‘A daunting challenge’: Former USC AD shares outlook on football, future of athletics
Eric Hyman let out a laugh when he heard the question.
He’d been an athletic director at five colleges, from Virginia Military Institute to TCU to South Carolina to Texas A&M. He saw the industry grow from something more regional to a national institution flush with millions of dollars.
But no, he’s not unhappy to not be leading a department and facing the set of problems confronting athletic directors around the country.
“It’s a daunting challenge, I’ll put it that way,” Hyman told The State.
He said, at the moment, simply nobody knows what’s going to happen as the coronavirus casts its long shadow over the world of college sports. The pandemic’s rise in the national consciousness eliminated the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in March, plus the rest of spring sports.
Now, with cases rising rather than tapering off, college football, the engine of college athletics financially, is now in doubt. That’s a large-scale problem for a department such as South Carolina.
Hyman said that during his time in Columbia (2005-2012), football accounted for 71% of the department’s income (men’s basketball was another 18%). According to the school’s most recent NCAA financial report, football accounted for four-fifths of the department’s sport-specific revenue, and that didn’t touch on how much of the non-specific revenue is tied into football.
“You want to have college football, because if you don’t have college football, it’s gonna be devastating because of the debt service, and all the financial responsibilities,” Hyman said. “And then your multimedia rights partners, the impact on there, and then your apparel people, what’s the impact there? I mean, all the way across the board, just how would you deal with it?”
Some conferences have already cut back on non-conference football games, with the SEC holding off a decision about that for the next week or two. That plan doesn’t come close to guaranteeing football at all in the fall. Any plan for a spring football season, a possibility Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley has discussed, brings its own set of challenges.
Former South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, now working at his alma mater Florida, said he hoped fall football could be played, pointing out that a NASCAR race managed to get some fans into the building. But he added he’d like to see a fall season even if getting in fans couldn’t happen.
Hyman came to Columbia soon after Spurrier and oversaw the football program’s rise. He helped revitalize the facilities at the school, overseeing the construction of the Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center as well as the athletic village around it. He also hired a host of Gamecocks coaches who are still around, including Dawn Staley, Frank Martin, Beverly Smith, Bill McDonald and Kalen Anderson.
After his time at South Carolina, he was at Texas A&M from 2012-2016. For the past four years, he’s done some consulting work, which has ground to a halt because of the pandemic. He did some work at UC Berkeley, was interim AD at Chicago State for a stretch and helped with an AD search at Utah.
He did point out that this change in the state of athletic finances might reverse some of the trends in spending, as arms races in coaching salaries, staffs and facilities have driven up the costs of business. A sudden turn to scarcity might put a damper on the spiraling coaching buyouts that often draw attention from fans and those following the sport.
“Maybe this will recalibrate and hit a reset button when things can be a little bit more manageable than they’ve been in the past,” Hyman said.
But for the moment, everything in college athletics remains fraught with uncertainty. Any schools still holding reserve funds will likely have to tap them. Furloughs and pay cuts are already a reality, and job cuts are a near certainty.
Hyman said he told someone even in better times, there are not still waters around college athletics. Cross currents and 80 mile an hour headwinds. No longer in the big chair, he offer a bit of wry commentary about the road ahead.
“If you like challenges, now’s a good time to be an athletic director,” Hyman said.
An edited Q&A version of The State’s interview with Hyman is below:
The State: How happy are you to not be an AD in today’s climate?
Hyman: (Laughs.) I’ll tell you what, my blood pressure has really gone down. I really feel for the athletic directors today. You’ve got three major issues that they’re dealing with. One by itself is tough enough. I said this to somebody, there’s no still water around athletics, and there’s a lot of cross currents and about an 80 mile an hour headwind. If you like challenges, now’s a good time to be an athletic director.
TS: You mentioned the three different challenges, what are those, in your mind?
Hyman: You probably know them, but it’s obviously the COVID pandemic, the money. The financial part is going to be devastating if you don’t have football. I know when I was at South Carolina, it may have changed, but it was 71% of our budget was derived directly from football. And men’s basketball was like 18%. And so you add that up and you’re close to, you’re at almost 90% of your budget financially. It’s that. It’s the ramifications of the financial (situation). There’s a lot of challenges that are coming out of it majorly, but the one positive is, at least, you might be able to slow down spending. At least the athletic director might be able to get control of the athletic department, where I’ve always said the coaches have the power. The athletic director has the authority. Power trumps authority, and hopefully maybe this will allow the athletic directors to be more influential than they’ve been in the past.
TS: Do you imagine that this is going to end up leading to, I guess, leaner and more savings-friendly approaches?
