The Real Budget Killers in College Athletics Aren’t Just the Obvious Ones
When you think of college athletic departments bleeding money, the usual suspects come to mind: flashy coaching salaries, endless facility upgrades, or maybe that multimillion-dollar buyout for a coach who went 3–9. But as the financial pressure on college sports intensifies - thanks to revenue sharing, NIL, and increased scrutiny - it’s worth digging into the real budget killers that are locking schools into long-term, often unsustainable spending habits.
The numbers don’t lie. They tell a story of ballooning costs, misaligned incentives, and a system that rewards arms-race spending, even when the math no longer makes sense.
Budget Killer #1: Coaching Salaries
The most obvious, and arguably most egregious, offender is the skyrocketing price of coaching talent. Not just for head coaches, but for the entire coaching tree.
In 2005, 16 major athletic departments were spending about $111 million combined on coaching salaries. By 2023, three Big Ten schools alone spent more than that. The group of 16 had ballooned to $411.4 million, a staggering 370% increase.
And it’s not just head coaches anymore. Assistant salaries, especially for football and men’s basketball, have exploded. Defensive coordinators are making $3 million a year. Strength coaches are earning six figures. GMs are now being hired like it’s the NFL.
This kind of salary escalation isn’t accidental. Athletic directors, faced with high donor expectations and performance pressures, are incentivized to spend for success. Nobody gets a raise for fiscal responsibility, they get one for winning.
Budget Killer #2: Facility Debt
While coaching salaries can be adjusted over time - at least in theory - debt doesn’t budge.
Many schools borrowed aggressively in the 2010s to fund state-of-the-art stadiums, training facilities, practice fields, and locker rooms. But the payments for those projects are still coming due now, whether revenue is up or not.
Ohio State spent $33 million last year just on facility debt service and leases.
Arizona shelled out $25 million, nearly equal to what it spent on coaching and support staff salaries.
Over a dozen other Power 5 programs reported $10+ million in annual debt-related expenses.
Unlike staff positions, this isn’t money you can just stop paying. These are multi-decade financial commitments, and they’re not going away.
Budget Killer #3: Institutional Inertia and Misaligned Incentives
Perhaps the most overlooked - and dangerous - budget killer is the structure of the system itself.
As Boise State AD Jeramiah Dickey put it, “We have a lot of cooks in the kitchen,” but no one really empowered (or incentivized) to act in the long-term interest of college athletics as a whole. Every AD is expected to win, to grow revenues, to build facilities, and to do it quickly. That means short-term wins, not long-term sustainability, often drive decision-making.
Take a look at almost any athletic director’s contract:
Win a conference title? Bonus.
Grow ticket revenue? Bonus.
Build a new facility? Raise.
Stay under budget or cut unnecessary costs? Nothing.
One example: Marshall’s AD, Gerald Harrison, gets a $10,000 bonus if his athletes hit GPA targets, but a $15,000 bonus for a Sun Belt title. Arizona’s Desireé Reed-Francois gets $50,000 if the football team makes any bowl game, regardless of what it costs to get there.
It’s hard to expect fiscal discipline when no one gets rewarded for it.
Why This Matters Now
The looming implementation of revenue sharing under the House settlement brings an entirely new set of financial pressures. Athletic departments are already looking to cut costs, and some schools (like Michigan and Oklahoma) have begun trimming staff.
But here’s the problem: you can’t cut your way out of bad debt, and you can’t reduce a head coach’s salary mid-contract without setting your program on fire. That means the most flexible cuts - support staff, travel budgets, technology, marketing - often fall on the people least responsible for the budget crisis in the first place.
If TV revenue ever stops growing, or if donors get tired of footing the bill, this whole model starts to wobble.
A Broken Model, or Just Misaligned?
To be clear, this isn’t a question of financial illiteracy. Most athletic directors know exactly how these balance sheets work. They know the current trajectory isn’t sustainable. But the system rewards spending, not restraint.
If the choice is between a new football ops building that impresses recruits or a more efficient, financially sound department that wins fewer games, most ADs know which option will keep their job longer.
Until contract incentives change, and until there’s real alignment between what’s rewarded and what’s sustainable, the budget killers will keep growing.
Because the real budget crisis in college athletics isn’t about how much schools are spending, it’s about why they’re spending it and who’s telling them that’s the only way to win.
