Did They or Didn’t They: The Sugar Bowl and Charitable Donations
Last Updated on June 5, 2014
I recently began reading Death to the BCS. It was so well written and compelling, that I initially chose to believe every single word. Although the book is full of disturbing facts about the BCS, two sentences caught my eye and haunted me.
“The Sugar Bowl gave nothing. Not a buck to the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction effort.”
After pouring over tax returns from 2005, 2006 and 2007, the authors determined that no donations had been made by the Sugar Bowl to anyone. As someone who gave to the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction effort, and who represents a nonprofit lender who has provided millions in funds to the development of affordable housing in the area, I was appalled. I immediately took to Twitter and called the lack of charitable giving by the Sugar Bowl “reprehensible.”
Then after a day or so of stewing over the situation, I decided to do my own research. I found it unbelievable that the Sugar Bowl wouldn’t donate a penny to the Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts. That’s when I came across this article on the Times-Picayune’s website indicating the Sugar Bowl had committed $800,000 to reconstruction in City Park.
I proceeded to tweet out the article, which illicited responses from @DeathtotheBCS (the official Twitter account for the book) and @PlayoffPAC (a political action committee dedicated to bringing a playoff system to college football). I asked, “@DeathtotheBCS says Sugar Bowl made no charitable donations. Is it true?” Their responses:
@DeathtotheBCS: “Yes. Tax records show it, bowl doesn’t deny it.”
@PlayoffPAC: “But according to their tax returns, appears nothing ultimately went out the door.”
Far too curious to be satisfied with those responses, I decided to contact both the Sugar Bowl and City Park. First, the response I received from John Hopper, Chief Development Officer and Public Affairs Director for City Park Improvement Association:
The claim in the book is a falsehood. The Sugar Bowl Committee pledged 800k to the park after the storm. They have given us 600k to date and are scheduled to pay us 100k each of the next two years. The entirety of their donations have gone to make improvements in Tad Gormley Stadium which seats 26,000. The stadium is used extensively for high school football games, as well as soccer and track meets.
We are proud and extremely grateful for the support from the Sugar Bowl Committee!
Mr. Hopper was also kind enough to send over some great before and after pictures of Tad Gormley Stadium, which you can see below.
When I inquired about the situation to John Sudsbury, the Director of Communications and Media Relations for the Sugar Bowl, he responded as follows:
The information supplied to you by Mr. Hopper is correct – we provided funds to New Orleans City Park following Hurricane Katrina. I cannot speak for the authors of the book on why they did not find any evidence of any donations. If they had contacted us, we could have provided them the information.
Mr. Sudsbury went on to tell me that the initial $400,000 donation was made in 2006-2007 for “major capital improvements.” He says the remaining $400,000 is being made in $100,000 increments for maintenance and upkeep.
As someone who is currently finishing up a book, I understand that it’s hard to look under every stone. In my experience, I’m never going to feel like my book is done. There’s always something I could add.
That being said, I’m fairly disappointed in the authors of this book for this particular inaccuracy. It was a bold statement; a statement that I, as a writer, would have been fearful of making if I wasn’t as close to one hundred percent sure as possible.
So how long did it take me to find the information to write this piece? Well, I found the Times-Picuyane article in mere seconds. It was the first entry on Yahoo when I searched “Sugar Bowl Katrina donations.” That’s all it would have taken the authors to figure out they might be wrong.
The rest of the research, emails and phone calls have taken me about four hours. Not really any longer than researching for some of my other SportsMoney pieces.
The information provided by the authors, and the opinions they formed, were largely based on tax returns from 2005-2007. There are indeed no line items on those tax returns that show any charitable donations. When I inquired of Mr. Sudsbury, he indicated that the donations were included under “Special Appropriations” on the Form 990 completed by outside accounting professionals.
Perhaps the error is in the preparation of the tax returns, but I do not have the expertise to make that judgment. The Sugar Bowl did include a schedule to their 2008 return that showed a specific line item for a $100,000 donation to Friends of City Park, which is the fundraising arm for City Park. That, combined with the statements of Mr. Hopper and Mr. Sudsbury, satisfy me that the donation was indeed made.
As such, I retract any and all statement I’ve made on Twitter regarding the Sugar Bowl’s lack of charitable donations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I was thrilled to find out I was wrong.
While I do recommend anyone interested in college football read Death to the BCS, I also encourage you to do your own research. It’s a very compelling read, and I’m intrigued by the playoff format they suggest, but I find myself questioning their facts now. That’s the unfortunate result of their making a bold statement that was fairly easily proved to be false.
This article offers the personal observations of Kristi Dosh, and does not represent the views of her law firm or its clients. Any information contained herein does not constitute legal advice. Consult your own attorney for legal advice on these matters.
Jerm
April 25, 2012I am so glad that someone calling them out for not doing any research. There are no footnotes, no supplement(s), nothing. In fact, there is not even a reference page at the end of the book. They just throw out supposedly correct information, and you are suppose to believe them on blind faith.
I read “Death to the BCS”, and it was one of the worst peices of journalism I have ever seen. For example, there is a statement about how their verison of a Playoff would generate $750 million compared to the roughly $250 million that is currently generated by the 5 BCS Games. However, the author(s) never explain how they come up with $750 million.
They used very manuliptive arguement techinque throwout the entire book, and if you do not keep your brain objective, then it is very easy for you to become emotional mad against the current Bowl System. However, as I previously stated and you just proved in your article, the book is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Finally, my personal favorite is that I believe the PR Firm that was hired crossed the line. On Amazon’s webpage, people can leave feeback based on a scale of 1 to 5 about the product/book. Also, the users can vote on which comments are the most useful, and by default normally the 2 to 3 most useful will appear underneath the book, and all of the comments that were voted to be the most useless are moved to the bottom. Just to make sure you understand, if a review was given a 5 star rating, the best, but the 2 of 20 users found the review useful, then that review will get pushed to the bottom.
What I believe a PR hired by the authors did was to move all the 1 and 2 Star Reviews to the bottom because all of the user votes on the reviews were all below 33%, On top of this, there were 3 reviews 1 star reviews, including mine, had at least 25 people vote. Whereas, all of the 5 and 4 Star Reviews were voted to be anywhere between 95% to 100% useful. Therefore, if only 7 of 25 people found your review helpful, it is basically impossible to have it moved to the front page. Honestly, what are the chances that all 5 negative reviews were all found to be the least helpful, and 39 postive, 5 or 4 Stars, were all found to be close to 100% helpful.
To make matters even worse, just about all of the postive reviews all sound the same with correct grammer. Then each of the 1 and 2 Star reviews recieved comments from other users trying to make your review look like a piece of crap by picking out one tiny detail, and starting a debate. However, when you ask them a basic question about college football, they have no idea what to say, and if they do respond they expose themselves because their reply displays their lack of not only college football, but football in general. Finally, to cap it off, of the 39 positive reviews, I believe roughly 80% of them had only reviewed 1 product, that book.