September 9, 2025

Here's what I'm doing with the 3OO M's

Yes, yes, it’s been a second.

A couple weeks ago, KU donor David Booth — the same man that also procured the rules of basketball on behalf of Kansas — donated $300M to the KUAD.

My brother-in-newsletters Michael Vernon has the breakdown of what goes where, and I encourage you to check that out in case you wanna get a feel for the actual shape of the thing.

With the utmost respect, I am choosing to ignore that vision in favor of my own napkin math. Here’s what I’d do with the $300M.

BRIBE OUR WAY INTO THE BIG TEN

It truly gives me no pleasure to tell you that we live in a The Art of the Deal culture right now. So how about this: if the KUAD came to the Big 10 and said, “Ok, what about $100M for a spot in the Big 10?” Is there any way they’d say no?

That designation would lift the entire university, not just the Athletics Department. They’ve thrown substantial coin at way dumber stuff in my lifetime.

I don’t get the sense that the governing group of the KUAD is that good with money, given that they’re going all out for a football stadium in an era where it’s harder and harder to get the greater public to attend weekly live events (or even the movies!). But hey, we’re here, we’re gonna do all of it. It feels possible that we could shake the Big Ten down and get in for $75M, but let’s give ‘em $100M and call it a day. Next slide!

REBUILD THE TROUGHS

Believe it or not I started writing this before the new Booth opened. I wasn’t planning to allocate more money towards the project. However, the data is clear: we need trough urinals back. 

I don’t love to share personal anecdotes unless it’s actually relevant, but the trough issue hits home. Folks, I saw the band Oasis in Edinburgh last month. It was as Biblical as you’ve probably heard it was. I want to talk about the bathrooms at Murrayfield Stadium, the HQ of Scotland’s rugby team.

Imagine three walls lined with shoulder-to-floor aluminum troughs — you have to step up to use them, which I observed substantially limited splash-back on the floor. You could get 100 lads in and out in 5 minutes. The efficiency is stunning, thrilling even.

What do troughs cost, $50M? You might have noticed I’m cutting pretty big chunks out of the pie, possibly as a necessity to get through the post in an efficient and (ideally) entertaining way. This is not a journalism newsletter: this is not a math newsletter. The vibes must ride. We’re talking troughs and we’re at $150M of Booth’s money spent.

VOLLEYMAXING

In January, KU convinced Matt Ulmer to come to Lawrence to coach the volleyball team, thanks to a massive pay raise and a voiced commitment to make volleyball an NIL priority in a way that Oregon could not match.

This was a massive coup to everyone following the sport. Prying Ulmer away from Oregon — quite possibly the most resourced athletic department outside of like, Texas — showed the college sports landscape that KU meant business, even if they maybe stretched a little bit with the dough. Ulmer has wasted no time, signing big international prospects as well as top 10 freshman to join the program.

There’s a blueprint here: volleyball powerhouses like Nebraska have marketed and licensed their athletes with great success. Though baseball is a fast-rising team at Kansas, there’s so many players on the roster, and good college volleyball is just extremely fun.

$50M, let’s just pump volleyball as much as we can, especially if we’re not really looking at baseball as a revenue sport. I think we’re at $200M now?

LAST $100M… SURE, STADIUM STUFF (PLUS A LITTLE BASKETBALL)

As I mentioned before, more investment in Booth Memorial stadium infrastructure is happening, like it or not. Even though it … made more sense to have more anchor tenants around the development area as we opened the refurbished Booth, that did not happen (though it looks like it’ll happen soon enough). So it goes. Let’s spend that money.

Conventions are a big industry. I can’t speak to that further and I hope participants they go over to Johnny’s original location and to Northside Social.

I am most excited for the Darryn Peterson experience (basketball) though I think we’re going to learn a lot from just how successful DP is on the larger DP landscape. The Jayhawks are paying plenty and three stripes is chipping into the till… is that a serviceable arrangement going forward? What does a major NBA prospect have to gain from this season? These are all questions to be answered soon. Let’s chat then. Rock Chalk.