which perks are personal and which are funded by the school.
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A source within the MU Athletics program has confirmed that these new Hummer H3s were leased by Marquette University for the assistant coaches of the Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams. After a cursory review, I was only able to find three Hummer dealers in Wisconsin.
Bergstrom Chevrolet Buick Cadillac Hummer
150 N Green Bay Road
Neenah, WI 54956Bergstrom Cadillac-Hummer, Inc.
1200 Applegate Rd
Madison, WI 53713Bergstrom Hummer of Milwaukee
11330 W Metro Blvd.
Milwaukee, WI 53224
Who is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Marquette University?
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John F. Bergstrom
Chair of the Marquette BoardJohn F. Bergstrom, Bus Ad ’67, was elected to the Marquette University Board of Trustees in 1994, was elected vice chair in 2001, and was elected chairman of the board in 2003.
He is chairman and CEO of Bergstrom Corp. in Neenah, Wis., which he founded with his brother, Richard. Today their business has 24 auto dealerships, employs 1,600 people and is one of the top 50 auto retailers in the United States. Time Magazine named Bergstrom the outstanding automotive dealer in the U.S. in February 2003.
Seems simple to me. Even logical. I don’t really agree with tuition dollars being spent in this way, even if the H3s are from Bergstrom’s dealership and are extremely discounted. It seems to conflict with Marquette’s constantly professed “social justice” effort, not to mention common fiscal sense in this time of high gas prices.
This is much like the recent coffee coersion incident, if you are basing your decisions on sound business logic (maybe these Hummers will help bring in talent?), great, but realize that you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth when you preach an almost socialist strain of social justice and rely on capitalist cost benefit analysis.
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Added to digg.com sports.
http://digg.com/basketball/Mar.....in_Hummers
Absolutely awesome post, Brandon.
The hypocrisy really is amazing. Maybe if MU had some active liberals on campus (ahem, besides the Administration) this irony could be brought to greater attention.
“Do we give too much to our basketball/athletics program(s)?” –my favorite campus question.
Are tuition dollars being spent to fund these Hummers? No, probably not. Men’s Basketball usually turns a profit.
I love that they’re yellow, though.
Men’s BBall turns a HUGE profit.
It does make the social justice talk seem real empty when you hear about things like this. I understand you gotta offer some perks to get and keep the talent here, but couldn’t they have found something a little less flamboyant? A lifetime supply of Stone Creek coffee maybe? How about just slipping the coaches a little extra in their Christmas bonuses? What’s the city MPG on a Hummer 3?
H3: 16 mpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummer_H3
Who’s going to be paying for the gas and operating expenses on these Hummers? Can the coaches expense these back to the Univeristy? Even if tuition dollars aren’t being used to fund these vehicles (supposedly), students who buy season tickets to men’s basketball are indirectly paying for these, since all the student ticket money is part of the overall ticket revenue MU Athletics takes in.
Now anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge supporter of Marquette athletics (not financially speaking), and that I will bend over backwards to defend the decisions made my athletics (except for Marquette Gold). This, though, gives me a lot of pause, especially considering how the athletics department is continually trying to wring more dollars out of ticket sales by discontinuing new alumni discounts, requiring mandatory donations for some season tickets, etc.
As someone who is pursing a graduate degree in sports management, I understand that competing on the level of the Big East requires a greater financial committment, but funding SEVEN Gold H3s for basketball coaches that already very likely make six-figure salaries (and a men’s head coach that is the second-highest paid coach in the country) seems like a total misalignment of priorities. It’s almost reeks of something an ethically-challenged athletics department about 90 miles to the west (UW-Madison) would do. How about using the money being used to lease and operate these vehicles to raise the salaries of other low-level support staff within the athletic department, like video coordinators or marketing interns? Or funneling this to bolster equipment and facilities for non-revenue sports, like track and field? Unlike Madison, we don’t have state funding to draw from to cover such wasteful spending, so why are we wasting our already limited resources on Hummers?
Maybe Bergstrom had an ulterior motive in pushing the Marquette Gold nickname after all. The priorities for all parties involved in this matter are very warped, to say the least.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/app.....2XHZdyzqN8
This is a list from a survey Bloomberg News conducted in 2005 to analyze assistant coach salaries. These coaches can probably afford their own H3s, and I’m sure Marquette pays very similar to these schools.
So you have one unidentified source saying MU has leased these Hummers. Did you make any calls asking the Men’s Basketball PR department to confirm it? Or call Bergstrom? If it’s true, they’re going to tell the truth and not risk being caught in a lie. How high up is your source? Does he/she have an ax to grind?
You can’t rip on the media (as your site commonly does) when you don’t confirm squat before publishing it yourself.
If MU really is spending money on these Hummers, I would agree it’s ridiculous. But please, do something beyond a Google search and a comment from a friend before ripping someone on your Web site.
A) The Hummer leases have been confirmed by multiple sources.
B) The Bergstrom connection is currently speculative as evidenced by the voice of the post.
C) MU does not have a history of telling the truth. Read the coffee coersion piece or any number of cover up tales here or over at the Warrior blog.
No campus makes a huge profit on any sport. Any stats purporting that are fraudulent, because athletic budgets do not include the huge overhead picked up by the campus landlords in their operating budgets — so basically borne by other students through their tuition (and thus by us the taxpayers, even for private and religious schools such as Marquette, because so much of student financial aid is funded by the feds and other public-sector sources).
Talk of profits — or losses — is business-sector talk, and that is appropriate, since campuses in such sports as basketball are serving as minor leagues for the likes of NBA owners (yes, that includes liberal millionaire Herb Kohl, who has become a millionaire on the backs of many of us; at least Bud Selig and other baseball owners pay for their minor leagues).
So take the athletic department budget at MU — or at any school — and start adding charges for rent, utilities, and other costs that businesses pay. Then see if they really amass “huge profits” deserving of Hummers. . . .
http://online.wsj.com/article_.....zIzWj.html
A story written by the WSJ re: money in men’s college basketball. Marquette is mentioned.
“The University of Arizona, which generated $16.6 million in revenue last year while spending just $4.1 million.”
These numbers are tracked by the U.S. Department of Education.
if you were offered a hummer at your job you wouldnt be complaining. these coaches dedicate A LOT of time and effort into leading these teams and so far the Marquette teams have been a huge success. the cost of these hummers cant nearly be as much as the profit both the men and womens basketball teams bring in for the school.
[...] In an interesting twist, we have been seeing some traffic coming in from Google Finance. Evidently, our past post on Marquette Basketball coaches rolling in Hummers from Bergstrom appears on the google page for Bergstrom Corp. [...]
[...] In an interesting twist, we have been seeing some traffic coming in from Google Finance. Evidently, our past post on Marquette Basketball coaches rolling in Hummers from Bergstrom appears on the google page for Bergstrom Corp. [...]
[...] In an interesting twist, we have been seeing some traffic coming in from Google Finance. Evidently, our past post on Marquette Basketball coaches rolling in Hummers from Bergstrom appears on the google page for Bergstrom Corp. [...]