re: ULL athletics operated at a $12.6 million deficit last year

Sad to see our state’s official university athletic program struggle

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Their mascot is a red dildo. Huge marketing opportunity IMO…

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The Pornhub Cajundome has a good ring to it and they'd probably pay well for the rights

Athletic budget deficits aren’t necessarily a massive deal. It’s campus debt that gets you in trouble. ULM can’t afford to operate those stupid buildings “donated” by Lumen.

They are in a massive hole across campus.

The Cajuns financial situation seems to be completely different. It’s all public data. From my understanding, and what’s had other UL System schools a little pissed, is that they have been running athletic deficits and then paying those deficits off with money that should have been going to paying off facility debts. It’s an accounting game. So they didn’t really “lose” 12.6 million. They spent $12.6 million more than they were supposed to and that money is being shifted from other campus facility projects.

The problem is that, if the interwebs is to be believed, the facility debt supposedly broke the 100 million dollar mark this fiscal year. At some point your debt service payments start to balloon to an uncontrollable figure.


Louisiana Tech actually started doing the same thing this past year and ran up $10 million in overages, however Tech doesn’t have a ton of debt on the books. Tech’s facility debt is in the 20-25 million range.

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And I presume this is including the amount of State money subsidizing SLI's / USL/ 'ULLLL's athletics.

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As of the latest USA Today numbers, which is probably one or two fiscal years behind, the following percentages is how much of each school’s athletic budget was “percent allocated”, which means institutional support whether from student fees, or direct funds allocated from the university’s total annual budget.

LA Tech: 55.76%
UL: 53.97%
ULM: 53.24%

And those numbers were low compared to their CUSA and SBC mates.

LINK

You may not like it. Hell…I may not even like “institutional support” funding such a large percentage of an athletic budget, but those three schools aren’t doing anything different than the rest of their G5 competition. Everyone is trying to stay competitive.

And I agree with those who say in this new world…it just doesn’t seem sustainable for much longer. P4s are losing money to try to keep up with basically the Top 30-40 of the college athletic world.

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They keep upgrading and adding on to their stadium even though they draw 16,500 a game.

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Upgrading - not adding on. There will be less seats

The end zone seats added 10 years ago were to replace some of the planned lost seating in the original upper deck. It took 10 plus years to go from that phase to the current one

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The Cajuns financial situation seems to be completely different. It’s all public data. From my understanding, and what’s had other UL System schools a little pissed, is that they have been running athletic deficits and then paying those deficits off with money that should have been going to paying off facility debts. It’s an accounting game. So they didn’t really “lose” 12.6 million. They spent $12.6 million more than they were supposed to and that money is being shifted from other campus facility projects.

The problem is that, if the interwebs is to be believed, the facility debt supposedly broke the 100 million dollar mark this fiscal year. At some point your debt service payments start to balloon to an uncontrollable figure.

Louisiana Tech actually started doing the same thing this past year and ran up $10 million in overages, however Tech doesn’t have a ton of debt on the books. Tech’s facility debt is in the 20-25 million range.

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This is the correct answer. The university has taken surplus auxiliary fees, that has allowed athletics to run in a deficit because the money is coming from self generated funds. The way the audit runs it shows as a deficit.

So the $100M in facility debt is still getting paid, just the extra isn’t going to pay off the debt early.

Also massive changes are already being made within the Academic side of the university since T-Joe was forced out. DEI degree programs are being dropped. Savoie was a massive proponent of DEI/LGBQT+ programs within the liberal arts colleges. Funding and creating new degree programs to push that nonsense.

For any fan of a state school to get upset at 3% of the general budget going to athletics is ridiculous. The amount of fraud waste and abuse inside the academic side of any state university far exceeds what athletics is allotted.

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Savoie was a massive proponent of DEI/LGBQT+ programs within the liberal arts colleges. Funding and creating new degree programs to push that nonsense.

For any fan of a state school to get upset at 3% of the general budget going to athletics is ridiculous. The amount of fraud waste and abuse inside the academic side of any state university far exceeds what athletics is allotted.

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Truth.