As the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic threatened a full 2020 college football season, the possibility of a shortened, or even canceled season made at least one thing clear at the University of Utah.
Utah’s athletic department was going to finish fiscal 2021 with a sizable budget deficit — it was just a matter of how big.
Now we know, and it's insurmountable. Despite claims from within the Utah's athletics administration that the sports programs were turning a corner, the news that the largest money-makers for the Pac 12 conference are leaving for the greener pastures of the Big-10 forced University leadership to take immediate action.
The Utes finished FY2021, which included the 2020 football season and 2020-21 basketball season, with a budget deficit just north of $31 million against an operating budget over that span of approximately $82 million.
That’s a large number, but is about half of the deficit that is currently facing the Utes for the upcoming season. Utes athletics director projects a deficit of between $50-60 million for the 2022-23 fiscal year. With the loss of UCLA and USC decimating future Pac 12 conference distributions, that number is expected to grow to upwards of a $100 million deficit by 2026.
And the numbers do not get any rosier for the Ute athletic department. The current red ink includes the fact the athletic department received $5,933,069 in student fees, and another $4,862,896 in direct institutional support, which includes “facilities, general and administrative, and Title IX support.” The Utah legislature will prohibit direct subsidies to college athletic departments beginning in 2023, increasing the deficit by another $11 million.
Faced with ever-increasing athletic department debt and in an attempt to insulate the rest of the University of Utah from instability created by these liabilities, the university announced today a plan to merge the Ute athletic department into the University of Utah School of Medicine. The land housing most Ute athletic facilities will be repurposed to house new parking structures. The location of current Rice-Eccles Stadium will be house an expansion of the Huntsman Cancer Research Institute.
The Ute athletic department will continue to exist in a restructured form and will administer intramural events and and a new University of Utah championship tournament series for flag football, basketball, volleyball, and racquetball.
“What I’m excited about is, it’s not going to create as much work as stress for this next year and beyond,” athletic director Mark Harlan said in his brief comments to the press. “With the great work of university leadership, understanding the importance of our department, understanding we’re one Utah in how we approach it, we’re going to work together and nothing’s going to hold us back from all our goals.”
