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In late 2008, the Texas A&M athletic department was scrambling to meet an ominous deadline.
The department had less than a year before it was to begin repaying a $16 million loan arranged by previous A&M President Robert Gates and athletics director Bill Byrne. The loan gave the department four years to use university money to shore up budget shortfalls, and the first payment was due in the fiscal year that starts Sept. 1, 2009.
But the department was facing two more years of projected deficit spending, and finance officials expressed concern that something needed to be done, records show.
Interviews with university and athletic department officials, along with e-mails obtained by The Eagle through a Texas Public Information Act request, depict the financial equivalent of a frantic fourth-quarter drive to get the athletic department into the black. Officials now expect a balanced budget for 2009-10, but 10 months ago they weren't so optimistic.
Many employees of A&M's division of finance, as well as some athletic department officials, expressed concern about the athletic department's fiscal responsibility. Financial officers cited poor revenue projections, a lack of interest in oversight or controls and an inability to control rising expenses as reasons that the program had problems the past three years.
"In retrospect, it is inconceivable to me how this situation was allowed to fester for so many years without proper action being taken," Elsa Murano, then A&M's president, wrote in an April memo to system regents reviewing the situation.
Expenses for the athletic department have risen sharply in recent years. In 2003, A&M athletics spent $43.2 million and turned an $800,000 profit. Projections for this fiscal year have the department spending $72.9 million and bringing in $71.9 million in revenue -- a $1 million deficit. Those revenue estimates included $4.5 million provided through the university's loan.
The department still was in the red in November 2008 with the repayment period less than a year away. A review by the university's division of finance predicted a $3 million operating loss for the 2008-09 fiscal year -- which began Sept. 1, 2008 and ends Aug. 31 -- and a $4.5 million deficit for 2009-10.
More strains on the budget were on the horizon. Athletic department officials were preparing in late 2008 to move their 80 employees out of the John J. Koldus Student Services Building to make room for departments displaced by the renovation of the Memorial Student Center. That move, which was requested by the university and required to be completed by May 2009, would cost the department $1.4 million, employees estimated.
Internal e-mails indicated that several possible solutions were discussed, including that the department might want the $16 million loan forgiven in exchange for athletics moving out of Koldus. University and athletic department officials said last week that such an option was never seriously considered. It quickly was shot down by A&M administrators.
"If it's true ... the request is completely out of the question," wrote Terry Pankratz, A&M's chief financial officer, referring to the loan forgiveness in a November 2008 e-mail to administrators.
Byrne requested university funding to help pay for non-revenue-generating women's athletics. All sports currently are paid for with athletic revenue, most of which comes from football and men's basketball.
"This is something that I have asked for since my arrival here," Byrne said in an e-mail last week, adding that most universities provide some financial assistance for their athletic departments. Byrne declined to be interviewed for this story but responded to questions submitted by e-mail.
University officials rejected his funding idea, saying they wanted the department to be financially self-sufficient.
That's when Byrne requested that the university pay the $1.4 million relocation costs, according to e-mails. That also was refused.
"During the past three years, very few, if any, measures have been implemented by athletics to significantly reduce operating costs," Pankratz wrote to then-president Murano in February. "Had cost-saving measures been implemented during the past three years, athletics may have some reserve balances to address the renovation costs or there may be some funding available through the line of credit Dr. Gates authorized."
The loan
Byrne and Gates talked about a loan near the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year, when the football team had been struggling and energy prices were skyrocketing. Byrne had informed Gates that the department was predicting $4 million deficits in each of the next four years.
Gates agreed to extend an interest-free line of credit to the department -- financed from the school's investment earnings fund, which can be used for one-time expenses. The rare loan didn't need board of regents approval, and several current regents didn't know about it until an April memo from Murano.
Gates also worked with the department to implement a financial recovery plan. That plan included transferring Cain Hall, where many athletes ate their on-campus meals, into the control of the university, which saved $1 million a year; requiring the university president, regents and chancellor to pay face value for their football tickets, saving $100,000; and adding an energy fee to football, basketball and baseball tickets, bringing $500,000 in additional revenue in 2006-07 and $1.2 million in 2007-08.
It was later determined that the department would begin making $1.6 million payments on the loan each year for 10 years, beginning in September 2009.
"I believe this recovery plan will provide the time athletics needs to address their budget deficits and realize their benefits from their investments," Gates told A&M System regents in a memo dated July 7, 2006.
