Ferd Lewis: College pay the price for ramping up arms race

For the past decade, much of major college athletics has been a free-flowing party, driven by escalating TV rights fees and other rising revenue streams.

Average salaries and bonuses for coaches and administrators have hit multi-million dollar stratospheric heights and new facilities have sprouted on campuses across the country like mushrooms after a rain.

Then came the impact of COVID-19.

Now, with the resulting red ink and financial uncertainty of the times, comes a reckoning for which few have made any preparation. It has forced several schools to scramble to trim sports, seek salary reductions and furlough staff and more institutions are examining the possibilities each day.

But you wonder if the current financial crisis means just a short-term austerity, or if the stewardship lessons learned in the pandemic will last any longer than the elastic on the masks that we wear?

History on the subject isn’t reassuring. The Great Recession of 2007-08 hit college athletics hard resulting in cuts and layoffs, too. The gravy train came to an abrupt halt and should have inspired some big-picture thinking. But it fostered few long-term adjustments and prompted little in the way of saving for the next crisis, as we are seeing now.

Money came in and money went out as schools hurried back to trying to keep up with the Joneses of their conference, forking over huge sums to buy out losing coaches and hire more expensive new ones.

Fewer than half of athletic directors at schools with major football programs have financial reserves for a crises, according to a recent survey of 100 ADs conducted by the LEAD1 Association, which represents the 130 Football Bowl Subdivision ADs, and Teamworks, an athlete engagement platform.

The study said 41% of institutions in the more well-heeled Power 5 conferences reported they have financial reserves. Meanwhile, just 26% of the members in the Group of 5, where the University of Hawaii resides, said they had saved any appreciable funds for the eventuality of a rainy day.

The ferocity of the athletic “arms race” is such that as many as 85% to 90% of major college athletic departments in a given year regularly operate at a deficit and require hefty campus and student funds to help cover their debts.

But even when there is a rare breakthrough or postseason windfall, the stewardship has been found lacking. Funds are often spent as fast or faster than they come in and rarely are any squirreled away as a hedge against tougher times down the road.

Early COVID-19 evidence suggests the lesson still hasn’t taken hold in some places as salaries continue to rise at noteworthy rates.

Take UCLA, for example. Even before the pandemic, the Bruins remarkably managed to run $18.9 million in the red for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

Last week UCLA hired a new athletic director, Martin Jarmond, at the richest contract ever awarded a public school AD in the Pac-12. His salary, which begins at $1.2 million this year, rises to $1.7 million in the final year of the contract.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.