āA school policy reads if an āindividual for whom a facility is named in conduct that is injurious to the reputation of the university,ā the name may be removed.ā
If it were school policy why didnāt they include it in the contract. I get why people are pissed and embarrassed, but sometimes these things are better left to die a quiet death. Keeping it in the news will keep a black eye on the University even if it shows how misguided they were with the contract.
Itās a great question, one I feel should be answered. This was the largest donation in our school/programs history at that point in time and we didnāt follow school policyā¦
Weāre victim of our own trust.
The policy they refernce Naming Opportunities | Office of Legal Affairs | UNC Charlotte was written in 2016, three years after the JRS deal.
Iām quite certain that the gift agreement wasnāt written or reviewed by our legal staff; that itās just a modified boilerplate scholarship agreement that Athletics wrote. The language and rigor in that document reads nothing like any other contract the university has produced (e.g. compare to coachesā contracts).
Flashback to 2011 when we were looking to get $5M for the stadium name over a 10-12 year period.
https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2011/04/29/Facilities/UNCC.aspx
Lol, so at what point do you jump from that to agreeing to $10m total for FOREVER rights.
It is possible they thought that a guy who put his name on the field, and then came back and gave us a $10 million check to put it on the stadium, and oh by the way, here is another $ million to endow a scholarship for my late son, would be a relationship that we wanted to encourage. There is nothing to say that we wouldnāt have gone back to Richardson for more money for the expansion to āhis stadiumā. In fact, Judy specialized at building the kind of relationships that allowed her to go back to the well.
Now that his checking account has a billion dollars in it, having him permanently tied into our program is the kind of thing any program would kill for. The number of schools with a billionaire benefactor is very, very small.
Nobody saw the inappropriate behavior issue coming. We should have been better prepared contractually as a matter of policy and practice, but at this point extricating ourselves may be very difficult. If we even want to. I will say if any chuckleheads start vandalizing our stadium in the name of ādoing what is right!ā we need to arrest them, and make them pay for the damages.
It could be a fruitful relationship, just because heās getting more $$$ doesnāt mean we will. His contributions would need to be more than another $10 million to make lifetime rights make sense. We screwed the pooch on that deal.
It seems to me lots on here are mad about the amount of money we got, not what Jerry did. I feel like if that is the case, let it go, itās done. This would have disappeared in the area and media just as everything always does, but now itās being brought back up.
I donāt approve/condone of what he did. There are 2 issues with this: his actions and our agreement (structure and $$$).
Is his name on our stadium our endorsement of him, or his endorsement of us?
Both it is a mutual agreement.
The media is not really covering this. Making a big deal out of this however will get us lots of bad publicity. I just donāt see the point in escalating this because there is likely nothing that can be done unless Jerry Richardson himself offers to negotiate the contract & take his name off of the stadium. Do we really want to take the media away from covering Silent Sam & bring them to us.
NPR was talking about it this morning (SGA resolution specifically)
Thatās my point. No one was talking about it until the SGA resolution. Iām just afraid they are opening a can of worms that will do a lot more harm than good for the University.
Transparency is a bad thing?
They arenāt asking for transparency it seems. They want to reverse the decision.
We deserve more than 10M. This is our way to get it.
They did request that, but also asked for open forum on the topic.
From what I have read that is not possible, and I donāt think that they should be weaseling āblackmailingā money from someone because they were dumb.
The University signed an agreement with no clause for him being a sexist, racist, or even if he was a serial killer. They have no legal grounds.