The rest of the budget adjustments were expected to be done by the athletic department, officials said.
"Athletics was charged with developing a comprehensive plan to begin repaying the loan in fiscal 2010, which was done by focusing both on increasing revenue and controlling or reducing expenditures," Byrne said.
He said examples include switching apparel sponsorships from Nike to Adidas, which saved the department $2 million a year in apparel purchases, securing a $3.9 million annual sponsorship payment by awarding Learfield Communications its media rights and adding a neutral-site football series with Arkansas, which is expected to bring in $4 million a year.
Rising costs
The department's increases in expenditures outpaced the gains brought in by the changes. Salary and wages increased more than 55 percent between 2002-03 and 2007-08. Among those increases, annual administrative salaries jumped $2.8 million.
Byrne's personal salary increased 42 percent in August 2008 -- from $486,000 to $690,000. In 2008-09, he also received $178,500 in bonuses for the success in both basketball programs and track and field.
During that period, travel costs rose $3.7 million, with $1.8 million of that coming from increased postseason travel. Payments to schools to play games at A&M increased by $1.7 million. Utility costs soared to $2.1 million, largely because of an increase in space used by the department, and scholarship costs went up $1.5 million because of an increase in A&M's tuition and fees.
Revenue also increased, but not at the rate that athletics officials had predicted. A&M finance workers have said in presentations and reports that the department's revenue projections have been too aggressive historically.
A five-year plan produced by the athletic department in 2007 predicted that football ticket revenues would increase by 10 percent each year and reach $25.9 million by last season. Ticket revenue for 2008 actually dropped to $19 million. Sales are down another 12 percent for the coming season, officials said last week.
The men's basketball team was projected to bring in about $3.7 million in ticket sales by last season but earned only $2.4 million.
Initial projections by the athletic department for next year predicted that overall revenues would remain about flat, which university financiers questioned. At the time, football sales were down 15 percent from the previous year's.
Initial projections by the athletic department for next year predicted that overall revenues would remain about flat, which university financiers questioned. At the time, football sales were down 15 percent from the previous year's.
"I think that is pretty aggressive after a 4-8 football season, men's basketball not enjoying the same level of success in prior years, potentially lower donations with individual market losses in a Texas and national economy that we have not seen in many years," Grant Trexler wrote in a February e-mail to Pankratz. Trexler is a finance department employee who has worked closely with the athletic department this year.
Outside help
During the first few years of the loan, the university had little involvement in the day-to-day financial operations of the athletic department.
"The division of finance was available to provide assistance to the athletic department -- like we would any other university unit -- but there were no formal reporting relationships between athletics and the division of finance in place during this period," Pankratz said in an e-mail interview last week.
That changed once Murano became A&M's president. She learned about the loan soon after taking the helm in January 2008. After discovering that no contract had been signed when the loan was given, she had one drafted and signed it on April 4, 2008.
Officials stressed that no takeover of athletic department finances had occurred but said that the involvement of the university division of finance in the athletic department had increased dramatically in recent months.
After the finance division's winter 2008 review predicted a $3 million deficit for 2008-09 and $4.5 million in losses in 2009-10, Murano deployed a team from the university to identify changes that needed to be made.
A&M administrators began receiving monthly operating reports from the department and assessed cost-saving measures. In April, Murano notified regents that they were targeting cuts that wouldn't affect competitiveness but that a reduction in workforce might be necessary.
"[The division of finance] provided Bill [Byrne] with the preliminary work plan for the financial review, and I believe Bill now sees the gravity of the situation and realizes, perhaps for the first time, that the university administration is serious about ensuring that athletics becomes solvent and learns to live within their means," Murano said in the April memo to the regents.
Byrne said in the e-mail interview last week that he was surprised by Murano's memo at the time.
"We took the issue very seriously," he said. "I had regular meetings with Dr. Murano's two predecessors, and financial issues were routinely discussed. In my 26 years as an athletic director, I have always taken budget items extremely seriously."
The process of targeting and executing cuts was long and, at times, confrontational.
The athletic department was more than two months late in providing a quarterly financial report that was due to the division of finance in November. Joe Powell, chief financial officer for athletics, requested that Pankratz's staff assist him in compiling information for a budget presentation, saying that "he had no confidence in his own staff," according to an e-mail by Pankratz.
