So was your trip out west personal
business, a little both?
I was meeting with
alums and friends of the university
from Monday to
Thursday, and
I could have flown back Friday
morning, but I thought maybe I'll
fly back some day.
It was good.
You looked at the forecast. Exactly.
I was like, huh. Good. Exactly. I was like,
huh.
Yes, we had a lot of really
great alumni. I mean, we weren't
doing any large-scale alumni events.
This was more I had dinner with
a group of Badger parents
and saw some of our.
I got to meet the San Diego alumni
group a couple of times.
I was part of the crew classic.
I was in the marching band, and they
flew out a few members to play for
us.
Oh, that's great.
And so you get to be there, and you
realize what that'll look like after
college. It's cool to see that
community.
I was also an Argentine over winter
break and I was out to dinner and
there turned out to be a major
freshman and her parents at the same
restaurant.
And did they recognize
you? Oh yes.
Oh, yes
The daughter was a little nervous
about coming over, so the dad did,
and then we all took a picture.
Anywhere you go, right?
Badgers everywhere. It's a good
thing.
Yep, we're good.
All right.
Like I said, you guys can talk to
me, or if you're interacting with
each other, that's allowed.
OK.
Chancellor Mnuchin, athletic
director McIntosh, thanks for
joining us both.
Thanks for having us.
Great to be here.
So Chancellor, let's start with you.
It's been a few months since we
heard the student section chanting
to fire the coach.
What have you seen since then that
gives you faith that the decision to
keep the coach was the right thing?
Well, for one thing, we saw two
pretty great victories after that
moment against both
Illinois and Washington.
But more generally, I think that
while last season's football
performance wasn't what any of us
would wish for, and it's what we
have to do better than that.
There's no question about that.
But I also think that what we've
seen is that this team
can pull together the resources,
the discipline, and the know-how
to help Badger football perform
at the level that all of us.
Rightly expected to.
Athletic Director McIntosh, we've
seen headlines about the new
recruits coming in through the
transfer portal.
What have you seen from inside the
building that gives you faith that
this next team is going to perform a
lot better?
Well, I mean, there's a lot of
excitement around
the players that have committed
to play at Wisconsin.
It's been fast and furious for
those Badger fans that have been
following the news.
It's, it's been a flurry of
activity.
You know, at this point in the
season, I feel
satisfied that we had a plan
and we were able to execute it.
And I think we did well in
this environment of college
athletics and its dependence
on the portal.
At the same time.
While I'm excited, you know, we
haven't played a snap yet and we're
looking forward to getting
those kids on campus and getting
to work and
they'll get to work right away.
And so it's the beginning of
a new season for us.
There's optimism and excitement and
like the Chancellor said,
there's high expectations and we
all understand that.
We embrace that.
It's what attracted us to come
here.
It's been a part of...
Part of who I am as having
been part of this program in the
past, and I think that's what's
exciting about the future.
Chancellor, there's a lot of things
that you have to deal with as the
Chancellor of the University of
Wisconsin.
National issues have never been
hotter than before.
How do you view the athletic
department? Is it something that
would be a lot easier if it was
something that didn't draw that much
of your attention?
I think first of all that we're
really proud to be a school that
has an amazing athletic tradition
and we're committed to our athletic
future.
We're really of the student athlete
experience and we are proud of the
way that athletics is a
great part of being a student at
UW-Madison whether or not you're a
student athlete and also it's
a front porch to the university for
the whole state of Wisconsin and
well beyond. It's an absolutely
critical part of who we are.
It's not the only part of who we
are. Some fans might think otherwise
on that, but we do have a
teaching and research mission too.
But athletics is absolutely central
to the identity of what it means
to be Wisconsin and what it mean to
be a Badger.
We saw Indiana win a national title
in football, a program that for
years was a doormat in the Big Ten.
Does that change the expectation for
what we should expect out of
Wisconsin football?
I don't think it changes the
expectation.
I think it demonstrates what's
possible, which is
much different today than it was
not a long time ago.
You know, first of all,
congratulations to Indiana.
