It’s time for the annual release of fiscal year athletic department data by our USA TODAY mothership. And, like normal, Ohio State is a big-time player in both inflows and outflows for the year 2019. In fact, no other program incurred more expenses than OSU. Athletic director Gene Smith oversaw expenses totaling roughly $220.5 Million, over $15 Million more than second-place Texas ($204.2 Million).
On the flip side, the Buckeye athletic department did rake in some pretty significant cash to the tune of $210.5 Million, but that obviously results in a finish in the red by about $10 Million dollars, going strictly on these hard numbers.
To take it further, expenses rose significantly for the Ohio State athletic department, to the tune of over $16 Million from the 2018 numbers. That, in itself, was an increase over the previous year of 2017, continuing to show that it’s not getting any cheaper to run one of the largest athletic departments in the country, one that has 36 sports as a part of its budget.
Of course, revenues are also going up, but the boom in facility building along with the rising salaries of coaches is what continues to drive expenses increases for Ohio State.
Now, before we get all bent out of shape because of what looks like an issue in bleeding money, one must remember that Gene Smith has pointed to sources of cash inflows that are not a part of these numbers. Earlier this year Smith reiterated that the deficit was more closely aligned with only about $600K thanks to some significant contributions by fundraising efforts.
But this also raises even more questions. If Ohio State already has a downfall from previous years, what will the loss in revenue mean because of the COVID-19 pandemic? How will the university fund all the other sports it is currently operating? Will cuts need to occur? When, and where?
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Smith was asked whether cuts were being talked about during a call with reporters last week, and stressed that none were currently on the table, and neither was a potential cut of coaching salaries — at least for now. However, one has to figure that those things will come into play at some point unless there are some very creative things being done with accounting and the budget.
Smith did say that the department is currently operating on a two-month budget and that some of these things will need to be addressed in the near future. We’ll all just have to wait and see about all the finances of where things end up in the near future with these truly historic times we are living in.