In the 1850s, political and ideological debate surrounding the pressing national concern that was slavery tore what’s now the state of Kansas apart.
Nowadays, political and ideological debate involving a nationwide financial crisis in college athletics is boiling over into a flashpoint at the state’s flagship university.
Last week, the University of Kansas’ faculty senate and university senate called for a no-confidence vote in Kansas chancellor Doug Girard after discovering that KU’s athletic department deficit has gotten to the point where “the new student-athlete payroll is coming out of the university general fund, made up of tuition money and state tax dollars,” as KCUR-FM reported.
This payroll is a result of the House settlement last summer that has put most Division I schools on the hook for what began as a $20.5 million annual payout to student-athletes.
That has led to the need for multiple universities, including the University of Arkansas, to figure out a way to shift funds to cover increasing costs. (KU was $11.9 million in the red last year, and projects a $14.9 million deficit this fiscal year.)
Arkansas athletics, meanwhile, generated a $6.89 million surplus last year but will need a lot more money going forward to cover a host of needs including paying a bigger, better-paid football staff, retaining football stars like Quincy Rhodes Jr. and landing a freshman in basketball who projects to make millions of dollars in one season.
As a result, UA athletics director Hunter Yurachek and other Razorback brass want the athletic department to stop giving the university millions of dollars a year and start receiving millions of dollars per year from the university instead.
The goal, as laid out in a January resolution passed by the UA Board of Trustees, is that this shift — along with tactics like ushering out sweetheart deal seating accounts at Razorback Stadium and trying to get us all to start saying a certain company’s name before “Razorback Stadium” — would drop an extra $11 million a year into athletic department coffers.
Such seemingly sudden pumping of the money levers is something with which a lot of schools across the nation are dealing. In many of those places, including Arkansas, athletic departments increasingly tapping into general funds has rung alarm bells.
Kansas, Arkansas Movements for External Audit
At Kansas last week, the faculty and staff also called for “an external audit of KU finances.”
In Arkansas, we see a similar movement emerging among public officials.
In mid February, 25 state representatives sent a letter to UA chancellor Charles Robinson, UA system president Jay Silveria and the UA Board of Trustees members in which they explained why taking from UA funds, on such apparently short notice, concerned them:
