Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

7/26/2010 at 2:30pm

Razorback Foundation members should soon be receiving the 2009-10 Razorback Athletics Annual Report in the mail.

When it arrives, skip through the 32 pages that make up the publication. Go directly to the inside back cover.

That’s where the real message from the athletic department is. There are three sentences, in red ink placed over a photo of students doing the Hog Call, that are worth noting:

“For decades, Arkansas fans have Called the Hogs.”

“In the coming months, the Hogs will be calling on you.”

“It is our turn to answer the call!”

What call should donors be prepared to answer?

Best guess here is it involves a phone call to inquire about the contents of your wallet. No announcements have been made, but after you look at the entire report, there are some conclusions you can draw pretty easily.

Particularly worth noting are pages 28-32. It is on those pages that the department’s financial picture is presented and then contrasted with the 11 other SEC schools.

Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long has been actively searching out additional “revenue streams” for the Razorbacks since he arrived. Once again he effectively uses the annual report as a way to present the case that Arkansas needs more money.

Much of the book is spent celebrating the academic and athletic achievements of 2009-10. But the message over the final five pages will strike some as less of a pat on the back and more of a pat down: Arkansas did well but can do even better with more of your money.

As has been written here before, Long sees that it takes a lot of cash to run the department the way big-time programs are operated. There are salaries that need to be raised, a seemingly endless addition of administrative positions and facilities to build and improve.

Again, this is nothing different than Long has proposed since he arrived. We’re all aware that the UA performs poorly in athletic foundation endowment (12th among SEC schools) and below average in total donors (7th), annual fund (9th) and football revenue (8th).

Arkansas managed to modestly improve its total donors and annual fund in 2009-10. Membership to the Razorback Foundation increased from 10,587 to 10,695. Annual giving was raised from $11.8 million to $12.3 million, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t much.

Long believes getting the program into the upper echelon of the SEC financially (and competitively) will require more than a 108-person bump in Foundation membership.

What the Razorbacks need are sustained sources of income each year. One-time gifts or bumps in season-ticket packages every couple of years are nice, but the need is for something that can be counted on from year to year.

Where might a sustained source of income come from? Go ahead and flip over to page 29.

It’s there — next to rankings for total expense budget and football revenues — that Arkansas compares 50-yard-line seating in Reynolds Razorback Stadium to the rest of the league. It currently takes only a $150 donation per seat for what the athletic department terms “mid-field lower-level football seats.”  That ranks 12th in the SEC.

Similar seats at Alabama require a $1,300 minimum donation per seat. Tennessee is at $1,250 and Florida is $1,000, while the rest of the SEC charges between $250 and $950 per.

Even Vanderbilt charges more per premium seat ($250). SEC teams ask for an average donation of $672 per seat for premium seating.

Suppose a ticket priority increase was put in place. That would generate six, maybe seven, figures of additional operating money for the department and the Foundation each year, right?

Keep in mind nobody has said publicly that such an increase is coming. But looking at the case for financial need and the comparisons laid out in the latest annual report, don’t the dots seem easy to connect?

Calling the Hogs could soon take on a new meaning.

Tagged: Southeastern Conference, Razorback Foundation, tickets, Arkansas Razorbacks, Jeff Long