Tuesday's announcements that the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences would be postponing fall sports — most notably football — through 2020 came as little shock to anyone paying attention the past few weeks, but the ripple effects of those decisions are nearly impossible to predict.
One major concern is the possible impact on non-revenue sports that unplugging the football money machine might have — up to and including terminating entire sports programs. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's news, several athletic directors went public with their intentions to keep their respective sports offerings intact.
As reported by the Wisconsin State Journal, the University of Wisconsin athletic department has since March modeled various ways of addressing projections of cratering revenues for this school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Athletic director Barry Alvarez said one thing has never been discussed: cutting any of the department's 23 sports programs.
"And I hope it stays that way," he said Tuesday, hours after the Big Ten finalized its decision to postpone fall sports competition.
University of California AD Jim Knowlton has been adamant since arriving at Berkeley in the spring of 2018 that he values Cal’s broad offering of sports — one of the biggest in the NCAA — and he has said during the pandemic that he still wants to keep all of them, according to Sports Illustrated's CalSportsReport. He said his position did not change with Tuesday’s news.
“I’m not thinking about cutting sports," Knowlton said. "It’s not one of the branches or sequels we’re looking at. We’re going to continue to support 850 student-athletes in 30 sports.”
Even after the Pac-12's Stanford University — home to arguably the most successful athletic department in the nation — cut 11 sports July 8, league rivals remain steadfast.
“I've made it very clear that I came here to be in a position to expand sports opportunities because I really believe in the student-athlete experience,” Arizona State University vice president for university athletics Ray Anderson said, according to SI's AllSunDevils platform. “So, I've also made it very clear that we didn’t come here to add sports and then have to eliminate sports. We're going to do everything in our power to maintain the student-athlete experiences that we have here.”
All noble sentiments to be sure, but the financial road ahead will be rocky.
Arizona State’s athletic department made $39 million in revenue from football in fall 2018, according to Equity in Athletics Data Analysis. If basketball is removed from the equation, the rest of ASU’s sports made $10.6 million during the 2018-19 school year.
Wisconsin had been bracing for a potential loss of $100 million in the event Big Ten football was canceled. Some layoffs of UW employees are ahead, Alvarez said, because of the fall sports postponements. The athletic department already has instituted pay cuts through a Work-Share program for hundreds of employees. The 25 highest-earning athletics employees took a 15 percent cut through October.
Related: U. of Wisconsin Losses Could Hit $100M Sans Football
Knowlton said Cal would look into the loan program the Pac-12 is planning, which would allot up to $83 million for each school, at an interest rate of 3.75 percent over the next 10 years.
Related: Pac-12 Mulls Massive Loan Bailout if Football Canceled
No such loan program has emerged for Big Ten members, leaving individual schools to amp up their fundraising efforts for the time being.
On Tuesday, Purdue rolled out its "More Than a Game" campaign. with the goal "to help the athletics department navigate the financial ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and position all Boilermakers for future success."
"We've been doing everything we can to be fiscally responsible in the face of the crisis, but now we need your help to keep it going," athletic director Mike Bobinski said on the Purdue athletics website. "All the hard work we've put in to get here is now in jeopardy. The 'More Than A Game' campaign is critical to the future of Purdue Athletics."
