Cal Athletics drew nation’s second-largest deficit in 2018-19

The California Golden Bears did not hit the mark during the 2018-19 athletic year, and vastly overspent, according to a report from USA Today Sports.

The company’s annual spending report focuses on college financial situations, accessing public records and reported spendings and revenue generated from every major university in the country. Though their chart features mainly just total revenue, total expenses, allocated funds and percentage of funds that were allocated, some quick math revealed just how big the gap between total revenue generated and total expenses from the Cal athletic department really was for 2018-19.

According to the USA Today report, Cal saw $87,500,758 in total revenue from the athletics department during the 2018-19 academic/athletic year. They also spent $106,676,734 in total expenses during that time frame.

That gap of $19,175,976 was the second largest in the country, second only to Alabama’s $21,226,792, though presenting a higher figure than UCLA’s much-publicized $18,926,075 deficit that Dan Guerrero left the Bruins.

It’s not all bad, I reckon, as Cal spent just the 36th-highest amount on athletics during that time frame, but framing it the other way, it doesn’t get any better.

Cal’s total revenue generated of $87,500,758 ranked 49th in the country and eighth of 10 total teams in the Pac-12 that were reported.

They even fell behind Arizona, Utah and Colorado in total revenue generated while Cal and UCLA were leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the Pac-12 in total deficit.

Conversely, Texas A&M led the country by generating a positive figure of over $43M.

The highest positive figure in the Pac-12 was Arizona’s $4,525,554 while of the 10 schools that reported, only four of them saw positive figures.

The full data and the methodology can be found here.