Syracuse University Athletics still has a chance to dip out of the red this year due to a recent cash injection from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

When SU moved from the Big East conference to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013, the university assumed a $7.5 million exit fee —a cost that sparked university-wide debate. Last fall, representatives from the University Senate Budget Committee, SU Athletics and the administration reached an agreement that SU Athletics would pay 25 percent of that fee over a 10-year period.

The agreement also resolved that any additional revenue from the move to the ACC would be used to pay back the fee, possibly in a shorter period of time. This year, Terry Donovan, executive senior associate athletics director and chief financial officer for SU Athletics, projected that the athletics department would be running a deficit, so paying back the fee earlier wouldn’t be possible.

Now, thanks to a recent move by the University of Maryland from the ACC to the Big Ten, SU Athletics received a $1.2 million windfall fund — an unexpected sum of money. Part of Maryland’s exit fee was allocated to schools currently in the ACC. About $200,000 from the fund will be channeled to pay off the exit fee’s remaining balance, said Dawit Negussey, chair of the University Senate Budget Committee.

“At that time, what the committee thought was that athletics was moving to the ACC, to a bigger conference, and presumably with perhaps even advanced prospects for a larger payout,” Negussey said regarding the Big East exit fee.

While SU Athletics may have projected a deficit at the beginning of 2014, revenues and expenditures change from month to month, said Gwenn Judge, SU’s director of Budget and Planning. Capital expenses or unexpected revenue, such as the recent windfall, may lead departments to re-estimate their budgets, she said.

The money from the windfall won’t necessarily bring SU Athletics out of a deficit, but it will help balance out its revenues and expenditures, said Lou Marcoccia, executive vice president and chief financial officer at SU.

“We’re still in the midst of a fiscal year so I don’t know how they’re going to end up yet,” Marcoccia said. “We’re only halfway through the year.”

SU Athletics could not be reached for comment.

The athletics budget for the fiscal year 2015 is approximately $60 million in operational costs and an additional $9 million for Carrier Dome operations, said Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs at SU, in an email.

While $200,000 of the $1.2 million windfall to athletics will be allocated to accelerate payment of the Big East exit fee, some members of the Senate feel some portion of the remaining million dollars should be given back to the university and not kept by athletics.

Negussey said there were projected budget deficits with the move to the ACC.

“It has been fairly slow in coming through. I believe athletics is still adapting to the switch,” Negussey said of the economic effects of the move to the ACC.

Quinn said the move has “generated a positive financial impact” for athletics and SU. The ACC and ESPN have a TV deal through 2026–27 that is worth at least $17 million per school per year.

In the 2013 fiscal year, only 20 of 129 athletics programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision reported positive net revenues, according to the 2014 NCAA Revenue and Expenses Report.

“Athletics operates at a deficit and it’s not only at Syracuse, but nationally,” Negussey said. “Many of the athletics programs, and most in the ACC, operate at a deficit.”

Negussey added that athletics is an academic-led program, but said the athletics budget needs to be more transparent.

He said that because SU Athletics’ budget is not transparent, suggestions cannot be made in documents such as the Bain Report. Bain & Co., a global management consulting firm based in Boston, issued a report in April on ways SU can become more efficient and effective.

At Wednesday’s University Senate meeting, Chancellor Kent Syverud said he hopes to move toward making university-wide budget information more accessible. As a result, he has established a subcommittee of the Board of Trustees to review SU Athletics’ budget and make the results known.

Still, members of the University Senate argued that faculty and groups such as the University Senate Budget Committee were not included in decisions such as deciding how additional revenue in the exit fee would be spent.

At Wednesday’s University Senate meeting, Craig Dudczak, former chair of the senate Budget Committee, said he felt that more money from the recent windfall should be treated as a university-wide gain, and questioned how the remaining million dollars would be spent by SU Athletics.

“It’s possible that the remaining funds will be spent on the rest of the athletics budget,” Marcoccia said at the meeting.

A budget committee report in April 2014 indicated, “There is likely no more controversial topic on campus than the role of athletics, generally, and its relationship to the university budget.”

While it is important to stay competitive in athletics, Negussey said academics cannot be forgotten.

“In big universities participating in a high-profile athletic conference like the ACC, athletics is upgrading and changing to stay competitive,” he said. “But we need to realize that we also need to catch up in academics.”

Negussey added that there is also a large discrepancy at SU between coaches and faculty salaries.

“If you compare academic salaries and coaches’ salaries, it’s absolutely no comparison,” Negussey said. “Athletics in some ways is becoming a distraction or distortion in terms of allocation of resources and priorities.”

The university’s most recent 990 form, which was released in May, showed that SU men’s basketball head coach Jim Boeheim was the highest paid employee of the university. SU women’s lacrosse head coach Gary Gait made a total of $716,409 in compensation in 2012. Thomas Wolfe, dean of student affairs at the time, made $265,952 in the same year.

Said Negussey: “Whatever expenses we have to pay, we have them as an institution.”

In the Jan. 15 article “SU Athletics receives windfall from ACC, will be used to help pay Big East exit fee,” the year SU moved to the ACC was incorrect. The official move occurred in 2013. Also, in the graphic that accompanied the article, the keys for the “Total expenses by team” and “Total revenue by team” pie charts were incorrect. For both graphics, the green should have matched with football and the gray should have matched with men’s and women’s basketball teams. The Daily Orange regrets these errors. 

Published on January 15, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Justin: jmatting@syr.edu | @jmattingly306