Courant: UConn athletics deficit grows to $43.5 million

[Bongo Fury]

Spending time trying to dissect the numbers on the BY is a waste of time for everyone here.

The bigger concern is the millions of CT residents who don't know the facts but see a headline like this and immediately start saying "something needs to be done about this waste of TAX PAYER dollars".

When they start to make their voices heard which IMHO will be soon based on the budget mess in CT we will likely see more sports shutdown

Yep, News likes to exaggerate headlines

 

[huskymedic]

Alternate access read here<<

 

[Greathusky]

I propose that all UCONN athletes go commando saving money on clothing and laundry expenses.

 

[Caronimo]

Need to fill the rent again

 

[upstater]

It included less than $1m in contributions but...

“The financial statement also does not include $26.4 million in donations and pledges the athletic department secured in the 2020 fiscal year, the second-highest amount raised in athletics history.”

Like I said earlier though, the game is never to hide the $$ from the athletes but from the parents.

So this plays out in so many different ways.

For example, branding. Colleges pile all the money from branding/royalties into athletics revenue. In many places, it is probably deserved. But, if you've been on Yale's campus or let's say NYU or Boston U. (non-athletic type schools) you will see kids wearing branded sweatshirts etc. For state schools where you have non-students wearing sweatshirts, hats, etc., it makes more sense to count that as athletic revenue. But is it 100% due to athletics? Or 95%? 75%?

Then there's donations. Without a breakdown it's hard to know what's being counted in this UConn number. Is this the donation for a hockey rink? Baseball field? Soccer field?

A lot of schools will use the donations as athletics department revenue. That's well and good since it was donated for athletics purposes. BUT then the school builds the facility with its own money (or bonds it out and ends up servicing the loan from the academic side). Which means: the donations to the facility were counted as athletic revenue. But the cost of building the facility was borne by the academic side.

U. Michigan did this a decade ago when it expanded the big house and remade basketball/hockey arenas, built new training facilities etc. The donations counted as AD revenue. The academic side bonded out the facilities, and now maintains the loans at a cost of over $20m a year ($450m in loans). Until 2 years ago, the AD did not reimburse the academic side for the cost, but now it does.

Infamously, there's the Oklahoma St. case from 2008. T. Boone Pickens gave the school $175m to build on their football stadium. The school counted that money as pending revenue. But the costs to build were provided by the academic side. So they bonded it out and started building. Then the 2008-2009 meltdown happened, Pickens lost a ton of money, temporarily reneged on his commitment to the school. The upshot was horrible for Oklahoma State, as faculty there had won some big gov't research contracts that required the school to build out new facilities for the research. But because of the stadium and the disaster on their finance sheet, they couldn't secure the bonds to build. They were way over their skis. They not only ended up not building the research facilities, but they also lost over $100m in grants, when the time expired for the research to start. Several years later, Pickens made god on his promise and gave the school $175m for athletic facilities. It was all counted as revenue by the ADs office.

 

[upstater]

Private companies can run a deficit and be successful because they are growing market share or show tremendous promise in their future prospects of lowering costs and turning a profit

Doesn’t take a genius to realize this isn’t the case with UConn athletics

UConn athletics are part of a university. It's the overall budget of the university that is in question. This is like a business taking a loss on a unit because of the benefit provided to the overall entity.

I'm not going to get into it too much but the business practices brought to universities in the last 15 years have hurt overall universities badly. I'd say athletics losses are more the result of business thinking entering the university than any academic concerns. Also, business practices coincidentally coincided with a 1,000%+ increase in non-faculty administrators hellbent on assessment. A giant waste of time and a total deflation of morale.

 

[mrl2016]

UConn athletics are part of a university. It's the overall budget of the university that is in question. This is like a business taking a loss on a unit because of the benefit provided to the overall entity.

I'm not going to get into it too much but the business practices brought to universities in the last 15 years have hurt overall universities badly. I'd say athletics losses are more the result of business thinking entering the university than any academic concerns. Also, business practices coincidentally coincided with a 1,000%+ increase in non-faculty administrators hellbent on assessment. A giant waste of time and a total deflation of morale.

Businesses divest individual units all the time.

Look I get athletics will likely always run in the red but the coaches payroll number jumped out at me. I’d love to see the breakdown of that. If 90% of that is basketball and football okay. But I’d love to know how much is coming from sports I don’t see as ‘beneficial’ to the university.

Given only basketball, football, and hockey had any real ticket sales revenue, in my opinion, the accounting needs to be done on a sport by sport level and donations should be included. Make donors check a box for which sports they want there contribution to go towards, or a box for an equal allocation.

That way you can tell which are really performing poorly and which if any are in need of cuts. Manage each sport as its own individual P&L to push accountability throughout lower levels of the organization.

You know your sport is running deep in the red? Maybe you get creative and start a fundraiser. That’s better than having no idea and waiting for AD Dave to cut your sport

 

[UConnJim]

Businesses divest individual units all the time.

Look I get athletics will likely always run in the red but the coaches payroll number jumped out at me. I’d love to see the breakdown of that. If 90% of that is basketball and football okay. But I’d love to know how much is coming from sports I don’t see as ‘beneficial’ to the university.

Given only basketball, football, and hockey had any real ticket sales revenue, in my opinion, the accounting needs to be done on a sport by sport level and donations should be included. Make donors check a box for which sports they want there contribution to go towards, or a box for an equal allocation.

That way you can tell which are really performing poorly and which if any are in need of cuts. Manage each sport as its own individual P&L to push accountability throughout lower levels of the organization.

You know your sport is running deep in the red? Maybe you get creative and start a fundraiser. That’s better than having no idea and waiting for AD Dave to cut your sport

The revenue, expense, and coaching salary data on each sport at UConn is readily available online if you want to dig, although, in my opinion, the revenues of some sports can be understated and the expenses of many sports are understated. Based on the report I have attached from 2017, some sports that don't generate revenues attract donors and some do not.

https://senate.uconn.edu/wp-content...Senate-UBC-Report-on-AD-Subsidy-to-Senate.pdf