Isn’t AZ missing like many many millions of dollars from its budget?
The university has a $240m budget hole in a $2.3b budget. Part of it is the post-pandemic budget bomb hitting almost every single university right now, but Arizona seems to have had a real lack of supervision and controls in place. They’re out of compliance with basic state laws like the required amount of cash hand. It’s really bad.
The university loaned the athletic dept $86m during the pandemic, $55m of which is still outstanding. And there doesn’t appear to be any workable plan to pay that off.
Heeke publicly floated the idea of privatizing
the football program, a tactic I love but that was not popular among boosters and alums. Or the coaches. There was no way Fisch was going to sign a new contract given the budget problems and uncertainty.
No idea who is going to step into that AD job. It’s going to be a nasty one.