During this time, the university denied Byrne's request for help in funding the department's move from Koldus to offices in Reed Arena and elsewhere across campus. The move eventually cost $1.77 million -- $370,000 more than estimated.
"At some point, the athletic department will need to take measures to address its ongoing operating deficits," Pankratz wrote in an e-mail recommending that Murano deny the request. "I believe that time is now."
Cuts made
By June, the athletic department and the division of finance had identified about $3 million in expenditures to cut in the 2010 budget. Those included reducing student worker levels, eliminating free tickets for staff and family, limiting international preseason team trips and reviewing car and cell phone allowances.
Printed media and recruiting guides were eliminated, the size of the football charter jet was reduced and more than 200 phone lines were removed from athletic venues.
About $1 million in cuts still was necessary, however, and Pankratz requested that Byrne send him employment justifications in preparation for layoffs. Byrne complied but also requested that he be allowed to proceed with "extra work for extra pay" benefits -- bonuses to coaches who put in extra time in the spring seasons because of conference and post-season play.
"We are working on revising the policy for the next fiscal year, but we have issues with other schools recruiting coaches away from us right now and coaches not being paid under our current extra pay for extra work policy is working against us," Byrne told Pankratz in a June e-mail.
Pankratz noted in other e-mails that the payments are required in many coaches' and administrators' contracts, but only if the money is available. In the end, the bonuses were paid and it cost the program slightly over $1 million "due to the great success achieved by our teams," Byrne said last week, referring to teams such as track and golf that compete in the spring.
Seventeen full-time positions were eliminated -- most of them through layoffs -- a month later, which Byrne said at the time cut the remaining $1 million needed from the 2010 budget.
The department still is running a deficit for 2009, but Pankratz declined to disclose its size. In June, finance officials estimated it at $975,000 -- after the university loan was factored into revenues.
'Fragile' finances
The loan wasn't publicly disclosed until June, after Murano pointed it out in a self-evaluation as a part of her performance review released to The Eagle, which had filed a Texas Public Information Act request.
Byrne defended the loan in a statement soon afterward, saying that sports programs could be expensive.
"I believe there are some people who do not understand that when our student-athletes attend Texas A&M, someone has to pay for that scholarship and fees," he said. "A grand total of $31,167,950.01 has been spent on scholarships in the past six years alone."
The athletic department is considered an auxiliary enterprise, which means it is expected to be able to sustain itself independently. Many other schools provide financial support to their programs, usually in the form of a student fee. Only a few schools regularly turn a profit.
E-mails, interviews and internal memos from 2006 all indicate that the main purpose of the loan was to allow the university's sports teams to improve competitively while the department sought out new revenue streams.
The football team, which brings in the most income and subsidizes other sports, has struggled, which might have contributed to the department's financial difficulties.
"If we had been selling out Kyle Field, you would not be asking me these questions," Byrne told The Eagle last week. "We would be operating in the black."
By many measures, A&M sports has been successful. It won national championships this year in men's golf and men's and women's track and field. Both basketball teams are enjoying success, and most other teams consistently reach the postseason.
The department spends $20 million on women's sports for every $1 million those teams bring in. That spending has allowed the department to stay compliant with federal law while receiving national acclaim, Byrne said.
The athletic department overall also is nearing the success level of its state rival.
"People scoffed at the notion that Texas A&M could compete on a head-to-head basis with that school in the state capital," Byrne said in June, referring to the University of Texas. "In the first year of competition in the Lone Star Showdown [an annual department-wide measure of head-to-head competition between the two schools], we were beaten 14.5 to 4.5. We won the trophy last year and held on to it this year by tying with 9.5 points each."
Last season, Texas' athletic department brought in nearly twice as much revenue as A&M's -- $120.3 million, according to Streets and Smith's SportsBusiness Journal. It consistently ranks as the top revenue-generating athletic department in the nation.
Next year, A&M will attempt to continue its success without further university help. Expenses are budgeted to be down about $5 million, and a balanced budget is projected.
Byrne called department finances "fragile" last week, but indicated that he believed the goal could be met.
"Granted, we've had some financial challenges due to the economy and unbudgeted expenses, not unlike many other athletic departments across the country," he said. "But working in conjunction with Mr. Pankratz and the division of finance, we are addressing these concerns. ... We always strive to do our best and have made moves to address our shortcomings. It is our goal to position ourselves to persist and prosper."
