Over the summer, I was asked to research the University finances--as opposed to athletics--by a person who runs a small, local nonprofit. My initial reply was that I don't track U of L finances overall nearly as closely as I do athletics, and I couldn't comment on what I would find.
As opposed to the athletic department only, it is much easier to locate public accounting reports on US universities. You don't have to rely on the NCAA or use non-GAAP accounting. They all get publicly audited and publish numbers that have a high degree of credibility.
What I discovered shouldn't have surprised me knowing what I know about U of L athletics. For this discussion, I prepared a couple of revenue charts showing public universities in the ACC and how their revenues have changed between 2017 and 2023, the most recent published numbers. The current U of L administration took the reins in 2016, after James Ramsey resigned in July of that year. So FY2017 was the first year since his ouster.
Total revenue (the left chart) contains all sources of revenue for the university. Operating revenue is essentially tuition, room, and board along with whatever each university considers to be revenue generated just by being open for business. And of course, the actual numbers vary considerably among the schools shown. As one example, Virginia has five times the operating revenue of U of L--which also makes growing it by 30% over the indicated time frame pretty impressive.
I'm not looking at every year in between for every school, but it's possible that a nonrecurring event--like a big donation--could have an outsized effect on one year. The 2017 and 2023 endpoints are each a single data point. I did look at U of L's numbers for the entire span of time and dating back prior to 2017. Here's the U of L total revenue data since 2011.
2018 was a big drop from 2017, and revenue made a slight recovery in the next year or two. But it has since rolled over after adjusting for inflation and is now the lowest it has been since 2017.
I've long maintained that athletics has a major problem managing its finances, and that really isn't a mystery considering that the University overall appears to have a similar problem. You can't argue it's Covid or related to some other macro factor when all of the ACC schools manage in the same environment.
And I've heard recent talk from our administration that our problem is expenses and not revenues. That's a convenient argument when you consider who is supposed to drive what. Lack of revenue is an administration problem primarily. Of course, when you don't have revenue, you have to trim expenses. So why don't we have the revenue we used to and while other schools still do?...
As opposed to the athletic department only, it is much easier to locate public accounting reports on US universities. You don't have to rely on the NCAA or use non-GAAP accounting. They all get publicly audited and publish numbers that have a high degree of credibility.
What I discovered shouldn't have surprised me knowing what I know about U of L athletics. For this discussion, I prepared a couple of revenue charts showing public universities in the ACC and how their revenues have changed between 2017 and 2023, the most recent published numbers. The current U of L administration took the reins in 2016, after James Ramsey resigned in July of that year. So FY2017 was the first year since his ouster.
Total revenue (the left chart) contains all sources of revenue for the university. Operating revenue is essentially tuition, room, and board along with whatever each university considers to be revenue generated just by being open for business. And of course, the actual numbers vary considerably among the schools shown. As one example, Virginia has five times the operating revenue of U of L--which also makes growing it by 30% over the indicated time frame pretty impressive.
I'm not looking at every year in between for every school, but it's possible that a nonrecurring event--like a big donation--could have an outsized effect on one year. The 2017 and 2023 endpoints are each a single data point. I did look at U of L's numbers for the entire span of time and dating back prior to 2017. Here's the U of L total revenue data since 2011.
I've long maintained that athletics has a major problem managing its finances, and that really isn't a mystery considering that the University overall appears to have a similar problem. You can't argue it's Covid or related to some other macro factor when all of the ACC schools manage in the same environment.
And I've heard recent talk from our administration that our problem is expenses and not revenues. That's a convenient argument when you consider who is supposed to drive what. Lack of revenue is an administration problem primarily. Of course, when you don't have revenue, you have to trim expenses. So why don't we have the revenue we used to and while other schools still do?...
