Some context on the #ASU financial news, and I apologize for not getting this published sooner - was caught off-guard by the USA Today report (here: bit.ly/3gsoEqE)
Per documents obtained by USAT, ASU sent a whopping $67.3 million in school funds and student fees to subsidize athletics during FY21 (the COVID year).
That figure represents "by far the largest single-year outlay of direct funding by a Division I public school, according to USA TODAY/Knight-Newhouse data reaching back to fiscal 2005 when the NCAA began its current reporting system"
Over the past 4 FYs, ASU has plowed 140m of school funds into athletics via direct support/student fees, according to our tally of the numbers the fabulous USAT database. (From FY18-20, ~73m of the 340m in total booked revenue came from central campus.)
As a university, ASU uses a different biz model from most FBS schools: It's massive (100,000+ under grads) and has a lucrative online edu system (50k enrolled online students)
But as an athletic dept, the financial structure is effectively the same as the other Pac-12s: similar revenue buckets and expenses, except for the amount of institutional support - in that area, only Cal compares
What strikes us is how different ASU is from Arizona, whose athletic dept typically receives ~half the campus financial support that ASU's dept does. The disparity is similar to the Cal/UCLA situation
Berkeley and Westwood are the same system, but the Bears received about 20m from campus in FY21 and ran an operating surplus, while the Bruins received 2.5m in support (via student fees) and ran a massive deficit.
All of which is to say: When evaluating & comparing performance on a broad, multi-year level, keep in mind that the economic foundations are different across the conference
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