UCF in better financial shape to pay players than most

Everywhere you look across the landscape of college sports, athletic directors are holed up in boardrooms and budget meetings, furrowing their brows over spreadsheets and taking a chainsaw to line items like movie villains in a slasher flick — desperately trying to figure out how they’re going to come up with an additional $20.5 million a year to pay their athletes.

Programs are bracing for staff cuts. Olympic sports are sweating their survival. Facility upgrades are being shelved or downsized.

The University of Kentucky’s athletics department expects to operate at a net loss of nearly $31 million over the next two fiscal years and is borrowing $141 million from the university’s general fund to offset the deficit.

The hoity-toity University of Michigan athletic department is receiving $15 million in support from the university’s general fund so it can balance its budget this year.

And then there’s UCF … calm, calculating and oddly comfortable amid the chaos.

“We’re in a little better position because we’re getting some new money [from the Big 12] as opposed to some other programs that have a $20.5 million bill coming to their athletic department,” UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir says.

I would say UCF isn’t just in a little better position; it’s in a much better position.

Yes, UCF — the young, brash program often dismissed by traditionalists as a Johnny-come-lately — may actually be better equipped to navigate the beginning of the pay-for-play era than the so-called bluebloods.

Why? Because unlike Florida, Florida State, Miami and other marquee programs throughout the country that have long been dining at the wagyu-laden lobster-stuffed banquet table of TV riches, UCF has been living off the crumbs — and learning how to stretch every dollar like a Depression-era homemaker….

Source link : https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/06/14/ucf-gators-fsu-canes-house-settlement-pay-for-play-nil-mike-bianchi-commentary/

Author :

Publish date : 2025-06-14 19:10:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.