CU Buffs continue trimming athletics budget

Through­out his sev­en years as the ath­let­ic direc­tor at Col­orado, Rick George has seen a lot of ups and a few downs with­in the program.

This year has pro­vid­ed unprece­dent­ed chal­lenges for George and col­lege ath­let­ics in general.

“This is the first time I haven’t enjoyed my job,” George told Buf­f­Zone on Friday.

CU con­tin­ues try­ing to nav­i­gate through the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and that has led to anoth­er round of lay­offs and fur­loughs this week.

Since July, CU has gone through about 30 lay­offs and fur­loughs. Most of those are fur­loughs, but at least a hand­ful of ath­let­ic depart­ment staffers have been laid off. CU has also had “five or six” open posi­tions that will not be filled.

“We con­tin­ue to trim our bud­get,” George said.

That trim­ming has, unfor­tu­nate­ly, led to George mak­ing “extreme­ly dif­fi­cult” staff decisions.

“I hate it,” he said. “It’s the worst part of my job, by far, but we’ve got to look at the whole.

“It’s dif­fi­cult because it impacts fam­i­lies and impacts chil­dren. … Not play­ing sports, and par­tic­u­lar­ly foot­ball, has a huge finan­cial impact on the department.”

Con­cerns about the spread of COVID-19 led to the Pac-12 – as well as the Big Ten, Moun­tain West and MAC – decid­ing last month to post­pone its fall sports sea­son until at least Jan­u­ary. How­ev­er, the con­fer­ence announced Thurs­day a part­ner­ship with Quidel Cor­po­ra­tion that will lead to dai­ly, rapid-results test­ing. That could allow foot­ball and oth­er fall sports to return before January.

At this point, how­ev­er, foot­ball isn’t being played. Even if foot­ball does return this year, it’ll like­ly be with a lim­it­ed num­ber of fans.

George has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that the finan­cial impact with be “sig­nif­i­cant” at CU, but the unknowns about the foot­ball sea­son have made it dif­fi­cult for the Buffs to nail down a bud­get for the 2020–21 fis­cal year.

In the past few years, CU’s bud­get has been around $90 mil­lion per year. George said Fri­day that for 2020–21, “I think we’re prob­a­bly look­ing in the $60–70 mil­lion range, but I don’t know that for sure. Our bud­get is going to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er. I think we all know that.”

George said the bud­get could change for the bet­ter if foot­ball returns soon­er than Jan­u­ary, but would take anoth­er major hit if foot­ball can’t be played at all in 2020–21. In recent years, foot­ball has pro­vid­ed near­ly 50 per­cent of CU’s total ath­let­ic depart­ment rev­enue. Last year, CU gen­er­at­ed more than $20 mil­lion in foot­ball tick­et sales alone.

Elim­i­nat­ing sports con­tin­ues to be a last resort for George, who added, “I don’t see that hap­pen­ing at this point. … For­tu­nate­ly at this point we’ve been able to stay away from that.”

An ear­ly return of fall sports – and foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar – would be a sig­nif­i­cant boost. Pac-12 com­mis­sion­er Lar­ry Scott called the devel­op­ment of Quidel’s rapid-results test­ing a “game chang­er,” and George said he is hope­ful that’s the case.

“I think at the time, the deci­sion (to post­pone) was the right deci­sion, but with new things com­ing into the pic­ture that are pos­i­tive, hope­ful­ly that will allow us to be able to return to play soon­er than we have antic­i­pat­ed,” he said.

While the Pac-12 waits, sev­er­al con­fer­ences are mov­ing for­ward. There were two Foot­ball Bowl Sub­di­vi­sion games on Thurs­day and anoth­er sev­en sched­uled this week­end. Cen­tral Arkansas, from the Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship Sub­di­vi­sion, has already played two games.

George said Pac-12 ath­let­ic direc­tors have not talked about using the games being played as poten­tial guide­lines for the Pac-12’s return, but, “It would be good to talk about it.

“Cen­tral Arkansas has played two games and I don’t know what their test­ing pro­to­cols are like and what kind of issues they’ve had, but  … maybe there’s a lot to learn from those schools that are cur­rent­ly play­ing. I want them to do well. Those teams that are out there com­pet­ing and play­ing, I think it’s good for us if they have suc­cess and they do this with­out hav­ing big setbacks.”

As CU waits and deals with the chal­lenges of this year, the Buffs’ coach­es and ath­letes keep prepar­ing for the day they can return.

“When­ev­er the green light hits, we’re going to be ready to go at Col­orado and we’ve put great sys­tems in place to allow us to do that,” George said.

Notable

George said there has been no res­o­lu­tion on the game guar­an­tees that were attached to the Buffs’ three non-con­fer­ence foot­ball games that were can­celed. CU was sched­uled to get $1 mil­lion for going to Col­orado State and $500,000 for going to Texas A&M, and the Buffs were set to pay Fres­no State $600,000 for com­ing to Boul­der. George has not dis­cussed those fees with ath­let­ic direc­tors at those schools. … For­mer CU line­backer Jash Allen, who entered the trans­fer por­tal this sum­mer, will play at Mon­tana State, accord­ing to a 247Sports.com report.

(Vis­it­ed 1 times, 1 vis­its today)



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