It happens every year. USA TODAY publishes the college sports database documenting the revenues and expenses (among other things) for hundreds of public-school Division I college athletic programs from the previous financial year.
Let’s mention the figures for Pac-12 schools in FY19, keeping in mind that USC — as a private school — was not included on this list.
Washington had the highest revenue of any Pac-12 program on the list. The Huskies had $133,792,677 in revenue and $131,317,636 in expenses.
The rest of the list, in descending order of revenue totals:
Oregon revenue: $127,508,498
Oregon expenses: $128,943,543
Arizona State revenue: $121,698,840
Arizona State expenses: $118,404,377
UCLA revenue: $108,412,967
UCLA expenses: $127,339,042
Arizona revenue: $105,091,389
Arizona expenses: $100,565,835
Utah revenue: $99,526,695
Utah expenses: $96,000,514
Colorado revenue: $94,935,198
Colorado expenses: $98,413,284
California revenue: $87,500,758
California expenses: $106,676,734
Oregon State revenue: $82,058,386
Oregon State expenses: $82,364,021
Washington State revenue: $71,691,339
Washington State expenses: $71,691,339
USC and Stanford, as you can see, aren’t listed.
I’m not going to dive into a deep analysis of these numbers or make sweeping statements on what they mean. You can see, however, that UCLA and California have a noticeable negative gap between listed revenue and listed expenses. This is why UCLA’s contractual situation with Under Armour is a matter of paramount concern for the Bruins.
The main reason we are publishing these numbers and presenting them to you is that this is a final snapshot of major-college athletic department budgets before the coronavirus pandemic. The numbers you see above won’t exist in a fuller context until we see the figures for FY20 and get an expansive look at individual schools plus conference-based comparisons. This will be a “before and after” view of how the financial landscape of college sports will begin to change, with more changes ahead in subsequent financial years.
Consider this brief publication of a small set of numbers a “clip and save” article. You’re definitely going to want to refer to this article a year from now, when the next USA TODAY college sports database comes out.