The Daily Agenda: Big loans, big paychecks in UA athletics
The UA athletic department borrowed $32 million from the school last fiscal year ... It also reported a $12 million loss in revenue ... Tom Meixner recreation trail in the works.
The University of Arizona athletic department has been named one of the top three contributors to the school’s financial crisis, borrowing $87 million from the school over the last five years.
In the 2023 fiscal year, athletics borrowed $32 million from the university and spent almost that same amount on salaries, with $31 million going towards payroll.
Interim Chief Financial Officer John Arnold said last month that there’d been “no sustainable growth” in the department in six or seven years and the plan was to “modernize athletic operations from the ground up.”
The department’s annual report from fiscal year 2023 seems to line up with Arnold’s assessment, showing a deficit of more than $12 million. The report doesn’t flat out say that the department lost money, but does provide revenue ($34.8 million) and expenses ($46.4 million) for the year.
We wanted to take a deeper look at the athletic department’s finances and since our other records requests haven’t been filled, we’re starting with salaries.
Long story short, a lot of money is being spent on athletic department salaries and half of it is being paid to just 10% of the department’s employees.
The top 25 highest paid staffers make a little over $15 million and almost all of them are coaches, although a few senior administrators made their way into the mix.
Some of these employees are no longer employed by the UA, although one of them (former Athletic Director Dave Heeke) will still be paid his $875,000 salary through 2025.
Football coach Jedd Fisch is also no longer on the payroll, taking a job with the University of Washington shortly before the announcement of Heeke’s departure.
Fisch and his staff still accounted for more than $8 million in salaries in the 2023 fiscal year, during which the team had a record of 5-7.
While some of the UA’s other teams have been operating with lean coaching and support staff, that’s not the case with football, which had more employees than any other team last year.
Football boasted 36 employees, including 10 assistant coaches paid between $262,000 and $660,000. The team also had seven analysts on payroll and employees to handle graphics, video production, social media and more.
The UA’s basketball teams combined spent slightly less on salaries last season, and both the men’s and women’s teams advanced to the postseason (but fell out in early rounds of their respective NCAA tournaments.)
Salaries for the men’s basketball team accounted for nearly $5 million of the athletic department’s payroll, while the women’s team came in at just under $2 million. More than half of the women’s team’s payroll went towards head coach Adia Barnes’ $1.1 million. Over on the men’s team, head coach Tommy Lloyd’s $3.6 million salary makes him the highest paid UA employee.
Those three teams accounted for $15 million in salaries, but the UA has 15 other programs within the athletic department and some of those other coaches also get hefty salaries.
And just like with the school’s central administration, the athletic department’s higher-ups are also handsomely paid.
The nine highest paid administrators make a combined $2.5 million. This group includes Heeke, Associate Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Derek van der Merwe, and several other administrators who all make more than $200,000 in annual salary.
But as we mentioned before, not everyone working in athletics is as highly paid. There were 54 staffers who were paid $50,000 or less, and another 113 making less than $100,000.
It’s worth noting that the athletic department’s annual report actually claims $36 million in staff compensation and salary increases (an increase of more than $4 million from the year before) so that’s another $5 million spent on payroll that we can’t account for in the records we received.
It remains to be seen if the athletic department will be saving money on football coach Fisch’s replacement. New head coach Brent Brennan’s contract will pay him $17.5 million over five years, starting at $2.2 million for his first year, slightly more than Fisch’s $2.1 million salary in fiscal year 2023.
That salary will of course increase annually until it hits $3 million in 2028, and also includes an extra $500,000 each year from the school for “peripheral compensation.”
The UA has yet to find a permanent replacement for Heeke and the Arizona Daily Star’s Greg Hansen pointed out that it would likely be no easy task given the school’s current financial situation.
But regardless of who they find, the person running the show will be stepping into a vastly different world than the one in which Heeke operated. One that allowed the athletic department to spend nearly $9 million more in fiscal year 2023 than the year before, despite inadequate revenue streams and that hefty loan from the UA.
One thing is for sure. Whoever ends up as the new athletic director has got their work cut out for them.
We’re waiting on several records requests from the UA and our current budget won’t cover the cost of an attorney to write a strongly-worded letter. Help us fight for your right to public information.
Helping out: Desert View High School students made prosthetics and took them to people in Peru, the Arizona Daily Star’s Jessica Votipka reports. Students in computer-aided drafting classes designed the prosthetics and then students in precision manufacturing classes used 3D printers to make them. When they got to Peru, people in need of prosthetics came from around the country, creating an emotional experience for the eight Desert View students who made the trip.
Devising a plan: Tucson police are writing a strategic plan so fewer pedestrians die in traffic-related incidents, KGUN’s José Zozaya reports. The police department’s traffic unit investigated 10 pedestrian deaths in January, compared to two in January 2023. The good news is in most cases the driver doesn’t flee. They stick around and talk to police officers, although that’s less common in cases of DUIs or speeding. Last month, the deaths involved a DUI, a failure to yield, a hit-and-run, and a driver not yielding to a person in a crosswalk.
Tradeoffs everywhere: The green economy needs copper and other minerals, which means more mining in Southern Arizona, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports. Mines like the one Faraday Copper is planning northeast of Tucson bring jobs to local residents, but also environmental risks. Local environmental advocates say one way to avoid new mines is to dig back into old mines that could still be profitable, such as the San Manuel mine.
In memoriam: A new trail planned between Sonoita and Patagonia could be named after Thomas Meixner, the University of Arizona professor who was a longtime advocate for the environment before he was shot and killed on the UA campus in 2022, the Star’s Henry Brean reports. The trail would be an extension of the Train Track Trail that follows a former railroad line between Benson and Nogales.
“When I first met him, I told him about the Train Track Trail and his eyes got really big,” Friends of Sonoita Creek president Bob Proctor said. “He was really interested in it. It was something that he wanted to work on.”
Property mix-up: The county assessor fixed an error made by her predecessor that caused homeowners to miss out on a tax credit, KVOA’s Chorus Nylander reports. Former County Assessor Bill Staples started classifying new homes as Class 4 properties, which refers to rental properties, rather than Class 3 properties, which refers to primary residences. As a result, those homeowners weren’t getting a $600 per year education tax credit. County Assessor Suzanne Droubie, who was elected in 2020, told KVOA she reverted back to the correct designation as soon as she learned about it. She’s sending letters to homeowners about the mix-up.
Coming up: Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock previews this week’s public meetings, including a $10.8 million budget deficit at the Tucson Unified School District, now that pandemic funds are drying up. The Sahuarita Town Council is getting an update on the proposed hot-asphalt plant and the Catalina Foothills School District Governing Board is discussing when kindergartners should be expelled for bringing dangerous weapons to school. And much, much more.
$4.21 million: The increase in staff compensation and salary increases in the UA athletic department between the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.
There's a long standing argument that college athletics are needed because they are money makers, they bring in alumni support and donations, and that boosters - not tuition - pay for a lot of stuff.
So, is UA an outlier here or an indication that the above argument is incorrect? How do we compare with peer institutions in terms of salaries, expenses, and revenues?
Please find out how much of the salaries for football and basketball are paid by donors, it is important to figure how much is donors and how much is the University to give a fair report.