Georgia
Georgia, SEC schools look to trim athletic department spending to make way for revenue share
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.”
The Georgia baseball team had long since poured out of the Foley Field home dugout and the water bottles that were thrown on the field in jubilation had been cleaned up.
The Bulldogs celebration that carried into center field after a 13-8 victory on Saturday night over LSU on May 9 had ended and players had doused coach Wes Johnson with blue sports drink.
Now, some 20 minutes later, it was postgame photo time for the freshly minted 2026 SEC regular season champions.
They gathered in front of the spot on the right field wall where the previous seven seasons of Georgia SEC championships were listed, the last in 2008. Above them on the video board was a graphic that recognized this year’s team as SEC champions.
“Watching the program grow in such a shot amount of time, it’s awesome,” said pitcher Paul Farley, who has been with the Bulldogs for all three seasons with Johnson and got the win in relief Saturday. “We’ve got four SEC games left and to be able to hang that up there the SEC champs already it’s amazing.”
Farley was speaking figuratively because the 2026 numbers weren’t on the outfield fence just yet.
Fifth-ranked Georgia (40-11, 20-6 SEC) still has a chance to put a College World Series trip up there in left field for the first time since 2008 and in a best case scenario add another national championship year in right field with the 1990 season.
“SEC champs is great, but obviously we want to do bigger and better things,” Farley said.
LSU, the team that won it all last season, was still around having a postgame talk on the artificial turf field long after the game ended.
Johnson was with LSU in 2023 as pitching coach when it won another College World Series.
“It’s massive,” Johnson said of this latest championship. “Anytime you can win this league, man, it’s so hard. Then win it outright. It’s something you want to check off on your list of things you’ve ever accomplished. It’s 10 weekends of just meat house grinding.”
Johnson said he didn’t know that the dominoes had fallen Saturday to set up Georgia being able to clinch except that he saw that Texas lost at Tennessee as the result flashed on the scoreboard.
Texas A&M also lost twice at Ole Miss to set up the clinch for Georgia.
“I’m calling pitches, I’m locked in,” Johnson said.
He said assistant coach Will Coggin told him when the game ended that ‘We’re champs.’”
Many of the players knew.
“We had a few inside operatives, I’d say, tell us,” Farley said.
Shortstop Kolby Branch said he didn’t know “until the water bottles started flying.”
Branch said another Georgia team loaded with transfers grew closer in the fall and built relationships that have turned into wins this season.
Johnson said winning the regular season title in his third season as coach in the age of the transfer portal and NIL “means a lot.”
Johnson mentioned Farley, Branch and Tre Phelps being at Georgia for all three of his seasons.
“Seeing where we were in the first fall, we forget this used to be dirt and grass,” Johnson said standing on on turf field. “And we didn’t have the cool building and we only had one batting cage, all the stuff we’ve been able to do since we’ve been here. The other side is just understanding true belief and understanding what guys can do.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. –Georgia Tech softball (30-27, 10-14 ACC) collected its second postseason conference honor as first baseman Addison Leschber was named to the 2026 ACC All-Tournament Team, as was announced by the conference following the 2026 ACC Softball Championship game on Saturday.
Leschber is Tech softball’s first All-Tournament honoree since Emma Kauf during the 2023 season. During the First Round of the ACC Championships, Leschber was nothing short of exceptional as she went 2-for-4 with one home run, one double, and five RBI. Leschber’s first-inning home run brought her to 13 home runs this season, the third most of any Yellow Jacket this season. In Tech’s fourth meeting of the season with Notre Dame, Leschber saw her 12th multi-RBI game and ninth multi-hit game of the season. The senior finished the season with 26 runs, 37 hits, seven doubles, 13 home runs, 42 RBI, and 83 total bases.
2026 ACC Softball Championship All-Tournament Team
Jessica Oakland, Duke
Addison Leschber, Georgia Tech
Bri Despines, Louisville
Madison Pickens, Louisville
Bree Carrico, Virginia Tech
Michelle Chatfield, Virginia Tech
Emma Mazzarone, Virginia Tech
Jasyoni Beachum, Florida State
Ashtyn Danley, Florida State
Jazzy Francik, Florida State (MVP)
Isa Torres, Florida State
UP NEXT
The Yellow Jackets will await their fate in the NCAA Tournament Selection show on Sunday, May 10, at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.
Full Steam Ahead
Full Steam Ahead is a $500 million fundraising initiative to achieve Georgia Tech athletics’ goal of competing for championships at the highest level in the next era of intercollegiate athletics. The initiative will fund transformative projects for Tech athletics, including renovations of Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (the historic home of Georgia Tech football), the Zelnak Basketball Center (the practice and training facility for Tech basketball) and O’Keefe Gymnasium (the venerable home of Yellow Jackets volleyball), as well as additional projects and initiatives to further advance Georgia Tech athletics through program wide-operational support. All members of the Georgia Tech community are invited to visit atfund.org/FullSteamAhead for full details and renderings of the renovation projects, as well as to learn about opportunities to contribute online.
