Will cutting some sports save the University of Arizona significant money? Not necessarily

During interviews since the University of Arizona’s budget crisis became public earlier this month, when president Robert Robbins spoke about possibly cutting sports, both UA football coach Jedd Fisch and men’s basketball coach Tommy Lloyd have said little.

Fisch said he’d heard about the issues, which includes a $55 million loan from the school to the athletic department that Robbins said has not been repaid “fast enough,” but that he was focused on trying to win.

And, when Lloyd was asked Monday if he expected the crisis would affect his program, the coach said he hoped not.

“I didn’t come here to be part of a budget crisis,” Lloyd said.

The coaches’ brief remarks were not a surprise. They run the only two profitable programs in Arizona’s athletic department, with football bringing in $20.1 million and men’s basketball $11.1 million in 2021-22, according to the latest UA filings with the U.S. Department of Education.

The coaches are also riding high in their respective sports, generating intangible marketing exposure and prospective student interest for UA, with Fisch’s football team headed for a bowl game and Lloyd’s third-ranked basketball team having won at then-No. 2 Duke last Friday.

But, other than Robbins’s videotaped addresses to the Arizona Regents and the UA Faculty Senate and major sports’ news conferences, the school has mostly been quiet publicly.

UA declined the Star’s request to speak with UA athletic director Dave Heeke about how the financial situation might affect his department, with a spokesperson saying an interview was “not realistic at this time," while both Heeke and Robbins have been absent at times from postgame basketball press conferences they sometimes attend.

The UA has issued a statement addressing the entire university situation, saying it “will address current budget challenges by reducing expenses and finding additional revenue streams,” and then “emerge stronger and better prepared for future growth.”

There was no mention in the release of whether cutting some NCAA Division I sports could be one way to reduce expenses, though Robbins spoke of it repeatedly in Regents and UA Faculty Senate meetings. Robbins told the Faculty Senate that UA had 23 sports and that schools in the Big 12, where Arizona will be moving to next season, had an average of only 17.

But an analysis of Arizona’s sports budget shows there aren’t many dollars to pick up by cutting sports, assuming that the profitable football and men’s basketball teams remain.

Title IX regulations require that women’s and men’s sports have roughly the same opportunities overall, so having a football team requires UA to offer more women’s sports.

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Women’s sports at UA lost a combined $13.3 million according to 2021-22 EADA filings, and there isn’t much money to save by cutting unprofitable men’s sports.

The additional men’s sports UA offers include baseball, track and field, golf, swimming and diving and tennis; combined, those sports lost $7.7 million in 2021-22.

Of course, trimming the operating budgets or staff is another option. But when Lloyd was asked Monday if he had been told anything that might happen with UA’s financial situation, he replied, “nothing I want to share with you.”

Whatever the case, Robbins expressed plenty of concern to both the Regents and Faculty Senate, blaming part of the problem on the Pac-12’s decision not to invite Texas and Oklahoma, which he said might have set the conference and UA up for bigger media rights payouts. Robbins said the loan was given under the expectation that greater media rights revenue would ensure it was repaid.

Instead, the Pac-12 imploded last summer, with UA, ASU, Utah and Colorado all agreeing to join the Big 12 in 2024-25. Robbins said UA would receive a slight media rights increase in the Big 12 but that it wouldn’t be a “panacea” to the UA’s financial crisis.

So something will need to happen at Arizona, somehow. Robbins and UA have until Dec. 15 to submit a plan for restoring the university's cash liquidity levels, and athletics will likely be part of it.

“The issue with athletics is serious,” Robbins told the Faculty Senate. “Athletics continues to be a vexing problem.”

University of Arizona faces difficult challenge in trimming sports budget

As the University of Arizona struggles with an operating-budget crisis, UA President Robert Robbins has said one place he will look to cut is athletics. But such cuts are very difficult, an academic expert on higher education and sports warns.