College athletic programs are reacting to soaring inflation the same way as everyone else — they’re looking for ways big and small to save money.
In the Power Five, home of college sports’ biggest budgets and most considerable resources, schools are working with boosters and other partners to try to bridge the financial gap. Working down the line to smaller institutions, where budgets and resources are smaller, creativity is a must.
For schools of all sizes, travel and food are the most challenging issues.
Nebraska, with 24 sports programs and an athletic budget of $168 million this year, hopes to work with its beef and chicken vendors to find more cost-effective ways to order food for the training table. It’s also lining up more nonprofit groups to work concession stands to reduce labor costs.
The school expects the cost of doing business to be about $3 million more than it would be if the U.S. inflation rate hadn’t risen to more than 8%.
Arizona, which has a $101.6 million budget and 21 sports, projects costs could increase by $4 million, according to Derek van der Merwe, an assistant vice president and chief operating officer for administration and athletics at the Pac-12 school.
“You have to work real closely with all your teams to take a look at what changes you can make to absorb that cost within your operating budgets, or you have to look at other opportunities to increase revenues to offset those costs,” van der Merwe said. “The post-pandemic economy and insecurity is around a lot of the budgets we have to manage and makes it challenging because we don’t know what to anticipate.”
Those Power Five schools, though, have deep-pocketed boosters they can often rely on in times of need, an insurance policy for budgetary concerns.
At Mary Baldwin University, a private school with about 1,000 undergraduate students in Staunton, Virginia, it’s a far different story. The school competes in Division III in the USA South Athletic Conference, and most of its members are in North Carolina, anywhere from 3½ to 6 hours away.
Besides the cost of travel, there are overnight stays and food expenses.
The Fighting Squirrels do not field a football team, having only started admitting men in 2017, but added baseball and men’s basketball last year. The new programs began just as the athletic budget, cut 20% during the pandemic, was restored to its previous level before those additions, athletic director Tom Byrnes said.
“So we’re doing things here on a shoestring,” he told The Associated Press. “And we’re getting it done, you know, as best we can. But inflation is not helping us.”
The school is banking on its creativity and some local generosity.
Men’s basketball, 8-13 in its inaugural season, will play exhibitions against two Division I programs, rather than a couple scrimmages that might be more helpful for player development, hoping to bring in $3,000-$4,000 for each to pay for the team’s basketball shoes.
“Baseball, softball and women’s basketball teams all work in concession stands or as ushers at James Madison football games,” Byrnes said, traveling in a bus provided by a local company at cost. The school also is negotiating with a used car dealer to have it provide a car for coaches to use on recruiting trips for free, and has local restaurants that sometimes provide food at a discount.
“So those are the kind of things we have to do. We do nickel and dime stuff, too. The women’s soccer team has a Kona ice truck at games, so stuff like that,” Byrnes said.
