Even at the handful of schools that usually run a surplus, times are tough. At Ohio State, ticket and concession sales are down. "The behavior of our customer has changed, and it will be that way for quite some time," athletics director Smith says.
"It just says the economy sucks out there," says athletics director Lew Perkins of Kansas, where expenses outpaced revenue for the first time since 1988, according to the department. Athletic departments are "spending what they have to. What's happened is the revenues, because of the economy, are going one way and our expenditures — travel, all those kinds of things — are going up and up and up. Tuition goes up. You have no control over it."
But Perkins acknowledges having control over what KU pays coaches, and its highest-paid by far is men's basketball's Bill Self. In 2007, Self was guaranteed $1.6 million. That season, the Jayhawks were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and advanced to the round of eight. In 2008, they won the national title as Self's alma mater — rival Oklahoma State — was looking for a new coach. He spurned Oklahoma State, and KU responded with a new deal that this season guarantees him nearly $3.4 million.
"We felt like after a national championship ... we wanted to put him in the top five or 10 highest-paid coaches," Perkins says, "and that's about where he is right now."
Perkins says the budget crunch will ease. "We're not in a panic mode at all," Perkins adds. "We think we're going to be fine. Everybody, Ohio State and all these other schools, I think we just have to manage our dollars differently than we did before. ... But you can't stop the operation."
At Kansas, the men's basketball players took a few more trips by bus instead of plane this season. Michigan State cut overall expenses in 2009, and conference meetings across the nation this spring are expected to focus on ways to trim budgets. An NCAA panel is reviewing the recent proliferation in athletic department employees. "We're trying to make (the department) as lean and mean as possible," Houston's Carlucci says. "But we're paying for talent. We're in a competition for fans (in the Houston area). When Sumlin wins, we can count on more ticket sales."
Carlucci paused, then prefaced his next comment with a rhetorical question.
"Is this heresy? It's like any other entertainment business."
