Louisville coaches, senior staff taking 10% pay cut to help budget

Athletic Director Vince Tyra says Louisville working on ways to impact budget

University of Louisville Athletics

Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra began taking conservative steps to protect the athletic department’s 2020 fiscal budget when the NCAA Tournaments were canceled amidst the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak. Tyra said the athletic department’s budget is still on track for a positive year, which fiscally ends June 30.

After the ACC Tournament and NCAA Tournament were canceled, Tyra said the athletic department had to quickly adjust how that revenue loss would impact the budget.

“Those decisions have been beneficial to us,” Tyra said. “They have allowed us to offset the lower distribution from NCAA and ACC. Primarily, travel, meals, halting equipment and supply purchases and tabling any projects we have.”

Louisville has a revised budget for the 2021 fiscal year, which begins July 1. The budget is currently planned with the assumption that football will be played in the fall.

The planned budget continues to be adjusted as the global pandemic impacts sports.

“We have a better feel for the economic impact for our fans and donors as well as the social impact, we will better be able to dial in,” Tyra said.

Tyra said the athletic department has worked on several initiatives and developing a variety ways to affect the bottom line on the expense side.

Head coaches and senior staff in the athletic department will forgo 10% of their compensation for the next fiscal year.

Head Coach	Sport	Base Salary
Chris Mack	Men's Basketball	$4 million
Scott Satterfield	Football	$3.25 million
Jeff Walz	Women's Basketball	$1.475 million
Dan McDonnell	Baseball	$1.2 million

Tyra, who will forgo a $150,000 bonus in 2020 and 2021 along with the 10% reduction of his base salary, hasn’t had to demand coaches to take salary cuts.

“We do have four coaches at the top that are million dollar plus earners, they have been great,” Tyra said. “Each one of them, calling reaching out, ‘what do we do, how do we help?’”

Louisville doesn’t have reserves financially to run its athletic department as usual, Tyra said.