Yep. Football finances all non-revenue sports, and most SEC athletic are operating with tight “reported” margins or are operating at a loss.
Arkansas is a great example. A formerly proud SEC program is basically tanking this season because they didn’t want to pay Pittman $20 million after the 2024 season.
The media doesn’t help. After Michigan’s $20 million+ NCAA penalty, reporters were tweeting out Michigan’s endowment valued at $19.2 billion. The average fan, and apparently journalists, don’t understand you can’t spend endowment funds on athletics. There are very strict guidelines on how universities can spend that money. If there weren’t strict guidelines, aggy would have already spent every penny of their PUF portion on football years ago.
Long story short, aggy (sort of), Texas, Georgia, and Alabama are the only SEC schools that can eat a huge buyout. Florida looked for a work around with Napier. Tennessee self reported penalties to fire Pruitt with cause.