Inside the lobby of the Jeff Jacobs JAM Center is a panel listing the donors and the monetary ranges of their contributions to San Diego State’s $15.8 million basketball practice facility that opened in August.

Not listed is the biggest single contributor: the university.

Following a protracted request under the California Public Records Act, SDSU revealed that president Elliot Hirshman authorized a “one-time” university allocation of $4.7 million toward the 23,500-square-foot facility. Hirshman’s predecessor, Stephen Weber, controversially used the same discretionary fund – from leases of broadband frequencies on campus – to balance the athletic department budget several times in the late 2000s.

The leases bring in approximately $1.1 million per year, meaning the $4.7 million represents roughly a four-year accumulation of the fund. Private donations accounted for $11.7 million of the JAM Center’s funding.


“The next natural question is, why invest in the JAM Center as opposed to some other possibilities?” Hirshman said in a phone interview earlier this week. “This investment should not be seen in isolation. We are investing in a broad range of academic and co-curricular programs right now.

“The second thing is that we think an investment of funds in the Jeff Jacobs JAM Center can, in the long run, enhance revenues not just for athletics but also for the entire university. What we’ve seen is that the success of our athletics program is benefiting the university in multiple ways. It’s attracting students who pay tuition to the university, and it’s dramatically enhancing both academic and athletic fundraising.”

There are tangible benefits from investing in the so-called “revenue” sports of football and men’s basketball, such as payouts for reaching bowl games or the NCAA Tournament, TV conracts and increased ticket prices (SDSU has raised them at Viejas Arena twice in the last three years). But other revenue streams are less quantifiable and often draw criticism from the academic side of campus, arguing that it amounts to a gamble with no guarantee of payoff when there are more immediate needs that better fulfill a university’s educational mission.

Weber’s use of the broadband discretionary fund to erase a $2.7 million shortfall in the athletic department budget was the topic of a 2008 Sunday “Dialog” section in the Union-Tribune with dueling commentaries. Former Aztecs defensive lineman Fred Dryer was in favor of Weber’s decision; Peter Herman, a professor of English and comparative literature who has followed the issue closely for the past decade, was opposed.


“You know the expression about not seeing the forest for the trees?” Herman said by phone Thursday. “It’s like (Hirshman) is missing the trees for the forest. He’s taking a macro view, and I worry he is missing what is happening at the micro level. There are very, very real needs on the academic side that are simply not being addressed.”

The total cost of the JAM Center, initially said to be $15 million, was $16.5 million, according to a revenue and expense projection released by the university. However, $684,768 was a “gift fee” to The Campanile Foundation, a standard percentage of donor dollars paid to the university’s fundraising arm for administrative expenses.

Besides $11.4 million from private donations, the identity of which the university is not required to release under the Public Records Act, the center received a $275,000 transfer from the Ron Fowler Excellence fund plus $154,061 in “miscellaneous” funds.

Athletic director Jim Sterk said the $4.7 million is the largest one-time payment from university coffers to an athletic department project in his five-year tenure at SDSU. The $11.4 million in private contributions also broke records for a fundraising campaign for a single project.


“President Hirshman believes in what we’re doing and supports that,” Sterk said. “He gave us the confidence after we had raised about $6 million that we’re going to do this, so I could go forward and be more public and make it more of a campaign.”

Hirshman said he pledged not to use tuition dollars or state appropriations to pay for the facility, which was built in a relatively quick 13 months. They initially considered borrowing money, he said, but the university prefers not to be burdened by excessive debt and a one-time funding option from the broadband account made more financial sense.

“The cost-benefit on this is very strong,” Hirshman said, “because the cost of the facility is amortized over the lifetime of the facility. For example, if this facility lasts 40 years, the $4 million cost is amortized at a rate of about $100,000 per year. So if we can generate from all the sources I described an additional $100,000 on an annual basis, not only are we only going to get our initial investment back but we are going to have additional resources to support our academic and athletic programs.

“This is a specific kind of investment in athletics that we think does in the long run benefit everyone financially.”