Kudos to everything they've
accomplished.
And go Big Ten.
Yeah, absolutely.
But it wasn't long ago
in which optimism
around the program revolved
around the high school kids that you
were recruiting.
And maybe, just maybe four years
from now, we'll see the
fruits of that.
And that's just not the world we're
living in now.
And so their turnaround in
a two-year span,
while unprecedented,
creates optimism for us and
excitement. And.
They have their strategy and
it's obviously worked.
We're executing ours and we're
optimistic and excited about ours.
Decades, the standard of Wisconsin
was to compete for big 10 titles and
hopefully in the right scenario win
a national title.
Is that still the standard?
Yes.
Is that still the standard? Yes.
So in that sense,
you gave the athletic director
a contract extension last year,
and he's the one calling the shots
here. What is your confidence level
in him? And will he be making the
ultimate decisions on who runs the
football world?
Yes, I mean, Mack is,
I think, a first-rate
athletic director.
We've had some bumps.
This is a wild ride in college
athletics right now.
More has changed over the last
couple of years than really
in decades.
It's still very much in flux.
So it's not altogether surprising
that there will be and can be
bumps in the road.
What we need is somebody passionate,
committed, and strategic.
Who also will be accountable for the
program's success.
And I have every faith that
MAC is going to execute
on that successfully.
But there are fans out there that
say, well, one of the reasons that
you kept Coach Fickle was because
you were the one that hired him, and
it would look awkward if you
admitting a mistake to let him go.
Is there any basis in that?
No, I mean, I understand
and I appreciate the frustration
of our fans sharing it.
But I think, you know, my job was
to try to determine what it will
take to move us forward and to be
successful.
And when we looked at
every aspect of our program,
certainly with the leadership in our
football program, Coach Fickel,
and we weighed that against what we
need to be success in the future,
we realized that we have a great
coach here.
We need to do more to invest in the
program. We need do more.
Uh... To evolve as a program
in times like the chancellor said
where it's it's been unprecedented
change and like i said for
those reasons and those reasons
alone uh...
That's the reason we retain coach
fickle and why we're excited about
our future but you
know i have no pride in those
decisions that's like
the Chancellor said my goal is
to position this program to be
successful in the long run and
there's no room for pride in that
When you look at the revenue coming
in, ticket sales make up
approximately 19% of the revenue.
The numbers are a year behind for
what we have. We know that ticket
sales were down last year, that
there were fewer fans in the stands.
Can Wisconsin sustain a
loss of season ticket holders when
it comes to the revenue portion of
this?
Well, I think there's a few things
that are worth noting.
One, we've had an
uptick over the last three years in
our ticket revenue and our ticket
sales.
That goes against what is
kind of a national trend
across college athletics.
While the ticket sales went down
last year, that is concerning to us.
We feel like we need to earn those
ticket holders their
share of wallet and their time and
their dedication.
And it's our hope that this
season they'll see.
The same optimism that we see, and
they'll see the same team
on the field that they've grown
accustomed to over the course of
decades.
But there's no getting around the
fact that, you know, football,
football at University of Wisconsin,
that's the financial engine that
underwrites the cost of
opportunity for all of our sports,
all 23 of our sport, north
of 700 athletes.
And so it's incredibly
important and
it's something that we continue to
work on. Our ticket sales.
We'll be going on sale this week and
there are a lot of people dedicated
to the idea of making sure
that our fans are able to connect
with this program and experience it.
Part of the landscape that's changed
is NIL and the media money
and the things that have changed
drastically everywhere.
Is Wisconsin, were they behind in
terms of adapting to that new
landscape?
Were they playing by a different set
of rules than other universities may
have taken advantage of how
NIL was supposed to be used?
Well, I can say this, we welcomed
the house settlement last
July, and that was an opportunity
for us to share revenues directly
with student athletes,
a way for us to maybe
influence our own destiny
in ways that we hadn't been able to
before.
In the time since house,
since that settlement was finalized
and took effect, the
world has
gone through even more change, and
so we continue to adapt and we
continue to iterate.
I think we have along the way,
but there's no doubt, like we
announced last fall, there was a
need to invest more in football and
that's what we did and that what
we've been executing.
And I think the progress
we've shown and the success we've
had in the portal just this last
week is the first step of
many that show the
progress that we're making.
The one thing I would add to that is
we welcome the house
settlement. We welcome the chance to
be able to support athletes
directly.
And I think we would both
welcome and I think frankly
many schools would welcome
a system that did have clearer
guardrails and
greater clarity about
what was and wasn't permitted.
We are operating, all of
us, in something of a Wild West
right now.
That's not the
structural environment that
I think is really ideal
for the future success
of college athletics.
That's a Wisconsin issue, that's
not a Big Ten issue, that's even an
NCAA issue, that's now a national
dynamic.
But I would love
to see greater
clarity and rules emerge
that would
ensure that we were all playing
by kind of the same rule book about
what was and wasn't allowed.
When you are trying to get
someone to donate to the University
of Wisconsin, are you
now competing with another set of
funds in terms of NIL dollars when
it used to be you contribute to the
university proper or the athletic
department? Is there now another
group that's taking from that same
pool?
You know, athletics has always been
an exciting place for some
of our donor pool, our donor group
to make contributions, and I don't
think that's changed.
One of the wonderful things about
Wisconsin is that we are doing a
lot of things on a lot cylinders,
and so there's amazing opportunities
for those who believe in
what we're doing, whether it's the
athletics program or the engineering
school or veterinary medicine
or arts to make a
difference. And so at some level.
There's nothing new about that, and
that's welcome.
I've spoken to a lot of fans who say
that they're happy that college
players are getting paid now, that
that was overdue, but at the same
time they feel frustrated with the
lack of transparency.
How much? Who's performing?
They're revealing them at a different
level, and the numbers are not being
disclosed.
Why aren't they being disclosing?
What would transparency mean?
Yeah, by the way, I share
in their sentiment.
I think the
ability for our student athletes to
benefit financially has
been a long time coming and was
a long overdue, so I
share that belief.
I think, you know, the landscape
has changed so rapidly.
Our fans have done a great
job of keeping up
with it, but it's changing on
a daily basis, and
the way we operate our department.
We need to position our department
in a way that has a competitive
advantage against those who we
compete with.
How we structure
our rev share agreements
and how we structure out CAP
strategy, it
gets into that competitive
advantage. For that reason, we
haven't been willing to share too
much.
The Big Ten has been negotiating a
deal with private equity brokers for
a 10% stake in media rights.
It's been rumored to be up to $2.4
billion.
Do you support that deal?
At this point, there's
no deal under active consideration.
As has been publicly reported,
we were in conversations with
actually a pension fund, not
exactly private equity, about a
minority stake in a new
enterprise.
I think that the
question of how we can work together
as a conference to
ask, are there
revenue and growth opportunities
where we can come together.
To add collective value.
I think that's a really important
conversation for
us to continue to
have.
And I think as we
look forward, I mean, college
football is an
area of such passion for so many
devoted fans all across the
country.
How can we
maximize those media opportunities,
and how can we continue to grow
opportunities, for example,
for women's sports?
What's been happening in women's
volleyball, and what's been in women
hockey here at Wisconsin, are
extraordinary.
There's strengths emerging all
over the country in women sports.
How can working together
lead us to be able to
do more and better?
To support our student athletes,
to support our fan base, and to
support opportunities?
I think those are good questions to
be asking.
As universities search for new
revenue to help compete against
other universities in the same
playing field, does that just raise
the over price, the same price
as it does in most of the other
areas of economics, or is
there a competitive advantage that
Wisconsin could gain as
opposed to another university with
maybe a donor or two that has deeper
pockets?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's
been our priority to
grow our revenues,
and this is something that we've
been preparing for for years.
The moment we're in right now in
terms of our revenue strategy,
we began working on
that three years ago.
And I think with
any enterprise,
it's important to deliver on your
customers' expectations and to
offer them.
