Washington State's athletic department "will run a deficit" of more than $13M for the second year in a row, according to a front-page piece by Jacob Thorpe of the Spokane SPOKESMAN-REVIEW. WSU AD Bill Moos said that the shortfall is "due in part to mandates by the Pac-12 and NCAA and lower-than-projected television revenues." He added that the athletic department in FY '15 spent $67.3M, down from $68.1M spent in '14. But overall revenues fell to $54.1M from $54.4M, creating a $13.2M deficit. The gap between revenues and expenses is "effectively a loan the department takes from the university." Moos said that it will be "up to the new university president to decide when and how the athletics department will pay back the school." While Moos is optimistic that the school "eventually will break even, their recurring athletic deficit illustrates the difficulty the isolated school faces trying to compete athletically with its better-financed peers." WSU still ranks "near the bottom of all Power Five conference schools in both expenditures and revenues." The school is "paying debt service for recent construction projects," such as the $61M football operations building. Moos said that those projects "were a priority, in order to both strengthen the football program and take advantage of favorable construction conditions." He said that future construction "will have to be entirely financed through donations" (Spokane SPOKESMAN-REVIEW, 3/16).