For the latest information on the Georgia Tech softball team, follow us on Twitter (@GaTechSoftball), Facebook, Instagram (@GaTechsoftball) or visit us at www.ramblinwreck.com.
Kirby Smart hasn’t hid from how Georgia goes about doling out dollars to its roster.
He wants veterans to make more than newcomers.
“I don’t want you to have to take a discount,” Smart recently told Josh Pate. “OK, a discount might be a little less than year one or two. We have we have traditionally paid our players junior and senior year as much as anybody at those positions. We don’t want to start [earlier] because I want you to earn it and work your way up.”
Smart acknowledges that route might hurt Georgia in recruiting. The 2026 recruiting cycle seems to reflect that. It was the first time Georgia signed a recruiting class that finished outside the top five of the 247Sports Composite rankings since Smart’s first class back in 2016. The Bulldogs had just two players finish in the top 50 of the player rankings, the fewest ever for a Smart signing haul.
Coming out of spring practice, it seems like the Bulldogs did a good job of identifying players who could fit and play immediately. Craig Dandridge, Tyriq Green, Khamari Brooks and Zykie Helton all had strong springs. None were viewed as top 50 overall prospects.
As for the top players on Georgia’s 2026 roster, most of them are in either their third or fourth seasons. KJ Bolden, Ellis Robinson, Nate Frazier and Chris Cole all signed as members of the 2024 recruiting class. Gunner Stockton is in his fifth year at Georgia and second as a starter.
Georgia’s 2026 team will be an older team compared to the one the Bulldogs had last season. Consider that Georgia started the year with only 10 members of the 2022 class on the roster and 13 players from the 2023 recruiting class.
This year, that number is up to 29 when you combine the number of players from the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes on the Georgia roster. Georgia’s 2026 team will have 34 players with at least three years of experience in Athens. Last season, that number was just 25.
Part of the reason Georgia’s roster is a better reflection of its spending in 2026 is because it did a much better job of retaining talent with its 2024 class than it did with the 2023 group.
Going into last season, 13 of the 26 members of the 2023 recruiting class were no longer a part of the roster.
With the 2024 group, Georgia still has 23 of the 29 players it signed from the 2024 high school recruiting ranks. Georgia also has transfers London Humphreys and Xzavier McLeod entering their third seasons in Athens.
The gap between the two classes is particularly stark at the top. Georgia has not had just one of the 10 top 100 players it signed in the 2024 class depart the program before their third season in Athens. With the 2023 group, six of the 12 top-100 signees had already left Athens.
For as much fretting as there might about the state of Georgia’s current recruiting, the 2024 class was ranked first in the country. That collection of players, which Georgia has been able to keep together, is set to enter their season in Athens.
Georgia paid big to keep players like Bolden, Robinson and Frazier from entering the transfer portal. There was a kernel of truth when Smart ribbed Miami coach Mario Cristobal about sitting too close to Robinson at an award ceremony.
Robinson figures to be one of the best players in the country this coming season. We’ve often seen top recruits — CJ Allen and Monroe Freeling are examples from the 2023 class — have their best seasons in year three, before heading off to the NFL.
That is why it’s so important to keep recruiting classes together and retain talent on an annual basis. Georgia has done a better job with the 2024 class compared to the 2023 class to this point. That’s a big reason why there aren’t as many questions and concerns about Georgia this offseason compared to last offseason, even if it has made Georgia a bit boring to talk about from a national perspective.
Texas, Miami and LSU all spent big money to bring in new talent. With Georgia, it paid top dollar to keep its roster together. No SEC team had fewer players transfer out than Georgia’s 12. That offsets some concern about the Bulldogs also making the fewest additions in the transfer portal.
“We had some new guys on our roster,” Smart told Pate. “We had 26 new freshmen. We had eight new portals. So like with all that going on, we had new people. But at least we knew they were ours. And going through spring practice to me was much more enjoyable because you didn’t have this big dark cloud brewing of was he going to be here?”
Georgia still built a very successful team in 2025, as the Bulldogs won the SEC and made it back to the College Football Playoff. But Georgia has bigger goals and Smart knows it.
“Apparently, all we can do is win the SEC championship right now, so that’s not good enough,” Smart told Finebaum.
The Bulldogs are hoping that a more veteran team will set them up for even more success than they had a season ago. And that veteran element was acquired by keeping its one-time recruits in Athens for seasons three and four.
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