Arizona State leads Power Five schools in pandemic aid to athletics
Athletics departments at Power Five public schools received hundreds of millions of dollars in special assistance from a combination of university, state and federal sources during the 2020-21 sports seasons conducted amid the toughest restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, newly obtained documents and information show.
Arizona State leads the way, providing a net total of $67.3 million in school funds and student fees to its athletics program, according to its annual financial report to the NCAA, which was acquired through an open-records request from USA TODAY Sports in partnership with the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Data project at Syracuse University.
In recent years, Arizona State typically has provided about $17 million in such backing to the athletics program. While USA TODAY Sports and Knight-Newhouse remain in the process of collecting fiscal 2021 financial reports, the $67.3 million stands as by far the largest single-year outlay of direct funding by a Division I public school, according to USA TODAY/Knight–Newhouse data reaching back to fiscal 2005 when the NCAA began its current reporting system.
The previous high total was the $55.1 million Central Michigan reported for fiscal 2020. The next-largest by a Power Five public school is the $38 million Rutgers reported for fiscal 2021.
“Rather than leaving Sun Devil Athletics with a year-end budgetary deficit as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, ASU proactively developed a plan to address the shortfall,” university spokesman Jay Thorne said via email. “ASU restructured its July 1, 2021 debt service on athletic and other facilities at historically low interest rates and a portion of the savings was allocated to (Sun Devil Athletics) to fund pandemic related losses.”
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The athletics department reported receiving $11.3 million in student fees in fiscal 2021— about $75,000 less than it did in 2020. It ended up reporting a $13.9 million operating surplus for fiscal 2021 after having a $10.9 million deficit in 2020.
The overall situation for Power Five public school athletics programs for 2021 in terms of the help they received from their institutions is difficult to assess because of the different approaches they took in handling the operating revenue decreases that occurred because of game cancellations and attendance limits for games that were played.
Financial reports obtained from 47 of 52 public schools show that in 2021, the combined operating revenue dropped by $1.36 billion compared to 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. But that figure is deceptive because the 11 Southeastern Conference school reports obtained so far include as revenue a $23.3 million advance on future conference distributions that the SEC announced last May.
When those advances are removed from the equation, the combined revenue decrease jumps to $1.62 billion.
But even that doesn’t provide the whole picture. In addition to Arizona State’s unprecedented school funding amounts, seven other athletics departments had anomalous year-over-year increases in net school and student-fee funding, totaling about $50 million. Rutgers had the greatest of those increases at $13.6 million.
Meanwhile, athletics programs at some other Power Five schools that did not dramatically increase school funding ended up reporting massive operating deficits for 2021. Ohio State’s was $63.7 million; UCLA’s $62.5 million. Altogether, 18 schools reported operating deficits of more than $10 million.
Even with a combined total of nearly $43 million in operating revenue from the school, government sources and student fees, Rutgers reported a $30.4 million deficit.
While some athletics programs had built reserve funds that could have offset at least part of a deficit, most athletics programs that had deficits are borrowing money – in many cases from the university. Due to operating deficits in prior years, Rutgers’ athletics program had received $84 million in loans from the university, according to an analysis by The Record and NorthJersey.com.
This past summer, school president Jonathan Holloway told the outlet, part of the USA TODAY Network, that the university is considering forgiving the loans.
UCLA’s program also ran eight-figure operating deficits in 2019 and 2020, but it annually receives a relatively paltry $2.6 million in school funds and student fees. That’s generally the second-lowest total among Pac-12 Conference public schools to Oregon’s. Its 2021 deficit brings its three-year total to $103 million.
“The department is working with campus to address these concerns on an annual and long-term basis,” UCLA athletics department spokesman Scott Markley said in an email. “We have begun to enact many measures already, including with cost reductions and increased revenues from ticket packages and pricing.”
Asked whether the department is borrowing all $103 million from the university and whether there is a re-payment plan in place, Markley said: “We were in the process of finalizing when the pandemic hit. As is the case for many university non-academic departments, the university will provide a line of credit to cover the deficit, which Athletics will need to repay in the future.”
Even with the expense and revenue measures that Markley described, this may be difficult. From 2007 through 2018, UCLA reported athletics revenues and expenses that balanced to the dollar.
Seven Power Five schools’ 2021 reports showed for the first time that they had received significant state or other government money. Virginia and Virginia Tech each reported more than $13 million in this type of funding. The state of Virginia’s budget rules prohibit public universities from using state appropriations or tuition income for the annual operating expenses of units considered to be school auxiliaries, among which are athletics departments.
But a Virginia Tech athletics spokesman provided an email that said of its government funding in fiscal 2021: “To mitigate the financial challenges posed by the pandemic, the state, the (school’s governing board) and federal agencies took several actions including federal and state support, debt restructuring and a healthcare holiday program. The $13-plus million revenue to athletics was a result of the University’s overall financial strategy based on those actions.”
Money from a federal pandemic assistance program, the CARES Act’s Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), was used by at least one other school: LSU. In its prior 16 years of NCAA financial reporting, LSU’s athletics department was among a handful nationally never to have shown any athletics income from school or government funds or from student fees. It also showed an operating surplus every year, and in each of the previous four years, gave at least $7.4 million to the university.
In 2021, associate athletics director Neal Lamonica said in an email, “LSU Athletics was allocated $4,041,962 in HEERF funds during FY21 to reimburse for mandatory COVID testing for students and coaching staff, PPE, sanitation supplies, etc.”
LSU’s program still reported a $9.6 million operating deficit for the year, not including $4.4 million it provided to the university.
Contributing: Abbott Koloff and Jean Rimbach, NorthJersey.com
Follow sports projects reporter Steve Berkowitz on Twitter @ByBerkowitz
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