SDSU Raises $1 Million for Athletic Deficit

San Diego State President Tom Day announced Monday that local residents and businesses have donated or pledged a total of $1 million over the next seven years in an effort to eliminate the $518,000 budget deficit facing the Aztec athletic department.

The announcement puts a successful end to the school’s nine-week fund drive designed to aid a department that has been operating in the red for nearly a decade. But, it doesn’t mean that the deficit is immediately eliminated.

Walt Turner, a 1954 SDSU graduate who led the fund drive, said his group has collected $300,000 in cash--the remaining $700,000 is in pledges. And, of the cash in hand, $125,000 is committed to a marketing campaign for Aztec athletics.

The department also faces the probability that the deficit has increased after the 1989-90 fiscal year, which ended Saturday.

Jim Herrick, SDSU associate athletic director for business affairs, is in the process of finishing the paperwork but said he expects the athletic department will once again wind up owing money--although he said he didn’t yet know how much.

“It’s not going to be much, though,” he said.

Mary Garretson, California State University system controller, said that in Nov., 1989, the chancellor’s office and SDSU agreed the school was committed to reducing the deficit on the state books to $375,000 by June 30, 1990, and then reduce the deficit by $125,000 in each of the next three years so that the deficit would be eliminated by June 30, 1993. Garretson said the state considers SDSU’s debt to be $500,000. By obtaining the $300,000 in cash, SDSU will be able pay the $125,000 owed the state.

“From our standpoint, that was the contract and they’ve met that goal,” Garretson said.

Fred Miller, SDSU athletic director, said SDSU plans to continue covering what is left of the deficit by borrowing against the pledged money.

Despite the fact that SDSU isn’t obligated to pay off its financial debt to the state until 1993, school officials were happy and relieved Monday as they talked about the $1 million they raised. The elimination of the deficit was one aspect of a three-part plan introduced by Day in April--better marketing of SDSU athletics and an investigation into conference affiliations other than the Western Athletic Conference were the other two.

“Today we’re very pleased to announce that we’ve had a successful completion of a key part of our effort--the elimination of the deficit that for years has been sapping the image and the strength of our intercollegiate athletics,” Day said. “It’s really a tremendous achievement, particularly since we’ve been doing this in a very short period of time. We announced that we intended to do it in April, and we’re announcing at the beginning of July that we’ve done it.”

Neither Turner nor Miller said they were concerned that some of the money pledged to the SDSU athletic deparment would not arrive.

“The caliber of people and pledges are such that you really are not nervous about any collection problem,” Turner said. “The experiences that the athletic department has had with Golden Aztec Ring and other significant contributions or pledges have identified very little collection problems. The 39 persons or companies are all substantial individuals, otherwise they wouldn’t be pledging this money.”

Turner said that there is not much overlap between the people his group contacted and people who normally contribute to SDSU via groups such as the Golden Aztec Ring or Aztec Athletic Foundation. Of the 39 people who will be donating money, Turner said, only between six and eight would overlap.

“That would not really amount to that much (money) each year,” Turner said.

Turner added that a potentially large area was left relatively untapped in his group’s effort--SDSU alumni.

“A good portion of the people who made the commitment were people who were not SDSU alumni, but were individuals within the community who felt San Diego deserved a strong collegiate athletic program,” Turner said.

One, Rod Wells of Arthur Andersen, said his company donated $25,000--to be paid over seven years--because of its community standing.

“As a public accounting firm, we see SDSU as a major resource for us,” he said. “We didn’t like the fact that SDSU is not a major player.”