Greg Byrne foreshadowed decisions Alabama might need to make to cut sports if developments in college athletics continue in the current direction.
It’s no secret that Alabama’s athletic department is supported financially by football, and to a smaller extent, men’s basketball.
Otherwise, Alabama’s 19 other sports lose money each year. It’s something athletics director Greg Byrne has often discussed, including in an interview last week with Bama247.
But when Byrne opened his comments Tuesday morning at a Congressional panel in Washington D.C. about the future of college sports, Byrne provided a number that underscored just how much of a financial burden Alabama’s non-revenue sports place on the department.
“The excess revenue from these two programs [football and men’s basketball] effectively offset the roughly $40 million annually the other 19 programs collectively run in losses each year,” Byrne told the panel led by Texas senator Ted Cruz. “If it weren’t for football, we would not have 21 sports at the University of Alabama.”
How much longer football can subsidize the rest of the athletics department is in question.
Byrne and former Alabama football coach Nick Saban participated in the panel as part of an effort to push forward legislation that would create “safe havens,” as Byrne described, from growing questions about antitrust, employee status and Title IX. Beyond the established impact of name, image and likeness and the transfer portal on college sports, ongoing lawsuits in parts of the country continue to threaten the amateur model of college sports while the possibility grows of college athletes being deemed employees and potentially unionizing.
Beyond that, there is an ongoing federal class action case, House vs. NCAA, that could entitle former college athletes to billions of dollars in damages for NIL revenue they were not yet eligible to receive before a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision and subsequent NCAA rule change. Byrne referenced that case Tuesday in his comments in Washington D.C.
“What has taken place from the court system and the litigation that’s involved and the potential damages that could along with it are well into eight figures,” Byrne said. “Those are resources and revenues that don’t exist. So the impact that could have on the Olympic sports, on the number of sports that you are able to offer.”
Alabama’s athletic department reported a $12 million loss for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023 that excluded $14 million in un-expensed gift revenue. The football program reported a $46 million budget surplus, according to AL.com.
The net effect of potentially having to pay damages in the House case while paying current athletes as employees would most likely lead to sports being cut at Alabama, Byrne warned.
“The increased expense of the employment model, that means that dollars are going to have to be taken from one area and put into others,” he explained. “So any company or organization that is faced with an increase in expenses and decrease in revenue is going to have to make tough decisions on what that model looks like going forward. So we’re not any different from any other organization.”
Byrne was direct in answering which sports could be at risk.
“It’s the Olympic sports that would be in jeopardy,” he said. “That’s men and women. If you look at the numbers for us at the University of Alabama, with our 19 sports outside of football and men’s basketball, we lost collectively almost $40 million. We funded that through our revenue from a football and men’s basketball standpoint. So potentially, which one specifically, if I’m just saying this in general: if I’m a swimming student-athlete. If I’m a tennis, I’m a track, any of those sports — those are really important to our universities — we want to compete in them. I can’t stress that enough. But there also will have to be decisions made because there’s not an unlimited supply of money like some believe.”
When Cruz repeated those sports back to Byrne, Alabama’s AD added another.
“Soccer,” Byrne said. “All those things. There’s been that in the past where sports have been eliminated by institutions. Some very good institutions.”
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