News

Sports not likely to feel cuts

While the University may be faced with difficult decisions about terminating staff positions, increasing class sizes and raising tuition due to the looming state budget cuts to higher education, UH’s athletic department may go by unscathed.

While the University may be faced with difficult decisions about terminating staff positions, increasing class sizes and raising tuition due to the looming state budget cuts to higher education, UH’s athletic department may go by unscathed.

Special Report
Budget cuts

Every Thursday, The Daily Cougar will take an in-depth look at how proposed cuts to the state’s higher education allocation will affect the University and its future.

Feb. 17: Tier One initiative

Feb. 24: Staff terminations

March 3: Athletics programs

March 10: The role of community colleges

March 24: Public vs. private debate

March 31: Financial aid

Track this series and find expanded resources on thedailycougar.com/budgetcuts2011

Richard Bonnin, executive director of media relations at UH, said one of the reasons the department may not be affected is that it is not directly funded by the state.

The department generates revenue from a number of different sources, including ticket sales, NCAA and conference distributions, program sales, concessions, parking, sponsorships, endowment income, media rights and student fees, Bonnin said.

For fiscal year 2011, according to financial information provided by Cassie Arner, associate athletic director of communications, the athletic department’s revenue has grown more than $5 million in the last three years.

“We’ve gone from $9.7 million in 2009 to $15.7 million in 2011,” Arner said. “When we can increase the amount of revenue we bring in, we can reduce what we’re dependent on the University for.”

According to the University’s FY 2011 Plan and Budget, UH receives $15,256,089 in student fees. From those student fees, the University provides the athletics department with $4,362,707.

The University also provides the athletic department with $12,347,521 of direct institutional support. These figures may seem large, but Bonnin said the athletic department only amounts to 3.4 percent of the University’s budget; academics accounts for 62.5 percent of the school’s budget.

As the Legislature continues with plans to invest less money into higher education, the athletic department may yet feel some of the after effects.

In a scenario where budget cuts do affect athletics, a percentage reduction could be made to the institutional support given to the department.

If that does happen, the department would look for ways to reduce costs without hindering the overall well-being of the student-athlete. But, Arner said, there are already measures in place to bring down costs and save money for the department.

Arner said the athletic department has restructured the way it goes about raising funds and the ways the department acquires revenue.

Conference USA, of which UH is a part, has signed a new deal with FOX Sports, which means the department will receive a larger payout than before.

The department has also changed the way it goes out and recruits donors, has a new licensing company, LRG, to take care of its merchandising and is renegotiating a contract with IMG, which handles corporate and media rights. All of these moves are efforts to increase revenue and become more self-sufficient.

“That’s always the goal of every athletic department,” Arner said. “We hope we’ll be able to grow our revenue and therefore not need as much institutional support. However, it takes a really strong and responsible fiscal mind. The first of our short-term goals is budget.”

Recently, a similar fiscal situation to the one UH is facing occurred at the University of California-Berkeley.

The UC System had to find ways to resolve financial difficulties that resulted from state cuts to higher education.

In order to help reduce the economic strain on the school, officials devised a plan to reduce the amount of funding that the school provides for inter-collegiate athletics from around $12 million to $5 million, resulting in the elimination of two programs — men’s gymnastics and baseball.

Although UH is facing similar problems, the University cannot eliminate any of its athletic programs. If UH were to eliminate any program it would lose its status as a Division-1 university, Arner said.

The NCAA website states that Division-1 schools must have at least 14 sports, which also have to be male-to-female proportional.

“We will not eliminate any sports,” Arner said. “We are currently at the minimum sports number that you can have to operate at a Division-1 level. There will never be a time where we eliminate sports.”

7 Comments

  • Let's be honest here, most of that revenue increase was from student fees. Here are the numbers for 2008-2009 according to NCAA and USA Today:

    Ticket Sales: $1,794,287.00
    Student Fees: $4,551,623.00
    Guarantees: $420,878.00
    Contributions: $2,212,800.00
    Compensation provided by 3rd party: $0
    Direct State or Gov't support: $0
    Direct Institutional Support: $15,334,786.00
    Indirect facilities and administrative support: $0
    NCAA/conference distributions including all tournament revenues: $3,300,362.00
    Broadcast, television, radio, and internet rights: $0
    Program sales, concession, novelty sales, and parking: $1,283,945.00
    Royalties: $893,282.00
    Sports camp revenue: $0
    Endowment/investments: $213,956.00
    Other $1,336,006.00

    Total Operating Expenses: $31,341,925.00
    Source: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ncaa-finan

    Come on: Tier 1 means SHEEP SKINS BEFORE PIG SKINS!!!

  • According to your figures Eric, students fees were $4.5 million in 2009 and they are $4.3 million today. Likewise, direct institutional support has dropped from $15 million to $12 million, and while that's not the zero it should be, it's heading in the right direction.

    I do question whether Cal is a fit comparison for UH. Seems Texas and Cal are more compatible as far as resources.

    • exactly…they should be $0…especially when you compare us with our tier 1 neighbors. UT & TAMU fully fund their athletics and more off ticket revenue, alumni support, and TV licensing. That's how a Tier 1 university is supposed to fund is athletic program. So, you alumni out there: CONTRIBUTE & support your UH Cougars! Go to games. Buy UH merchandise. Wean our sports program off institutional life support.

      • Texas and A&M are the exceptions. Actually, A&M's athletic department is working on paying off a loan from the school that kept it afloat. Very few universities (about 20) break even on athletics, Tier I or not. UH will never reach that level. Well, never say never, but it's highly unlikely in the near future.

        • Look at the budgets at A&M and UT before you make false assumptions. Both schools do, in fact, receive institutional support for athletics, and worse A&M recently had a rather large issue about the athletics department taking a 17M loan from the school. But, as you say, those are Tier 1 examples. Another example, Michigan also receive institutional support despite drawing in excess of 100K to each football game. Then, you have states like Florida that actually allow the state to contribute money for the building of athletics facilities or to athletic budgets…. In certain cases, if the state's contribution were removed from athletics budget, they would actually have massive deficits that would make ours pale in comparison. Of course, the other problem is that we do not have access to the TV contracts that some receive from conference affiliation. If we ever have access to such contracts our deficit is almost a net zero (when the increased attendance and donations are considered).

  • Let's review the UC Berkeley cut in student sports: Money forund for cosultants by Birgeneau but not for students, When UC Berkeley announced its elimination of student sports including baseball, men’s, women’s gymnastics, women’s lacrosse teams and its defunding of the national-champion men’s rugby team, the chancellor sighed, “Sorry, but this was necessary!”
    But was it? Yes, the university is in dire financial straits. Yet $7.2 million was somehow found by Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) to pay the consulting firm to uncover waste, inefficiencies in UC Berkeley (Cal), despite the fact that a prominent East Coast university was accomplishing the same thing without expensive consultants.

  • The administration should stop selling pipe dreams about athletics and misleading the community with flawed arguments ( it is only "3.4 percent of the University’s budget"; well with that logic, the large majority of departments on campus can say that they are a small percentage of the university budget and no one will be cut). Year after year we have been told to be patient and that eventually the athletics department will be self-sufficient. National statistics show that this is a pipe-dream.

    The quality of the education will suffer seriously if the cuts are directed only to academics. Which one do you prefer: A lower quality education from a university with division-1 athletics or higher quality education from a university with division-2 athletics?

    Imagine where UH would be today if millions going to athletics were to be invested, instead, in academics year after year in the last 10-20 years!

    It is time to stop this madness and focus on academics.

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