Arizona State University and University of Arizona poured $125.5 million into athletics at the height of the pandemic. Here's why.
Overall view of the empty Arizona Stadium during the Arizona State Sun Devils game against the Arizona Wildcats during the Territorial Cup on Dec. 11, 2020, in Tucson.The stands at Arizona Stadium were empty on a cool Saturday evening in Tucson in December 2020, when the University of Arizona football team kicked off against Arizona State University in its final game of a bizarre and tumultuous season.
Arizona State Sun Devils forward Jalen Graham jumps for the opening tipoff against San Diego State Aztecs forward Nathan Mensah to begin the game at Desert Financial Arena in Tempe on Dec. 10, 2020.ASU gave its athletics department $57.9 million in institutional support in fiscal 2021 — 10 times more than it gave the year before and more than any other public university in the U.S., according to the database — plus another $11.3 million in student fees.
Sports economists predicted the schools’ contributions to their athletics departments were likely to recede in 2022, though not to pre-pandemic levels, and cautioned the future appears precarious for the athletics finances at Arizona’s largest universities. The school declined to answer further questions about its restructured debt. A public records request filed in September for documents related to the university restructuring its debt service in fiscal 2021 remains outstanding.
Lisa Rulney, the university’s senior vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer, in a written statement Thursday said every dollar saved through staff furloughs was “kept within that person’s unit and used to protect the jobs of their direct colleagues.” The ASU and UA athletics departments would have faced a deficit every year since at least fiscal 2010 without millions in institutional support from their schools, and in recent years, millions more in student fees, according to public records.We furloughed faculty and staff so that we could bail out the athletic department.
The ASU athletics department carried $245.2 million in debt at the end of fiscal 2021, according to public records. UA athletics carried $133.7 million in debt. “It’s a lot more difficult when you’re already in the red and you lose a bunch of your revenue, as opposed to most of the schools in the SEC and most of the schools in the Big Ten that were operating closer to with no institutional subsidy in the first place, before COVID hit,” said Victor Matheson, a professor of economics and accounting at College of the Holy Cross and past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists.
The database provides a comprehensive — but imperfect — picture of nationwide athletics subsidies in fiscal 2021 because of inconsistencies in the ways schools handled financial reporting. At least 10 Division I schools, including ASU, reported their athletics debt increased by more than $30 million in 2021, according to the Knight-Newhouse database. The Sun Devils added $39.8 million to their burden, none of which was attributed to an internal loan, according to a university spokesperson. Four schools reported more than $40 million in added debt.
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