Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
Years of evidence leads to only one possible conclusion about the state of affairs in Salt Lake City: Utah's athletic department budget, like its football team, can only be knocked off course by a health crisis.
On the field, a surreal spate of injuries last fall derailed the Utes' pursuit of their third consecutive Pac-12 title.
Meanwhile, it took a global pandemic to interrupt Utah's streak of profitable years.
The Hotline examined a decade's worth of financial documents and found the Utes have reported an operating surplus for all but one year in that timeframe: The COVID year, 2020-21, which featured a truncated football season, no fans in the stands (or arenas) and greatly reduced revenue distributions from the Pac-12.
Utah reported a $31 million loss that year.
Otherwise, the athletic department has reported one operating surplus after another.
The latest profit was included in Utah's financial report for the 2023 fiscal year, which the university submitted to the NCAA this winter.
The Utes booked a school-record $126.3 million in revenue against $124.5 million in expenses for a profit of $1.8 million.
They were one of five athletic departments in the Pac-12 to report a surplus, along with Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Cal. (USC's financial data was not available.)
However, the NCAA allows athletic departments to book financial support from the university as revenue, and that support takes two forms: direct transfers from central campus to athletics; and student fees allocated to athletics.
The Utes received $10.2 million of the former and $6.1 million of the latter last year. The total campus support of $16.3 million was about $5 million more than in previous years and slightly above the conference's average of $13.7 million.
But on a relative basis, the Utes were in reasonably solid shape.
When the campus support was removed from the revenue total, Utah showed an operating loss of $14.5 million. That looks bleak, if not dire, until you compare the figure to others across the conference: Only Oregon and Washington were in better position.
The Ducks reported an operating surplus of $3.8 million with zero direct support from campus while the Huskies showed an $8.7 million loss when their support ($10.3 million) was removed from the revenue total.
Utah's record revenue in the 2023 fiscal year was powered, of course, by the football program, which generated $92.5 million in revenue — or 73 percent of the athletic department's total intake.
That figure shattered the program's previous high of $75.7 million in revenue, set in 2022, with year-over-year increases in royalties, parking and concessions.
Also, the Utes experienced a massive jump in revenue from contributions, which the NCAA defines as "amounts received from individuals, corporations, associations, foundations, clubs or other organizations designated for the operations of the athletics program."
In other words, donations.
In the 2022 fiscal year, Utah booked $19.7 million in contributions, but the amount jumped to $29.5 million last year. The increase was largely the result of an increase in season ticket prices and the philanthropy tied to those tickets.
However, football expenses also increased, from $40 million in 2022 to $51.8 million last year. The main reason: an $8.3 million increase in debt service, leases and rental fees.
But that upturn was the result of a bookkeeping change, not a material increase in expense.
The Utes changed the manner in which they allocated costs, moving millions in expenses from the "non-program specific" category over to football.
The total outlay for debt, rental and leases only increased $100,000 from one year to the next.
Most recent Hotline with Jon Wilner stories
Jon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP Top 25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree. You can follow him on Twitter @WilnerHotline or send an email at jwilner@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Pac-12 Hotline: Subscribe to the Pac-12 Hotline Newsletter. Pac-12 Hotline is not endorsed or sponsored by the Pac-12 Conference, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conference.
