Commissioner’s Corner: Tournament & Playoff Finance

By Mike Krueger, CHSAA Commissioner

For many years, CHSAA member schools have asked the CHSAA Tournament and Playoff Finance Committee (T & PF) to look at the process, funding structure and procedures that are involved when a member school hosts a post-season event. This past fall, under the leadership of Committee Chair Paul Cain (Mesa County Valley School District #51) and CHSAA Director of Finance Sarah Vernon-Brunner, the committee embraced this challenge and went to work. CHSAA’s current structure for T & PF has not changed in many years. Expenses have gone up over time and it is more common for teams to travel further distances in the playoffs. The current financial structure is difficult for host schools, as they are consistently losing money thus making this system onerous for our schools.

The T & PF Committee is made up of eight incredibly talented individuals with a variety of experiences. The committee is well represented by both small schools and big schools; rural, suburban and urban; geographically members come from around the State, and there is a comfortable balance of school leaders from differing backgrounds. This committee met several times during the fall to look at copious amounts of data and financials for schools and the CHSAA organization. They painstakingly broke down existing procedures and had transparent and honest conversations about what the membership has been asking for and what would be best for member schools on a broad scale. Feedback from the membership was consistently shared and perspectives provided.

Through this comprehensive process, the T & PF Committee was able to identify the significant challenges with the current process, the tedious nature of the forms, the timeliness of reporting, etc. But what stood out to the committee were the inequities that existed and the substantial costs member schools were incurring when hosting post-season events. The data demonstrated that for years host schools have experienced significant financial losses, many of these losses totaling in the thousands of dollars. With that being said, it has created concerns in which schools do not want to
volunteer or be in a position to host events. This should not be the case. However, due to increased costs in security, facilities, game workers, visiting team reimbursements, etc., along with the current financial structure, this has become the reality.

After months of review, the committee was able to determine an innovative approach that simplified the process and addressed the identified inequities. The committee determined that an annual fee-based approach provided for simplicity and equity and could be based on classification (size of the school). It is an approach that is membership focused while still providing the organization with the operating funding that is required. There was certainly some outside the box thinking that went into this new proposal. I would invite you to look over the proposal in detail and discuss this with the
legislative council representative(s) for your school community. The details can be found in the legislative council committee report here and will be presented in January for approval by the membership. Some of the primary points that were determined:

• The new approach simplifies the process for schools – a primary outcome
• Increased time back to schools as it eliminates the need to file complicated financial reports,
• Budget savings – host schools have much less risk of losing money on events they host,
• Host schools have additional ownership over the event,
• Improved budgeting: The fee is predictable and can be budgeted annually,
• Visiting teams in single head-to-head games still have a good chance of getting funds to help subsidize travel expenses because if a host does make a profit of $1,000 or more from the game, then they will share 25% of that profit with the visiting team. No additional funds are sent to CHSAA at any time.
• While this is a broad-based approach, it is important to note that although CHSAA is a 367-member school organization, schools are impacted differently by the post season.

I encourage you to take a moment to read the proposal (and especially the committee rationale) and contact the appropriate legislative council representative(s) to share your thoughts. As always, we remain focused on sharing information with you as school community leaders. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me or to our Director of Finance for further clarification or insights. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Mike