Here is the biggest problem with the reporting.
UConn does not allocate $16.8 million in revenues to an individual sport even though the vast majority of these revenues come from football and basketball. Thus, the size of the "deficits" reported for individual sports are due to accounting, not reality.
Judge for yourself as these revenues are not allocated to any sport:
1) NCAA Distribution: $2.2 million
2) Conference distribution: $2.34 million
3) Royalties, licensing, advertising, sponsorships: $12.26 million
The women's basketball media rights with SNY ($1.15 million) is a separate line item so it is allocated to women's basketball. Men's basketball and football have no media rights revenues allocated to the sports.
Oh, and the report doesn't include $26.4 million of donations and pledges made to the athletic department in FY2020.
In addition there are transfer pricing issues (expenses) that you typically see in companies that can lead to bad decision making.
Look, the athletic department has financial issues, but don't use this report exclusively (and the Courant article) to evaluate the situation.