(Minneapolis, MN) — Golden Gopher athletic director Mark Coyle says the coronavirus pandemic will likely mean the University of Minnesota athletic department will sustain a budget loss as this fiscal year wraps up and will likely create a revenue shortfall for next budget year, as well. Coyle says the department was projected to turn a profit of about one-million-dollars for fiscal year 2020 before the health scare hit. Now there could be as much as a four-million-dollar loss for the year, and projections vary on next year because it is undetermined whether there will be a fall sports season. Coyle and his staff presented three budget scenarios to the Board of Regents this past Friday that showed revenue losses of ten-million-dollars, thirty-million-dollars, and 70-million-dollars. Those scenarios varied with the number of football games that would or would not be played. Coyle says top-paid coaches and some department staff have taken voluntary pay cuts and furloughs to save the department money, and other cash-saving strategies have been implemented. Coyle says the decision on whether there will be a fall sports season will be made in collaboration with the N-C-A-A, the Big Ten, and the president’s office at the U of M. He says that final decision won’t likely come until the summer.
Golden Gopher athletic director Mark Coyle spoke with MNN Sports Director Mike Grimm:
