Boise State is ‘going to run in the red’ after the football season was suspended
Boise State stands to lose as much as $20 million if football season is ultimately canceled, and Athletic Director Curt Apsey said Thursday that it could take several years to recover from than kind of hit.
“We’re going to do the best we can to get ourselves out of this, and it’s going to take everybody,” Apsey said during a conference call with reporters. “Our staff and our coaches are well aware that we’ve got to be really smart about what we do over the next 10 months.”
On Monday, the Mountain West suspended all fall seasons as cases of COVID-19 have risen in many parts of the country.
The toll not having football this fall is going to take on the budget is keeping Apsey up at night, but he said the decision came down to something more important than money.
“I think it just comes back to the safety and the health of everybody involved,” he said. “Now we take what we have and we look forward, and we start to plan as best we can so that we do give these kids an opportunity.”
Apsey said the majority of the $20 million in losses was going to come from four areas: ticket sales, seat contributions, corporate partnerships and revenue from TV and the College Football Playoff.
In July, Apsey said if games were held in Albertsons Stadium this fall, he expected its capacity to be reduced to about 25 to 30 percent of the 36,387 fans it can seat on game day. That alone would be a big hit to the budget, but no games could be crippling.
In 2018-19, Boise State football generated $5.6 million from ticket sales, according to documents obtained through an open records request. The team also generated almost half of the department’s $50.6 million in revenue.
This season, Boise State was expecting to collect about $5.7 million in TV revenue after the Mountain West announced in January that CBS Sports and Fox agreed to a new TV rights deal.
Boise State has already made an effort to soften the financial blow.
In April, it announced all employees making at least $40,000 a year — including coaches — were required to take furloughs. In July, the university disbanded its baseball and swimming and diving programs, which Apsey said would trim about $2.2 million off the budget.
Apsey said cutting more teams isn’t currently part of the plan, but he also said every option is on the table.
“We’ve got to look at every way we can save money and start to decrease the amount of debt that’s going to come with this season,” Apsey said. “We’re going to run in the red, but the goal is to get that net loss as low as possible.”
The athletic department plans to turn to donors, season ticket holders and corporate partners for help, Apsey said, and discussions are under way about how to cover expenses in the short term.
“You have to plan for the worst from a financial perspective,” Apsey said. “We also can’t just sit back and talk about how we save. We’ve got to talk about how we generate revenue in the most difficult time there’s ever been.”
A spring football season would be the best way to recoup some of that lost revenue, though Apsey admitted that will depend on what local and state regulations will allow the Broncos to do on game day.
With Ada County in Stage 3 of Idaho’s reopening plan, large gatherings were already limited to 50 people. After a vote Tuesday by the Central District Health Board of Health, social gatherings in the county are now limited to 10 people.
Extra year for seniors?
After the spring season was canceled in March because of COVID-19, the NCAA gave schools the option of offering seniors an additional year of eligibility.
Apsey said Thursday that he wasn’t sure exactly how that would work for fall athletes, but he hopes the NCAA can figure it out.
“I think we have to be as fair as we can with these young people, similar to what we did in the spring,” Apsey said. “They’re heartbroken right now, and I feel bad for them. I see it on their faces and I’ve seen how hard they’ve worked.”
Much like with spring athletes, the feasibility of offering an additional year will rely on the NCAA loosening limitations on roster size and scholarship regulations.
Schools also would have to incur the costs of additional athletes.
On Thursday, Apsey said Boise State spends about $40,000 per full scholarship, and that’s not including the expenses that come with hiring support staff, such as nutritionists, trainers, team doctors and mental health professionals.
Will the Florida State game happen?
Discussions have started about rescheduling Boise State’s home game against Florida State, which was scheduled for Sept. 19, but Apsey said it won’t happen in 2021.
The Broncos were supposed to host the Seminoles in a rematch of last season’s weather-altered affair in Tallahassee, Florida, but the ACC’s decision that all nonconference games must be played in the home state of the ACC schools ended that.
“That one hurts,” Apsey said. “That (deal) was done seven years ago, and our fans have been looking forward to that all this time.”
The Broncos also lost home games against BYU and Georgia Southern and a road trip to Marshall, but Apsey said every athletic director he’s spoken to has been adamant about rescheduling.
The Broncos have home games against Oklahoma State and UTEP and road trips to UCF and BYU on their nonconference schedule in 2021.
Big Sky postpones fall sports
The Big Sky Conference announced Thursday that it has postponed all fall sports until spring 2021 — ending any chance of Idaho or Idaho State taking the football field this year.
The conference announced last Friday that it wouldn’t play a conference football schedule this fall, but Idaho Athletic Director Terry Gawlik said the Vandals planned to play nonconference games.
