There’s been plenty of hand-wringing lately over the idea that, in this nascent age of revenue sharing in college athletics, sports teams that represent a financial burden to their departments run the risk of being cut.
Sure enough, just last week, Arkansas whacked men’s and women’s tennis.
According to the Fort Smith Southwest Times Record, Arkansas reported spending more than $2.3 million on the two sports last year, while their total revenue was less than $4,000.
Explaining the decision, Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek said, “The landscape of college athletics continues to evolve, requiring us to make challenging choices as we balance competitive opportunities, resources, and the long-term sustainability of our department. Ultimately, we concluded that we are unable to provide the level of support necessary for our tennis programs to consistently compete in the SEC and nationally at the standard our student-athletes, coaches, alumni, and supporters deserve.”
The key words there aren’t “unable to provide the level of support necessary.” The keyword there is “choices.”
Aside from the fact that Arkansas men’s tennis is playing in the NCAA tournament this weekend (the Razorbacks can’t compete?), Yurachek runs a department that had a nearly $196 million operating revenue budget in fiscal year 2025 with an $11.8 million surplus — and still transferred nearly $4.9 million from athletics to the campus.
The Porker People reportedly are paying deposed football coach Sam Pittman around $9 million in buyout obligations. That’s right: Arkansas could operate its tennis programs in the black for three years if it refrained from the popular college-sports absurdity of making former coaches stupendously wealthy for not coaching. The buyout cost to Arkansas could’ve been considerably less had it not fired Pittman five games into the 2025 season, but, hey, that’s college athletics these days, right?
Arkansas Athletics employs more than 200 people. No savings to be found there, right? And in 2016, the university’s board of trustees approved a profligate $160 million expansion to Razorback Stadium.
The shot-callers in Arkansas athletics can afford $2.6 million to keep the tennis program afloat. They’ve made a choice not to.
Nothing but the best for John Calipari.
And based on the recent history of Arkansas football, who wants to bet that, in five years, Ryan Silverfield won’t get a Pittman Parachute of his own?
I know, I know: How much does football bring in and how much does tennis bring in? That’s beside the point. At every major-college athletics department in America, it’s understood that football and men’s basketball pay the freight for every other sports team on campus. It’s an accepted cost of doing business because the purpose of every other sports team is to provide academic opportunities and upward mobility for the young people on those teams. Or that was the purpose at some point.
If it sounds like I’m picking on Arkansas, eh, not really. In 15 minutes, another AD will be making the same baseless claims as Yurachek. This year college athletics departments could opt in on up to $20.5 million of revenue sharing with athletes, and next year $21.3 million. Built-in excuse.
Since 2023, more than two dozen college tennis programs have been discontinued. The overwhelming majority are at schools outside football’s Power Four conferences, at places with tiny budgets by comparison.
In those instances, pleas of hard choices and an inability to provide necessary funding ring true.
When it happens at a school in the SEC — or in the Big Ten or the Big 12 or the ACC — it’s a lie.
When an AD says there’s no money for tennis, run that through your decoder ring, and it translates to everything in service to almighty football and men’s basketball.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Don’t buy the lie that Power Four programs have to cut sports | Williams
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
