Tate | Taxpayers got stuck in a high bill like UI football founders Sport

For years, Illinois and other Power 5 athletic programs justified juicy salaries and outrageous spending with a pat statement: This is our marketplace. Our expenses come from TV, receipts and donations. This is not tax money.

The no-tax money answer usually calms troubled pants, like those who responded when The News Gazettes Tom Kacich pointed out that in 25 years the DIA has grown from 71 employees to 300 plus, with about 70 now making $ 100,000 or more.

No public money? OK, but where do the bizarre retirement benefits come from? How are all utilities handled? If the tuition fee is not tax money, what are they?

But let’s not get picky. The DIA has generally fulfilled its mandate to operate independently.

Varsity Athletics has worked smoothly even though this hybrid UI department has more than quadrupled its expenses over the lifetime of today’s UI athletes … hot air ballooning despite poor ticket sales.

COVID-19 creates chaos

It progressed at full speed until it stopped happening. At night, a microscopic and highly contagious virus changed everything. And people ask: what now?

Even if football is played, which seems to be a 50-50 proposition last year, the $ 121 million DIA budget is no longer attainable as visitor numbers will drop and TV distributions will no longer reach $ 53 million.

There are many problems. Those seven, five and three-year leases on premium seats more than a decade ago are not suitable for 30-year mortgages. Some cannot renew.

Remember, the DIA was in the doldrums before 2020. It was only two years ago that the UI was ranked fourth in the debt of the national athletic departments. The annual debt service, previously reduced by a number of advances, still has access to $ 22 million.

If the total numbers spill over, guess who is ultimately at stake for DIA debt service, plus guaranteed athletic scholarship prices, plus staff salaries, plus multi-team expenses? The taxpayer-backed university, that’s who … and the UIUC campus already has millions in arrears from last year’s operating budget of $ 3.1 billion.

Worse to come?

The level of the disaster so far expressed is a best-case scenario. It assumes football kick-off in 43 days, simultaneously with the arrival of thousands of students on campus … an absolute playground for an unseen respiratory virus.

Big Ten leaders took this into account for a one-size-fits-all decision to cancel all non-conference sports in the fall. The decision stemmed from legitimate concerns that smaller schools could not meet the health protocols (tests) of Big Ten members, and the September four dates could be used to spread 10 football matches over a 14-week period, delaying emergency situations were possible.

Impact widespread

If the Big Ten leaders decide to switch to spring football games in August, it would be one last guess to save some of the TV distributions they rely on.

Without that income, Division I sports London in 1942, Berlin in 1944. Unrecognizable. Without football, the consequences would reduce a range of sports across the country and eliminate some. It could spell the end, or at least further delay, of the UI’s downtown hockey business. With the president’s office becoming vigilant late in approving construction, the timeline for new baseball and softball facilities and the $ 30 million Ubben upgrade would likely be extended.

Here we are. Surrendered to an invisible enemy, who may or may not return if you have, and can be transferred in ways you least expect. Not even sure how deaths in the 18-22 age group would compare to his cousin’s, the flu.

There is so much we don’t know. But we do know that the model without tax money doesn’t work without football.