The big question

Throughout our time here in Eugene, there has been a tricky question bothering us. Everyday we go running on Pre’s trail and drive past the huge Autzen stadium which would rival a premiership football ground. Right next door, we see day by day developments to the building of a $20 million dollar baseball ground. Having seen all the other wonderful sport facilities for the Ducks across Eugene from running tracks to astro turf pitches, we’ve been asking ourselves the same question….where the hell does all the money come from?

My theory was that pretty much everyone within a 20 mile radius of Eugene owns a ‘Ducks’ sweatshirt. 75% of people own a Ducks Car sticker, and possibly 50% of people own either a Ducks baseball cap or some other accessory like a Ducks umbrella or Ducks pair of slippers. When you combine this with the ticket sales to Ducks events - you get yourself a Ducks athletics fund.

Well, today we found out that my theory was very wrong. At least I have the consolation of breaking the world record for the number of times a duck is mentioned in one paragraph. Anyway this is the story…

I have been feeling quite unwell over the last few weeks and as an unfortunate consequence I have felt the rather disturbing desire to race over 1500m at the ‘Oregon Preview’ meeting here in Eugene in three weeks time. Having not had a response to my pleading email to the organiser and having received some insider information that the organiser’s office was inside the Autzen Stadium we decided to head down there…before I come to my senses and change my mind.

Whilst waiting in the organisers office we took the opportunity to distract some poor guy working at another desk and ask him endless questions about the university. The opportunity to find out about how it is all funded was too big to miss.

It turns out that the millions of dollars that are spent every year on University of Oregon sports comes from…wait for it….donations!!! The university does not receive any government funding and the proceeds from sales of merchandise and tickets is minimal. University alumni and other members of the public give money to the university sports union which is then divvied up amongst the sports. We were both totally amazed. We’re talking about around $50million dollars per year here not $500.

Chris was immediately excited that maybe there is hope for British University sports after all….all you need to do is find enough people to donate enough money. Ahem. Perhaps I’ll leave the recruitment drive to him.

We didn’t actually get to see the meet organiser in the end but I’ve since been accepted into the meeting… and at least we now finally have the answer to our funding questions!!