MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Most Georgia Bulldogs fans probably don’t know the names behind the scenes in the Butts-Mehre building that crunch the numbers and spent months making decisions when putting together an athletic budget.
People like Stephanie Ransom, Scott Hallberg and Derek Hammock.
“They’re not the most popular people in the athletic department right now,” Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said.
On a fourth-floor conference room in Brooks’ AD suite, the senior administrators who oversee the finances and business operations of an athletic department that supports 21 teams have held meetings with every sport and department.
“I can walk into those meetings and play good cop, bad cop depending on what mood I’m in that day and help them out,” Brooks said. “It’s been a lot of work to really refine the budget.”
Brooks said crafting the $223 million fiscal year 2026 budget is more “complex” in the first year of expected direct player payments of about $20.5 million — including $2.5 million of new scholarships — as part of the House Settlement which is awaiting final approval.
Brooks said he approached it wanting minimal impact on the experience of the Georgia athletes.
He asked programs to rank their priorities to find areas that Georgia could be more efficient in, like team travel.
He’s got plenty of company at athletic departments across the country, including colleagues in the SEC who are holding their spring meetings this week at the Sandestin Hilton.
“Every school I’ve talked to has tightened the belt and cut expenses and tried to continue to be good stewards of those dollars,” said Auburn executive deputy athletic director Jared Benko, the former Georgia Southern athletic director. “From a revenue standpoint, you’re always looking to grow in revenue.”
At Georgia, softball is expected to produce $127,500 in ticket revenue after the school began charging for tickets this past season. That’s a far cry from the $43,008,842 projected for football ticket revenue in the next fiscal year which includes a ticket price increase to $80 for all games.
If the SEC goes to nine conference games, more money is expected to flow in through its TV contract with Disney.
“That $20.5 million, that comes from somewhere,” South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer said. “We have to come up with it. All of us as coaches are certainly cognizant of that.”
On the expense side, Georgia athletics has cut its annual payment to university programs to the university from $4 million to $2 million.
Spread out throughout Georgia’s budget numbers is the phrase “reassessment of needs and spending efficiencies,” with cuts to travel, supplies and other areas. Georgia cut its “outsourced meals” from $1.4 million to $834,921 as it prioritized in-house meals over catered meals. Costs for pregame basketball, softball, soccer, gymnastics, tennis and volleyball meals were trimmed.
Georgia projects $1.25 million in revenue for a new, non-athletic related events.
Brooks said the school is eyeing a spring Sanford Stadium concert, but has brought in Top Golf in the stadium in the past.
“We have to look at potentially other things we can bring to Stegeman,” he said. “Now that we have turf on the baseball field, maybe there’s opportunities for maybe a small concert there.”
Oklahoma is cutting 5% of its athletic employees, athletic director Joe Castiglione confirmed this week.
“It’s a massive reimagination of the structure that we need for college athletics, the ecosystem for it and obviously the economics behind it,” he said. “I would say it’s a strategic re-org, streamlining.”
At Auburn, Benko said: “We’re looking under every single rock and tightening the belt.”
A year ago, Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts said here: “We don’t have a revenue problem in college athletics, we have an expense problem.”
A year later, here’s how he’s addressed that in College Station.
“We’ve just tried to look at how do we find a way to eliminate redundancy of expenses, how to do a better job of running our business like a business,” said Alberts, noting that student services and academic support make the business of college athletics unique.
Alberts said Texas A&M won’t add additional debt service on facility upgrades so those must be fully funded. That includes a project that would add baseball suites and club seats.
Benko said Auburn is “making things as efficient as possible but still being in position for championships…We’ve put controls in place so every dollar is justified.”
