The small budget for Arizona Football could be fixed by Pac-12

News broke of the football assistant salaries in the Pac-12, and surprise, the Arizona Football program doesn’t have all that much money.

File this one under things that make you ‘shake your head’, but as news broke of the cost of assistant salaries in the Pac-12, we learned Arizona Football doesn’t have a big budget.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to our readers, but in short, the athletic department doesn’t have an enormously large budget, so in turn, our assistants don’t get a whole lot compared to others in the country, putting us at a major disadvantage.

Arizona Wildcats

You can’t really blame the University here, because there are a lot of nuances and obstacles for the Arizona Football program to overcome.

For starters, we are not an elite program, so fans aren’t exactly filling Arizona Stadium in droves of people.

Additionally, we aren’t really setting the world on fire when it comes to results, exposure and overall revenue per year.

Now, winning helps and aids in curing quite a few of those things, however, if you have been paying attention in the media lately, I feel there is one underlying theme here that I think is to blame for the smaller budget, and that is the Pac-12. But we will get to that a little later.

For now, while we await the numbers of our revenue earned this year, we do know the athletic department will be spending $3.15 million on its assistants this year. By comparison, ASU will spend $3.73, Cal $3.74, Washington State $3.2 and Oregon State $3.075.

Okay, now you can prepare yourselves in directing your frustration at the appropriate people, the conference!

As we soon head into 2019 and beyond, the Pac-12 will still be stuck in “ancient times”. The failing Pac-12 Network, poor exposure and poor revenue sharing all leading back to a narcissistic and inept conference commissioner in Larry Scott.

So just how bad is it? As reported by Mercury News, each participating member of the Pac-12 conference will make an estimated $33.5 million in 2018. Now while that sounds like a lot, compared to other Power Five conferences, it really is not.

By comparison, the SEC will make a projected $42 million, the Big Ten roughly $51 million and the Big 12 roughly $38 million.

Now, let’s quantify that total over the next five years let’s say, and a school like Arizona will be running a deficit of $87.5 million compared to a school like Rutgers for instance who plays in the Big Ten. Rutgers football went 1-11 in 2018 but will still earn more money.

Imagine what an extra $6.5 million per year could do for a school like Arizona? Better paid assistants? More money to allocate to improving the fan experience? Or how about reinvesting that back into the student-athletes to ensure they are getting the best educational/ athletic experience possible?

The Pac-12 is leaving so much money on the table with its failing network and the commissioner is either complicit or truly ignorant to the sheer disadvantages his conference will be facing in the coming years.

Following the scathing, four-part article by John Canzano, here was Scott’s response “We’re challenging to follow because we’re unique as a conference.”

To Larry Scott, I say swallow your pride, figure out how you can get your conference on a competitive footing revenue and exposure wise, and help your member schools. Otherwise, doom them by having them compared to the Mountain West or Western Athletic Conferences.

At Zona Zealots, we’re hopeful the problems in the Pac-12 can be remedied and quickly. After all, we could use just about any kind of positivity right about now. Bear Down, Arizona!