How Wisconsin could use the extra millions it'll soon receive from new Big Ten media deals

What do you have planned for that money?

The seven-year agreements announced Thursday with Fox, CBS and NBC starting with the 2023-24 season are reported to be worth an average of more than $1 billion per year for the conference, which will trickle down a part of that to its 14 schools — soon to be 16 with the 2024 additions of UCLA and Southern Cal.

The University of Wisconsin already gets roughly $50 million per year from the Big Ten, most of it linked to media rights contracts. The new sums aren’t yet public — a Sports Illustrated report put the figure at more than $70 million per school per year — but it’s safe to say the athletic department will have many millions of dollars more coming in soon.

If one of your ideas is to bring back baseball, you’re probably going to be disappointed again. History suggests adding sports isn’t a top priority for UW administrators.

Athletic director Chris McIntosh said last fall sports expansion wasn’t a front-burner topic for UW. The athletic department isn’t too far removed from answering questions of whether it needed to cut sports like other Big Ten schools were doing in the first year of the pandemic, so there’s likely to be some caution exhibited.

UW seems far more likely to invest new money into its existing 23 programs and roughly 650 athletes than to broaden its portfolio. Given that, here are four ways the Badgers could use the extra cash.

Improve facilities

UW athletics is about to become the owner of a prime piece of property with tremendous redevelopment potential. It might be a few years away, but the construction of a new football practice facility on the site of the Camp Randall Memorial Sports Center (aka the Shell) is a good bet.

The athletic department has been studying how best to use the Shell once it completes a purchase from the Division of Recreation & Wellbeing. That’s due to happen after a new recreational gym facility on Observatory Drive opens in 2023. A 2020 report commissioned by UW recommended moving the indoor track to the McClain Center and building a new indoor football practice facility in place of the Shell.

The football facility probably will happen regardless of new Big Ten media money, so maybe some funding could go toward another facility in need of an upgrade.

More than five years into an athletic facilities master plan from 2017, projects are in progress or have been completed at Camp Randall Stadium, the Kohl Center, the Field House, Nielsen Tennis Stadium, University Ridge Golf Course and the Soderholm Family Aquatic Center. The soccer and track teams have seen renderings of a new or improved facility since 2007, but there’s nothing yet planned for the McClimon Complex.

There are complicating factors. A main one is the competing interest with the overall campus master plan, which envisions the McClimon site as a future health sciences addition sometime after 2035. The soccer and track teams, meanwhile, have tents instead of permanent locker rooms at their home venue — not a great look for a Big Ten school.

Prepare to pay players

The results of recent court cases involving the NCAA make it easier to envision a day when college athletes get paid directly for competing. They now can make money from their name, image and likeness and get paid for academics, so being treated as employees doesn’t seem as far off as it once did. (The National Labor Relations Board already has said Division I football players at private schools can be considered as such.)

UW officials have been opposed to the pay-for-play concept, but it’s fair to wonder whether that would hold up if it became common among peer schools. And the athletic department has opened the bank for athletes starting this school year, with bonus money for staying academically eligible and graduating.

What kind of salaries would college athletes draw as employees? That could be subject to negotiation and litigation. Where would athletic departments get the money to pay? Media rights deals are a possibility in the major conferences.

Boost mental health support

David Lacocque, hired by UW last December as director of clinical and sport psychology, said athletics mental health professionals saw more than 10% of athletes in the first three months of the 2021-22 school year. For comparison, university officials have reported usually seeing 10% of the entire student body over a calendar year, he said.

A 2019 NCAA study showed 30% of women’s athletes and 25% of men’s athletes felt in the previous month that difficulties were piling up so high that they could not overcome them.

There’s a growing need for mental health support with college athletes, and it would make sense for UW to continue to increase funding for it.

Beyond that, the athletic department could look into expanding existing programming around off-field programs like nutrition and career readiness.

Escalate coach pay

UW added more than $1 million to its football coach salary pool in 2022, and it’s hard to picture the trend turning the other way. Recruiting and retaining in-demand coaches requires a financial commitment, and Badgers coaches have been getting rewarded lately.

The total paid to UW coaches in salary, benefits and bonuses in 2019-20 was just shy of $24 million, or 16% of total expenses. More money in the revenue category means more money to put toward the salary line of expenses.