Unfortunately, the easy and really ONLY good answer for all the financial woes is a successful football program. Of course, should Cal somehow manages to get that mythical Rose Bowl berths and make a ton of money (via donation increases), that would mostly be funneled back into the football program, possibly in the form of another costly infrastructure thing like another practice field (because all the other major programs have multiple). So the answer is not just one great, historic football season but a sustained football dynasty for a decade (and longer)....something akin to the run that Stanford went on under David Shaw.
By the way, the table clearly implies (and I have read this elsewhere) that women's basketball has been the most costly program for Cal. A big part of this has been trying to make that program profitable since that Final Four run - the cliche that it costs money to make money. For some of the other non-revenue programs, Cal's facility is so inadequate that even if there is a large audience to see the successful teams, Cal can't make money because they can only have a small crowd.
For Title IX reasons, Cal can't just cut a few expensive women's sports. The only way to cut any sport would mean meeting the current women to men undergraduate percentage (there are more women than men in undergraduate now) vs. the historical ratio that has more men than women. A lot of men's teams have valiantly raised a lot of money to be financially independent, but they still might eventually get cut (or something akin to that terrible downgrade attempt by Cal Athletics to make rugby a special club sport) if/when Cal Athletics have to balance that budget. Sadly, there may be an even strong impetus to do that sooner due to the COVID-19 pandemics.
Another major factor to this saga is this expected upcoming NCAA reform. Can Cal Athletics somehow find the extra money if they have to pay student-athletes?
Interesting that, as bad as the men's basketball team was under Wyking Jones, the program still turned a profit. I don't imagine that that would have continued had he been retained, but it's interesting to see the constraints of trying to manage a budget crunch, and how that likely impacted the men's basketball coaching searches recently.
I believe Wilcox' ongoing success will enable the football program to achieve profitability in the near future, with the unknown element being the impact of COVID-19 on revenues through 2021. Success will lure more fans back to Memorial, though I don't think the absence of the Raiders will have anything to do with that.
Unfortunately, the easy and really ONLY good answer for all the financial woes is a successful football program. Of course, should Cal somehow manages to get that mythical Rose Bowl berths and make a ton of money (via donation increases), that would mostly be funneled back into the football program, possibly in the form of another costly infrastructure thing like another practice field (because all the other major programs have multiple). So the answer is not just one great, historic football season but a sustained football dynasty for a decade (and longer)....something akin to the run that Stanford went on under David Shaw.
By the way, the table clearly implies (and I have read this elsewhere) that women's basketball has been the most costly program for Cal. A big part of this has been trying to make that program profitable since that Final Four run - the cliche that it costs money to make money. For some of the other non-revenue programs, Cal's facility is so inadequate that even if there is a large audience to see the successful teams, Cal can't make money because they can only have a small crowd.
For Title IX reasons, Cal can't just cut a few expensive women's sports. The only way to cut any sport would mean meeting the current women to men undergraduate percentage (there are more women than men in undergraduate now) vs. the historical ratio that has more men than women. A lot of men's teams have valiantly raised a lot of money to be financially independent, but they still might eventually get cut (or something akin to that terrible downgrade attempt by Cal Athletics to make rugby a special club sport) if/when Cal Athletics have to balance that budget. Sadly, there may be an even strong impetus to do that sooner due to the COVID-19 pandemics.
Another major factor to this saga is this expected upcoming NCAA reform. Can Cal Athletics somehow find the extra money if they have to pay student-athletes?
Interesting that, as bad as the men's basketball team was under Wyking Jones, the program still turned a profit. I don't imagine that that would have continued had he been retained, but it's interesting to see the constraints of trying to manage a budget crunch, and how that likely impacted the men's basketball coaching searches recently.
I believe Wilcox' ongoing success will enable the football program to achieve profitability in the near future, with the unknown element being the impact of COVID-19 on revenues through 2021. Success will lure more fans back to Memorial, though I don't think the absence of the Raiders will have anything to do with that.