Inside Athletics: John Hartwell

OleMissSports.com's Inside Athletics is a biweekly blog by the Ole Miss athletics department's senior administrators and key personnel to offer fans added insight into the overall operation of the department.

Overseeing a $34.4 million annual athletics budget and a $13.8 million annual UMAA Foundation budget, I pay as much attention to dollars and cents as wins and losses when it comes to Ole Miss athletics.

It is important for us to win, and it is equally important for us to operate within our budgets and to make sound financial decisions.  Ultimately our job as administrators is to provide our coaches and student-athletes with the facilities, equipment, nutrition, travel arrangements, etc., that they need to be successful both within the Southeastern Conference and nationally. This goal has to be balanced with running a fiscally sound operation in which we don’t spend more than what we bring in revenue wise.

This balancing act is made more challenging by two significant factors: 1) rising costs that are beyond our control, such as tuition costs and energy costs which affect travel costs; and 2) the continuing “arms race” in collegiate athletics in terms of building newer and bigger facilities.  In many ways running the business of a Division IA athletics department requires the same management and financial skills it takes to run a business.  I’ve spent 18 years as a CPA, and I often have to call on this experience to make sound business decisions for Ole Miss athletics.  The last thing I want to do is to tell a coach or fellow administrator “no” when he or she makes a reasonable request, even though sometimes you have to because we just couldn’t make it work financially.  However, I never want to tell a coach or administrator that unless I have exhausted every effort to grant their request.  In these cases, I then ask the person to prioritize the need versus other financial needs their sport or area has, and whether or not the request is going to help the success of our student-athletes on the playing field, in the classroom, or in preparing them to be positive contributors to society after they leave Ole Miss.

In our budgeting process, we involve each head coach (or their designee) and department head by asking them to identify their needs for the following year.  This is done in February each year and is the first step of a three-month process to develop the following year’s budget.  Our budgeting system is a “zero-based” budget meaning that each year each sport/department has to justify their needs to determine a budget, as opposed to giving across the board percentage increases.

Accountability is of utmost importance in the financial operations of any business and the Ole Miss Athletics Department is no exception.  We have a wide array of groups that we must be accountable to.  These groups include the NCAA and the Southeastern Conference (for compliance reasons), the State of Mississippi and its IHL Board (for fiduciary and state guidelines to include procurement, ethics, etc.), University Administration, donors to the UMAA Foundation, and our coaches and our student-athletes (to ensure they are given every opportunity to be successful).

The following is an executive level breakdown of the Ole Miss athletics budget for FY2008 (which runs from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008):

 

REVENUES:

Football Tickets - $9,500,000
Men’s Basketball Tickets - $840,000
Baseball Tickets - $480,000
All Other Tickets - $37,000
SEC TV Football - $3,800,000
SEC TV Men’s Basketball - $950,000
SEC Championship Game/Bowls Football - $4,700,000
SEC/NCAA Basketball Tournament - $1,650,000
Concessions - $520,000
Student Fees - $1,815,462
Out of State Waivers - $1,200,000
UMAA Foundation Supplement - $4,800,000
Telesouth Marketing/Broadcast Rights - $800,000
NCAA Distribution - $255,000
Rebel Shop & Collegiate Licensing - $300,000
Nike - $50,000
Fed Ex Gift on Academic Center - $500,000
SEC Surplus - $440,000
Game Guarantees - $304,500
All Other Revenues - $1,440,882
TOTAL REVENUES - $34,382,844

EXPENSES:

Athletics Sports - $17,340,514
Academic Support - $908,996
Training Room - $1,166,848
Strength & Conditioning - $516,142
Media Relations - $692,476
Ticket Office - $656,824
Video Productions - $446,665
Compliance - $330,139
Equipment Room - $350,932
Debt Service - $4,261,102
Buildings, Grounds, Game Management - $3,635,282
Administration - $4,076,924
TOTAL EXPENDITURES - $34,382,844

John Hartwell

Ole Miss Senior Associate Athletics Director for Finance

Past Articles

	10/05/2007	Inside Athletics: Sans Russell
	09/24/2007	Inside Athletics: Walker Jones
	09/05/2007	Inside Athletics: George Smith
	09/05/2007	OleMissSports.com Launches Athletics Blog

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