A post-House reckoning awaits some bloated athletic departments

The industry-wide financial stress test created by the House settlement is forcing campus leaders to look in the mirror and see the same image many have identified for years: bloated athletic departments.

Athletic departments are not a monolith – not all schools have 200-plus staff members like Ohio State, which generated a university-record $280 million in revenue in fiscal year 2023. But schools at all levels to varying degrees are dealing with the same issue: Non-essential positions may now be expendable.

“Look at the staff sizes of these school athletic departments,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas told On3 before the House settlement. “Any basketball team in a Power Five conference, they have more suits in their team picture than they have uniform players. You look at the athletic department and it’s like bank vice presidents.

“How is it that Yale has 20-some athletic directors – everybody is an athletic director? If you see somebody who is walking around on campus who has a tie on, they are probably an athletic director. It is unbelievable.”

After House, must-have positions are priority

Each school will assess must-have and nice-to-have staff positions differently as they navigate a new financial model that will require the NCAA and all 32 Division I conferences to pay $2.8 billion in damages over a 10-year period and enable schools, at their discretion, to pay as much as $22 million annually to athletes.

As SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said during league spring meetings, when there’s a shift of revenue up to 22%, “things won’t remain the same.”

Andrew Zimbalist, economics professor emeritus at Smith College, concurs, telling the Associated Press: “Some of the bigtime programs have staffs of 250-300 people and have very modern facilities and have been building more of them. Now there’s no way they’re going to be able to afford that.”

Consider the predicament of a school like Louisville, existing outside the lavish world of the two super conferences and with 23 varsity sports to preserve. Plans for an indoor baseball facility have been postponed indefinitely. The slot created by a sports information director’s departure has been left unfilled. 

“I think we’re definitely shifting to an attitude of what is needed in college athletics as opposed to what is wanted,” Louisville Athletic Director Josh Heird told LEO Weekly. “If our marketing department has eight staff members, do we need eight staff members? If our senior leadership team has 10 people on it, do we need 10? That’s a scary proposition for people to think about.”

New staffing situation is new normal

A scary proposition that is now a new normal.

And yet, new revenue streams are already being explored, be it through on-field corporate logos, jersey patches (potentially down the road), or selling conference naming rights. 

Expenses must be adjusted in a new financial model, of course, and the safe bet is they will be – and college sports will continue to flourish. 

“Some of these schools are taking in $200 million a year, and it’s amazing how their athletic department expenses magically rise to the exact level of their revenue,” Bilas said before the House settlement. “How’s that possible? Like, c’mon. If Congress wants to investigate anything, they should look into that.”