USA TODAY: Cal finds little company in push to cut subsidies
The University of California-Berkeley's dramatic, sustained decrease in its subsidization of its athletics program during a recent three-year period may well be replicable by other NCAA Division I schools.
But none has done it.
According to Cal athletics director Sandy Barbour and the campus' vice chancellor for administration and finance, John Wilton, none has even asked Cal officials how they did it.
"I think there are a couple of reasons for that — one of which is I think it's widely recognized that, in about every way imaginable, Berkeley's different," Barbour said with a chuckle.
Just five of the 227 public schools that were in Division I from 2009-10 through 2012-13 have managed to reduce their subsidies for athletics in each of the past three years, a USA TODAY Sports analysis found — Cal, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina State and Southern Illinois. And Cal was the only one of those five to drop its subsidies by more than $1.2 million during those years.
USA TODAY Sports has collected the schools' financial information dating from the 2004-05 fiscal year. The data are now collected in conjunction with Indiana University's National Sports Journalism Center.
From 2009-10 through 2012-13, there were seven public schools that received no subsidy money in any of those four years: LSU, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Purdue, Texas. All are members of one of the six elite conferences – the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pacific-12 and Southeastern .
Comparing figures from 2009-10 to those from 2012-13, roughly one in three of the other 48 power-conference public schools has reduced subsidies for athletics while one in 13 of the non-power-conference schools has done so.
This potentially adds fuel to the ongoing debate about the future look of major-college sports. The power conference schools' revenues are going to continue climbing with the start of the College Football Playoff and television-related developments like the continued growth of the Pac-12 Networks, the SEC Network's debut. Those schools are campaigning for changes in the NCAA's governance structure that would allow them to make rules changes such as increasing the value of athletic scholarship so it can fully cover the actual cost of attending college.
Schools outside the power conferences have resisted these types of changes, in part, because they know their athletics departments will have a tough time generating enough new revenues to cover the increased costs. That will mean falling further away from the elites – or continuing to increase subsidies, either by making greater demands on debt-burdened students or on tight university budgets.