KREM Sports Director Brenna Greene sat down with WSU AD Pat Chun last week to discuss a variety of topics that have come up in his first full year on the job.
Q: What is your plan for the athletic department debt?
A: Well, we've got a five year debt recovery plan so we're well on our way to staying on track with that. Obviously, we've made some changes because we made a decision about Coach Kent. So that impacts our debt load, but we're on track. We've retooled our entire revenue generation side of our athletic program. We've made personnel changes in our fundraising staff, our corporate sponsorship staff, our marketing staff, our ticketing staff. Our budget recovery plan is the right plan, we just got to make sure that we got the right people that can that can deliver on that plan.
Q: So what exactly entails a plan? Are you are you cutting money in certain places? Where is that being made up?
A: Well, we we have the lowest amount of expenditures in all the power five so there's no where to cut. We have a revenue generation issue. That's why we've made wholesale changes in our revenue staff. Football, we're at 91% renewal rate for season tickets so that is a standard where a program should be like this.We have opportunities in all of our other sports and that's why we made wholesale changes in those places. Fundraising is always going to be a big opportunity for us as well. We have a different formula and different strategy and different people that we're going to be really focused on revenue generation.