AUSTIN — Construction hasn’t halted at Royal-Memorial Stadium.
A colossal tower crane still hovers above the south end zone, moving thick steel girders to and fro. Engineers and construction workers mill about, the lone figures on a campus that emptied out on March 13, when the university ceased operations and classes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The $175 million expansion project at the 96-year-old stadium has operated within a bubble, impervious to shutdowns that have touched every other part of the city. School officials intend on sticking to the July 2021 completion date, no matter what.
After all, the money has already been committed: $125 million from donors, the rest from bond proceed to be repaid from ticket sales and gifts. Still, the scene at DKR can feel jarring given the economic tumult caused by a virus that has decimated industries and threatened the status quo of not only college athletics but colleges themselves.
We’re nearly three months away from what should be the start of the 2020 college football campaign. If this season is disrupted, either totally or just partially, the whole of NCAA athletics will experience a devastating seismic shock.
Even Texas, with one of the nation’s few self-sustaining athletics departments, likely wouldn’t be immune. There would be casualties, whether that be the shuttering of certain programs, departmental layoffs, temporary or permanent pay cuts, scholarship reductions or some combination of the four.
Over the past two years, Texas football has generated $301.4 million in revenue according to university audits. Expenses during that period have totaled $84 million, creating a profit margin of $217.4 million.
The university fields 19 varsity teams in addition to football. Over that same two-year span, those programs posted an operating loss of $12.1 million.
The deficit was more massive among non-program specific categories during 2018 and 2019.
Revenue for items such as royalties, licensing fees and ticket sales amounted to $64.7 million. Non-program specific expenses — support staff and administration compensation, fundraising, facilities debt and direct overhead were the costliest — totaled $225.8 million.
So, strip away football and Texas athletics over the past two Fiscal Years would have posted a loss of $173.2 million. Add it back in and that number becomes a green $44.2 million.
The numbers involved in the equation aren’t as massive at most schools outside Austin. But the story is the same for every university that fields a college football program. If the sport is lost, even for a year, the ripple effects will be catastrophic.
Already some universities have made cuts. Bowling Green and Furman eliminated baseball. Cincinnati discontinued men's soccer. East Carolina axed four sports: men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving, men's tennis and women's tennis.
Coaches and athletic department heads have also seen their salaries constrict. Athletic department employees at schools like Boise State, South Carolina, Iowa State, Colorado and several other Division I programs have been required to take furloughs or accept one-year salary reductions.
None of those measures have yet been implemented at Texas, which recently allowed a group of about 30 football coaches and support staff back into offices for a “phase one” through the end of May.
“The plan includes multiple layers, beginning with training and education programs conducted by our Sports Medicine Team and Dr. Bray using the Texas Athletics Employee Guide for COVID-19 manual,” athletics director Chris Del Conte said. “The next steps involve staff completing an online COVID-19 symptoms questionnaire each day before leaving home, and then a thorough screening process that includes a temperature check upon arrival at the designated entry checkpoint in the North End Zone of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.”
Most Division I university officials around the country still sound optimistic about football being played this fall despite more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with at least 94,500 resulting deaths. But a season played without fans would hurt athletic department coffers, too.
Texas football generated $38.5 million in ticket revenue in 2018 and $42.5 million in 2019. That accounted for 60 percent of total ticket sales during that span. That would be a monumental loss, even accounting for other revenue earned through media rights contracts.
Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott on Wednesday said he doesn't see a “reasonable” way to host large public gatherings with over 2,500 attendees at any point this year.
“The large events are the first thing that we turned off and are going to be the last thing we’re going to turn back on because of that risk of exposing lots of people to one another, particularly individuals of the same household,” Escott said during a Q&A session.
Del Conte have not issued a statement in response to Escott’s comments, but the head of Texas athletics has spoken optimistically of his belief there will be a football season. As a state institution, Texas does not fall under city or county jurisdiction.
For now, the UT say it is monitoring the situation closely, continuing conversations with campus leadership and developing contingencies and plans for a wide array of possibilities.
In the meantime, construction will go on.
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