Uh... What they're asking for
and so you know we began to
increase our offerings of premium
seating three years ago not just
here at Camp Randall but the Cole
Center we've
had a flurry of renewal activity
with our with our partners like
Under Armor uh...
Over the past few months
uh... Those are ways to grow
revenues uh...
We see tremendous opportunity
of Badger Sports Properties our
sponsorship arm which has
grown.
Year over year for quite some
time and I think will continue
to grow, especially as
now our student athletes have the
ability to participate in
it, to represent brands
in a way that
sometimes shares the university mark
and that's a
way to grow the pie.
As you travel and speak with alumni,
do they bring up sports to you?
Is that one of the things? Sure, of
course they do.
And do they bringing up the
successes? I mean, is Wisconsin
football, is that part of some of
the first and earliest conversations?
I've had lots of conversations
about Wisconsin football.
I've lots of conversation about
other aspects of Wisconsin
athletics.
It's definitely something that alums
talk to me about and
sometimes make their feelings known
in strong
terms.
And there's also a lot of people who
believe in this institution
and what we're trying to do,
athletically and more generally.
That's one of the incredible,
really
positive things about the Wisconsin
culture and environment.
Wherever you travel.
There are badgers everywhere and
there's usually badgers with
opinions and strong feelings and
ideas, but whether they're
happy with what you're doing or
whether they are unhappy, that comes
from a place of caring about the
institution and its future and
believing in it.
And that's special sauce.
That's something really wonderful.
Do you have concerns that the
transfer portal has changed some of
the relationship with the fact that
they aren't four-year students?
You don't follow someone coming in
all the way through their senior
year that some of these players are
here on campus for maybe eight
months.
I mean I think there are pros and
cons with
the transfer portal.
I mean do I miss the
days when a player is
here for four or five years?
I do.
I mean, I benefited from a system
like that.
I can see the merits of it.
I can the connection that
those players have
with the university and
the connection the university and
our fans have with that player.
I worry today in
terms of the volume,
the amount in which players
transfer, the number of institutions
that they're attending.
I worry about the
educational mission and
what that means for them.
But at the same time,
I can't deny the opportunity
for a student athlete to
participate in a new system
in which they can benefit in
many ways. It's one of those.
Financially and try to find success
for themselves.
So it's a mixed bag,
it's not the perfect system.
Like the Chancellor, my hope is that
there will be stability in
the future.
I don't think this is the ideal
system, but it's
one that has created a lot of
opportunity for a lot students.
It's also one in
which a lot student athletes have
sought opportunity and not found it.
I share those concerns.
I mean, I absolutely understand that
students within a system
are going to look for where they're
going to find the best option
in all kinds of ways,
financially, in terms of playing
time, in term of fit, even
in terms of education, all of the
above.
But I do worry when
I see students going to four
or five schools in four or four
or five years that we
are losing
something.
About what it means to be
a student-athlete connected to
a specific place.
And bringing this full circle back
to the football team and looking
ahead to next year.
There are people we talked about,
what is the standard?
But there are some people that I've
talked to that said, well, it's gotta
be bowl or bust in terms of
the success for the coach next year,
is that a sentiment that's fair for
fans to have that a winning record
in a bowl season should be the
minimum?
I have high expectations for
our coaches and our athletic
director and I understand that our
fan base does as well.
Overbust, is that a fair sentiment?
I don't think our expectations have
changed, and I think our
intent is to compete at
the highest level.
I think, like I said, we've put
a plan in place that we feel
optimistic will allow us to do
that.
Right now, usually the
coaches from the fall get an
extension on their contract.
It's usually announced somewhere in
February or March.
Will there be a one-year extension
on Coach Fickle's contract?
I think that's a conversation that
we should take up in February.
Johnson Manookin, A.D.
McIntosh, thanks for your time.
Thanks so much for having us.
And go Badgers.
Can we just do like 10 seconds of
room time?
So we're just going to hear the fan
quietly. Thank you.
Awesome. And Chancellor, can you
just give me a nice big clap?
Perfect. We're good.
That sinks all the...