LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- University of Louisville athletics officials have introduced a first round of budget cuts in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions. Now they — and everyone else in college sports going through the same thing — will hope that they are enough.
Louisville Athletics Director Vince Tyra led his team on a three-week cost-cutting mission that saw a $109 million athletic budget cut to the $95.1 million proposed budget that was rolled out in a ULAA workshop Wednesday.
The reaction afterward was best summed up by board member Steve Jones, who told Tyra, "Your projections look great. Knock on wood we get there.”
Most of the reductions had been discussed previously by Tyra, though he did note Wednesday that U of L coaches, in addition to agreeing to a pay cut, also are forfeiting their performance bonuses in a one-year agreement with the school.
Beyond that, the department laid out $8.7 million in administrative cuts, in areas from travel costs to administrator travel to road games to recruiting budgets to pregame and postgame meals. Originally, Tyra had hoped to find $6 million in cuts in this area. The extra savings went to reduce cuts in salaries and benefits, though those are still considerable.
An estimated $4.1 million in salaries and benefits was cut, mostly through a round of furloughs and layoffs announced late last month.
“We obviously downsized, and I don’t suspect that they would all be coming back, or those positions would be coming back anytime soon, relative to this year’s budget, and even looking out into the following fiscal year,” Tyra said.
And there are an estimated $1.1 million in cuts to student financial aid, through reductions in the number of student managers, student trainers and graduate assistants.
Tyra knows that if the coming college football season doesn’t materialize, these cuts will just be a beginning. And he acknowledged to the board that more “draconian” cuts have been considered, with areas for further reductions identified should they become necessary, but he did not discuss those in any detail.
For those who think U of L has been quick to make these moves, a look around the college sports landscape in recent weeks shows that perhaps it has been ahead of the pack. Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, USC and Washington State are among prominent Power 5 programs to announce reductions in recent weeks, while many mid-major programs have begun the more painful process of cutting some sports entirely.
During that time, Tyra’s phone has been buzzing.
“We took a little bit of angst from media early because we were one of the first to get out and make significant changes in our budget, and people were questioning why we were doing that,” he told the workshop. “And then, we went from that to being the poster child for making changes in Division I, and led roundtable discussions on it and later had 70 universities follow suit, and literally use our playbook and in many cases our actual documents to go about the same process.”
The reduced budget projects that football will see its revenue decline by $4.7 million and men’s basketball by $2.45 million.
But with the football season – and the participation of fans – still very much hanging in the balance, the losses could be far greater.
For the moment, athletic administrators find themselves with an impossible target to hit. In Louisville’s budget, Tyra knows that season ticket sales will be down. He’s hoping single-game ticket sales will rise if games are played and fans can be admitted, even in a reduced capacity. At the same time, a scaled-back football season could lead to some reduced expenses. Tyra, associate athletic director for finance Jeff Spoelker and their team are trying to anticipate those kinds of variables, without really knowing how they might work.
FOOTBALL UPDATE
All the while, the question of when the football season will begin, or whether it will at all, and what it might look like, remains front and center. Tyra said the NCAA’s approval for athletes to return to campus this week is an important step, because it cuts down the lead time for a season from 6 weeks to get players ready to the more traditional 4 weeks.
“Those two weeks could become valuable in the decision making process at the conference level across football, as to whether we’re a go or no-go,” Tyra told board members. “And inside the conference whether the schools say they’re a go or no-go.”
Still, it’s too early to know what the landscape will be in the fall, and with no central authority making a decision, the landscape is even more muddied.
“One of the knocks on college football is that there’s no ‘football czar,’ and you’ll hear that probably more in the coming 60, 90 days, that there’s not somebody that oversees football,” Tyra said. “. . . The NCAA runs and operates the basketball side and the tournament, but not so much the football. So there is a football oversight committee. There is a Division I council that looks at these things, but a lot of these decisions that are being discussed. . . But if there’s a school that’s in a ho5spot and their university is uncomfortable, they have the opportunity to make an individual decision on their campus, and may not participate. That’s where the conferences have to make a decision as to, you know, reset the schedule, if you will, if they’re not going to play. And I think that could happen. I don’t know how likely that is. I hate to speculate on it too much at this point.”
Tyra said he feels like the Power 5 conferences are communicating well, and those commissioners may be as close to a central authority as big-time football has right now.
“Right now, these decisions seem to be being made, fortunately by our Power 5 commissioners – and no offense to the other conferences – but they’re talking on a routine basis, almost daily right now, and certainly this is the topic,” Tyra said. “But even they would admit that it’s a little early, a little premature to make a call on things, until we see how this advances through the summer. . . . “But unfortunately there is not a single source that is going to say all go or all not go, when it comes to college football. It’s going to be -- if you think times are unique right now, wait 60 days.”
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