Bulldogs have a $143 million athletics budget for 2019

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The Georgia Athletic Association board of directors approved a record $143.3 million budget Friday. And it’s a good thing, because costs are going through the roof, particularly when it comes to football.

Among the line items in the 2019 budget, approved by unanimous vote at the spring meeting here at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge on Lake Oconee, was a football compensation expenditure of $9,418,877. That’s the cost of paying head coach Kirby Smart his new $6.6 million salary plus the salaries of all of the members of the ever-growing football support staff.

The figure is almost twice what UGA paid in football salaries the previous year ($4.985 million).

“It’s all relative to college athletics now,” Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said after the meeting.

Georgia’s football operations budget for 2019 is $35.2 million, up $7.8 million from 2018. That includes a $2.265 million outlay for recruiting travel.

There also is a new lineitem buried within. It’s $1.8 million, which is the new federal excise tax that is being assessed on nonprofits that pay employees more than $1 million in salary.

So Georgia is now being assessed a 21 percent tax rate on anything over that amount that it pays coaches. Currently that is on three individuals: Smart, basketball coach Tom Crean ($3.2 million) and football defensive coordinator Mel Tucker ($1.5 million).

The federal excise tax was part of a legislative package passed last year that also will eliminate donations to athletic departments to buy tickets.

“I understand the theory behind passing the legislation [to discourage excessive salaries] but I’m not sure in the current marketplace that it’s going to achieve its goal,” UGA President Jere Morehead said. “So far it has not.”

So while college athletics has more money than ever coming in, it has more than ever going out as well. Georgia is spending more money than ever to take care of student-athletes, including cost-of-attendance supplements, training table and other services.

“Fortunately we’re able to do so much more for our student-athletes than we used to do,” McGarity said. “I’d say other than salaries and support services that we need to keep the engine running, what we’re spending on our student-athletes has been truly transformative. That’s not really being talked about. There are certain things we’re able to do that they’re not able to do on a lot of other campuses.”