photo by: Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics

KU athletic director Travis Goff speaks during the beam ceremony at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium in Lawrence on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024.

The Kansas athletic department is on track to be “right around budget” for the fiscal year 2025 that concludes at the end of June, Chief Financial Officer Pat Kaufman told members of the board of directors on Friday.

It’s a significant shift from KU Athletics’ initial budget projection for the year, approved in November, that had predicted revenue falling short of expenses by $16 million. The department did not share exact revenue and expense numbers during Friday’s meeting.

“Remarkably, we’re going to end up — I shouldn’t say remarkably — we’re going to end up right around budget, probably a little bit favorable of a budget this year on a net basis,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman said that the budget played out differently in several ways from how KU expected. The department incurred greater costs than anticipated to play its home football games at Children’s Mercy Park and GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium while David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium was under construction. On the other hand, he said, “It also generated extra revenues.”

“We smashed our football ticket sales by over $2 million,” Kaufman said. “… Fans kind of liked going to Arrowhead and the team did well as well.”

Also, KU exceeded expectations “from a salaries and benefits perspective.”

“We’ve already put some steps in place to save some dollars there, from some of the things that Travis has talked about throughout the year that we’ve implemented,” Kaufman said. “hiring freezes and other initiatives.”

As the Journal-World reported, KU Athletics has cut its workforce by about 30 people, or 8% to 10% of its size, since the start of last fall through a combination of a hiring freeze, voluntary separations and layoffs. Athletic director Travis Goff said that would save about $3 million.

Goff said during the board meeting that over the course of the last nine months, the department has found ways to reduce its expenses by more than $15 million in total — much of which, he cautioned, will not come into play until the fiscal year 2026.

On that note, for the second year in a row, KU Athletics did not consider or approve a budget for the fiscal year 2026 during its June meeting, due in large part to uncertainty surrounding the still-unresolved House v. NCAA settlement that will allow schools to share revenue directly with their athletes.

“We’ll probably take that later in the summer for consideration and approval,” Kaufman said. “But FY25 looks good for now.”

The settlement — along with its repercussions like the formation of new systems like the College Sports Commission, cap-management tools and NIL Go clearinghouse for sponsorship deals — was a popular topic of discussion on Friday.

It introduces a variety of variables that will be difficult to approximate as KU looks to prepare its 2026 budget. As university CFO Jeff DeWitt said, the budget will have to factor in the settlement along with revenues from playing in a renovated football stadium, as well as the changing costs of athletic travel from year to year.

“Pat’s job has gotten considerably harder in the last year,” DeWitt said.

Fitzgerald extension imminent

Goff said that KU is “on the cusp” of a contract extension with baseball coach Dan Fitzgerald.

“Really excited about the future of the program and coach Fitzgerald’s energetic commitment to the University of Kansas and all of us leading that program forward,” Goff said.

KU baseball recently concluded a momentous season in which it returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014 and set records for conference wins and road wins. The Jayhawks were eliminated from the postseason last Saturday with a loss to North Dakota State in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Fitzgerald’s success within three years at a program that has not recently experienced much of it prompted some media members to bring his name up for several offseason head coaching vacancies, but KU is now poised to lock him down for the years ahead. His current contract runs through 2029; by making the NCAA Tournament, he earned an automatic one-year extension.

Rowing coaching search ongoing

KU parted ways with former rowing coach Carrie Cook-Callen on May 21 by announcing that it would not renew her contract.

Goff said on Friday that KU is about a third of the way through its search for a new coach, with sport administrator Maya Ozery, the senior associate athletics director for student-athlete development and inclusive excellence, leading the way.

“(There’s a) lot of excitement and energy about KU rowing,” Goff said. “We met with the team to get their thoughts. We met with former letterwinners yesterday and got a lot of great feedback from them as well.”

Goff is making his sixth head coaching hire after Lance Leipold (football), Lindsay Kuhle (women’s golf), Fitzgerald, Nate Lie (soccer) and Matt Ulmer (volleyball).

“No pressure, you’re batting 1.000,” Chancellor Douglas Girod said.