The cuts to Carolina Athletics have started, but likely not ended.

Much speculation over the last few months, besides whether we’ll have a college football season, is how UNC manages the deep losses that began with the pandemic and shutdown last March.

Right off the bat, UNC Hospitals canceled all non-essential surgeries and procedures and pivoted to telemedicine just as the university told its students not to come back from spring break and go online for the rest of the semester.

Early estimates on lost revenue at the medical center were about $100 million. And you can bet that number has grown before the hospital reopened for regular treatments and operations.

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, talking about the university’s general education bucket, has put his expected losses at around $150 million, and that does not include athletics, which operates like a separate business on a $100 million budget.

Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham came out this week and predicted losses from $30 to $52 million, and that includes expected TV revenues if 11 football games are played. If not, that number goes up. The university apparently has some dough in reserve, plus a $4 billion capital campaign that is near reaching its goal. So the chancellor is not preaching doom, only deep losses and severe budget cuts.

In athletics, Cunningham announced that all employees earning $400,000 or higher will take a 20 percent pay cut, which drops to 15 percent, 10 percent and 15 days of unpaid furloughs down the pay scale.

That means Mack Brown, whose state salary and extras total $3.75 million, will give up about $600,000 thru the next June end date. Roy Williams earns $4-plus million and has already paid $600,000 back to the university to cover losses in last spring’s aborted seasons.

Cunningham says he won’t fill any of his 17 full-time openings, but has not mentioned layoffs and cutting any sports programs, such as Stanford dropped 11. I imagine all of that is on the table.

At this point, everything’s still out there – along with the coronavirus.

 

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