Hyman: I think that’s what I’m saying to you. Athletic directors, like I said, I said this at A&M, but the board, they manage your daily activities, but they hold you accountable for the results, and a lot of things are outside the athletic director. The athletic director is just scrambling. So from a financial standpoint ... I mean there’s a lot of negatives, don’t get me wrong. But the positive is that maybe there’ll be a little more realistic instead of having people on top of people. Just the explosion of what the costs are. Now this might slow things down because when you really look at it, you would think that a lot of schools in the country, there’s no reserve account. You need to build it up. When I left South Carolina, we had $14 million in reserves. And I did that on purpose, to protect the programs. I have no clue what’s happened to it. I don’t know if they still have it as far as I’m concerned. But the issue was, you have to run it like a business, and it’s gotten away in the last five six years. It’s gotten way far away from that and maybe this will recalibrate things and hit a reset button when things can be a little bit more manageable than they’ve been in the past.
Back to your other question, the other thing obviously, is name, image and likeness. And that’s just paying players and where the players, the athletes get compensated — and how that all comes out in the wash, I have no clue. But if you have enough challenges now trying to stay within the NCAA rules, you can imagine what’s gonna take place with name image and likeness. So I think there’s going to be a lot of unintended consequences. And then your other issue is obviously empowerment of your athletes. And you’ve seen that around the country. College football, I think, is like an $8.8 billion industry. And you look at what the athletes ... I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand why they feel the way they do because they’re the ones who generate all this revenue, and you have coaches making $10 million, $7 1/2 million dollars, and they get a scholarship. Well, people say a scholarship is OK, but in reality their lives are so regulated they don’t get a chance to take internships during the summer, and all those kind of things. so it really is restricted what they could do. And this unfortunately is going to end up, the athletes are going to end up being compensated a little bit different than the way they have been in the past.
TS: Theoretically, if you were sort of still in an AD seat, how would you try to approach and attack this situation where departments are, you know, looking ahead to so many unknowns don’t know what you know even a football season might look like?
Hyman: I’ve always been very upfront and very open with people, and just lay the cards on the table, say this is what we’re dealing with. And there’s no magic bullet and lay it out. These are the potential consequences that could happen. You don’t know. Because this situation is very fluid. What else can you do? If they don’t have football, then jobs are going to be impacted at a high level, and maybe even sports are going to be impacted. I know nobody wants to drops sports. I’ve got that totally. But when you’re in a situation where you don’t have the finances to support it, what are you going to do? Obviously people are in jeopardy of their employment and, and you talk about opportunities for student-athletes. It’s a daunting challenge, I’ll put it that way.
TS: Do you have any sense of the mood around the sport about where things might be going football-wise, or is it all just kind of hold your breath, wait, plan and when something happens it happens?
Hyman: Nobody knows. Obviously I think there’s greater chances that you won’t have it than you will. But nobody knows right now. You want to get it. You want to have college football because if you don’t have college football, it’s gonna be devastating because of the debt service, and all the financial responsibilities, and then your multimedia rights partner, with impact on them, and then your apparel people, what’s the impact there? I mean, all the way across the board, it’s just, how would you deal with it? It’s enough to say grace over, I’ll put it that way.
And you’ve got to understand, an athletic director’s job is to juggle a lot of balls, and there’s a certain rhythm that you have in athletic departments, and obviously now you have three balls, huge balls to throw your rhythm off with the three things that I said to you, and all the ancillary things that will take place from that.
TS: Could you imagine almost, I guess a contraction in overall the size of college sports, when this is all said and done?
Hyman: It depends on your financial support. See, what makes it really tough is that the state coffers across the country for state revenue, the revenue is down dramatically. And so your universities are having to cut back a certain percentage. So you’re having that. You’re not going to get help there, but you can go out and borrow the money.
Maybe that’s what some of the schools do, to borrow the money, but then that really puts you in harm’s way because you don’t know. You don’t know what the end product is going to be. And you’re going to bet on the (cards), and you just don’t know what it’s gonna be right now. This could be something that we could have for a year or two year. Gosh, I hope not. I hope it’s football this fall, but still, as an athletic director, you’ve got to look. There’s so many things across the waterfront that could happen. The bottom line is you have X amount of dollars. And with those X amount of dollars you can do X amount of things. And when those dollars are gone, they’re gone. And I know the ADs don’t drive around in a Wells Fargo truck today. There’s no money tree out here, and their resources are, potentially going forward, are going to be a lot less than they have right now.
TS: This is sort of a procedural question but if a department does come up in the red, I’m guessing the primary sources for fixing that are either borrowing more money or asking the school for it? Are there any other sources?.
Hyman: Well yeah, your fans, your support. But if you look across the country, some of your donors are impacted substantially. If you have a state like Texas, you’ve got a lot of deep pockets, I mean obviously with oil now, where they are right now currently is not where they’ve been in the past because people are struggling right now. But in South Carolina, you have an X amount of donors, but they’re impacted too. How many of them, I don’t know that you know, but I don’t think you have numbers in South Carolina that you do in Texas that have the financial flexibility.
This story was originally published July 18, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
