LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Anticipating a $2.1 million revenue shortfall created by the novel coronavirus, University of Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra announced Wednesday that the school’s head coaches in 21 sports as well as a dozen senior athletic administrators have agreed to a 10% salary reduction for the 2020-21 academic year.
Tyra said the athletic department is also studying other moves to reduce costs and consolidate expenses because of reduced revenue from the cancellation of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and uncertainty about the start of the 2020 football season.
Tyra said the goal was to find $15 million in savings for the 2020-21 academic year. He said that his goal was not to be forced to eliminate any sports.
“We’re looking at everything,” Tyra said. “There’s nothing that’s not on the table to me. You have to (look at every expense).
“When I got into this job (in 2017) I had no idea I was going to have to use my business skills as much as I have.”
Another source said some U of L programs could have their budgets cut by as much as 30 percent with significant reductions to their travel budgets, including more trips by bus instead of airplanes. Using the 2019-20 athletic budget, if the top programs saw reductions at that level, it could mean a cut of $5.34 million for football, $2.03 million for basketball and $1.39 million for women’s basketball.
Tyra added that he favored delaying the start of the football season by as much as two months over the possibility of playing earlier in empty stadiums because of concerns about the pandemic. He said that he believed that if it was considered safe for athletes to return to campus it would have to be safe for all students.
A source said the four highest-paid U of L coaches agreed to their salary reductions last Friday as Tyra tried to be proactive in finding solutions to financial questions all college athletic departments will confront.
"They were happy to do it," Tyra said. "They wanted to know what they could do to help."
Men’s basketball coach Chris Mack has a base salary of $4 million, football coach Scott Satterfield earns $3.25 million, women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz makes $1.475 million and baseball coach Dan McDonnell earns $1.2 million. That would equate to a savings of about $992,500.
Tyra said his salary will be cut 10 percent from $850,000, and he also will forego bonuses of $150,000 that he is due at the end of this academic year as well as in June 2021. The moves come amid a university-wide discussion over reducing expenses.
Tyra said the total savings from the overall department salary cuts and his bonuses would be roughly $1.75 million.
Last week Iowa State athletic director Jim Pollard announced similar 10 percent cuts at his school because it was facing a $5 million shortfall from reduced revenue from the men’s NCAA Tournament.
Tyra said he had been working on his plan since returning to Louisville following the cancellation of the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C. on March 12, the same day the NCAA canceled its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Two weeks ago, the NCAA announced that it was reducing the disbursement it would pay to NCAA schools and conferences by 63 percent in the wake of cancelling NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
For U of L, that means a smaller check from the ACC, which already figured to have to reduce payments to member schools after is conference tournament was canceled. Louisville Athletics had $3.2 million in revenue for ACC/NCAA disbursement in the 2019-20 budget. That amount could be as little as $1.2 million after the NCAA’s distribution cut.
"We may be on busses more than people like," Tyra said. One source said there was discussion that any trip of eight hours or less would be taken by bus.
Tyra said that the athletic department's reserve fund also had been used extensively in recent years to pay a contract buyout of $14 million to football coach Bobby Petrino, a settlement of $4.5 to former athletic director Tom Jurich, more than $4 million for Mack's buyout at Xavier and legal expenses associated with an NCAA investigation of the U of L men's basketball program.
“We’d already been working on cleaning up other expenses and trying to tighten the budget,” said Tyra. He said the department had reduced expenses for entertainment by 43 percent since he replaced Jurich as the school’s athletics director less than three years ago.
Uncertainty will surround fans at every school. Tyra agreed that some fans could be reluctant to sit in large gatherings because of their fears about contracting COVID-19 while others will be without the discretionary income to purchase tickets.
“If some of the projections you hear about the unemployment figures turn out to be true, that’s another factor you have to toss in the bucket,” he said.
Tailgating is a tradition in direct contradiction to social distancing but Tyra said that a bigger concern was crowds at points of entry.
There are already considerable lines to enter Cardinal Stadium for football games as well as the KFC Yum! Center for basketball games.
“That’s another thing that we’ll have to solve,” he said. “People are elbow to elbow to elbow. We’ll be working on extra gates.”
Like other conferences, the ACC has not made a decision on how to proceed with football. Louisville is scheduled to open its season with a Thursday (Sept. 4) night home game against North Carolina State before the Cardinals visit ACC champion Clemson Sept. 12.
“We have a great opening opponent in North Carolina State,” Tyra said. “It’s a conference game. We should be able to tell right away (how many fans will continue to attend games).”
Tyra said that he preferred delaying the start of the season one or even two months, starting as late as the first week in November to avoid playing games in empty stadiums.
“We have to wait until it’s a healthy time,” he said. “We want students to back in class and in the dorms. I prefer we not rush the start of the season.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to play football in empty stadiums. I think it sends a bad message. For one year, we could overlap football and basketball as long as we didn’t have home games in both sports on the same day. We don’t have the staff for that.”
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