So is 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 someday.
That's loud, right?
That's, it was so, it's good.
You looked at the forecast.
Exactly.
The alumni groups, I hope they're
wonderful.
Yes.
We had a lot of really great,
I mean, we weren't doing any large
scale alumni events, this was more,
I didn't know what it was,
badger parents, so it was awesome.
I got to meet the San Diego alumni
group a couple 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. 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 badger
freshman and her parents at the same
restaurant.
And did they recognize
you? Oh, yeah.
The daughter was a little nervous
about coming over, so the dad did,
and then we all took a picture.
Oh, sure.
Anywhere you go, right?
Badgers everywhere. It's a good
thing.
We're good.
All right.
All right, yeah, like I said, you
guys can talk to me or if you're
interacting with each other, that's
allowed.
All right Chancellor Mnuchin,
Athletic Director McIntosh, thanks
for joining us, both of you.
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 one?
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 expect it 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.
And while I'm excited, we
haven't played a snap yet and we're
looking forward to getting
those kids on campus and getting
the work and
they'll get to work right away.
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
could 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, 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, you know,
it wasn't long ago in which the
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.
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 at 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's still the standards?
So in that sense you
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
program?
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.
There are fans out there that say,
well, one of the reasons that you
kept Coach Fickel is because you
were the one that hired him.
It would look awkward if you
admitting a mistake to let him go.
Is there any basis in that?
No, I mean I have the strength, I
understand and I appreciate the
frustration of our fans sharing it.
But I think my job was
to try to determine what it will
take to move us forward and 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 successful 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.
To evolve as a program in
times, like the Chancellor said,
where it's been unprecedented
change.
And like I said, for those reasons,
and those reasons alone,
that's the reason we retain Coach
Fickel and why we're excited about
our future.
But, you know, I have no pride
in those decisions.
That's, like 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 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, you know,
of the 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 football
at the 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,
took effect, the world has
been, 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 we've been
executing. 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 frankly
think 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 no a Wisconsin issue, that's
not a Big Ten issue, that's no 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 of 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 viewing them at a different
level and the numbers are not being
disclosed.
Why aren't they being discloses and
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 it 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.
In 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.
And how we structure
our rev share agreements and
how we structured our cap
strategy is,
it's a competitive, it
gets into that competitive
advantage. And so 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.
Would 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, you know, college football
is an area of
such passion for so many devoted
fans all across the country.
And 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 overpriced, 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,
you know, maybe a donor or two that
was deeper pockets?
Yeah, I mean, I think...
You know, 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, you know,
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.
Uh, we've had a flurry of
renewal activity with our,
with our partners like Under Armor
over the past few months.
Um, those are ways to grow revenues.
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- Sure.
Of course they do.
And do they 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 have lots of other
conversations 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 to 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. One of those.
Financially and try to find success
for themselves and so 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 education, all of the
above.
But I do worry when
I see students going to four
or five schools in four or four
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 got to 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.
He's bold and robust, 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 and 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.
Chancellor Minookin, 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 tone?
So we're just going to hear the fan
real quietly.
Awesome. Enchancer, could you just
give me a nice big clap?
Perfect. We're good.
That syncs all the audio for the
cameras.
All right, thank you both, we really
appreciate your time. Thank you.