Friday, October 24, 2008

Oklahoma State Athletics is Bankrupt

This is unbelievable.

Not only did Oklahoma State keep the donation from Boone Pickens in a hedge fund (purportedly at Pickens’ request), they borrowed against the amount – apparently once as large as $300 million – to fund their massive athletic facility project. The hedge fund has been totally wiped out due to margin calls as a result of the sharp fall in oil.

So Oklahoma State has a huge amount of debt, and the collateral for that debt is gone. The athletic project has been shelved.

This is the type of thing that sets a program back – forever.

4 comments:

Scully said...

has this been verified?

Chris said...

Two articles sorta back this up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/21boosters.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i98ACVshxvu8eJFSzHyuJWfDbS-AD93VSLHG0

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how all this works, but somebody explain to me why they didnt use the actually money that was donated to fund the project? Were they hoping/assuming it would just make more?

Also, do you guys think this new facility would help OSU become a top program?

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how all this works, but somebody explain to me why they didnt use the actually money that was donated to fund the project? Were they hoping/assuming it would just make more?

Also, do you guys think this new facility would help OSU become a top program?