Utah athletics announces department wide furloughs and layoffs

Speaking on Friday, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan announced that there would be department-wide furloughs and layoffs in response to the economic impact due to the COVID-19 pandemic

The economic downfall due to the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the nation has taken another victim.

Speaking on Friday, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan that there would be department-wide furloughs and layoffs in response to the economic impact due to the pandemic.

"As I have previously shared, the financial challenges that we are facing at Utah has led us to make difficult — but necessary — decisions to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic,” Harlan said. “These changes include furloughs of various lengths for every department employee — including me, our executive cabinet and our head and assistant coaches. In addition, in some select cases, we have also eliminated positions through reductions in force. We also have eliminated all performance bonuses until further notice.”

On August 11, the athletic department took a huge hit when the Pac-12 CEO's elected to cancel/postpone the fall sports season until 2021 as a direct response to the pandemic and the health and safety of its athletes. Following the loss of the fall sports season, primarily the football season, Harlan told reporters that the athletic department could lose $50-$60-million of their $91-million budget.

“Well, certainly there is an economic impact of this and certainly we are not surprised that we are in this position. It’s something that was a possibility. As such, our team has been planning for this possible outcome," Harlan said a few weeks ago. "Candidly, we believe it’s anywhere from $50-$60 million loss. Could be more depending on various different elements on a $91 million budget. We understand that is going to cause us to have to make some very difficult decisions as it relates to the operation of our department this year. We had an all-staff meeting about an hour ago and we said the same thing."

On ESPN 700’s “Bill Riley Show” Friday, Harlan told the news of the furloughs, stating that the decisions revealing the layoffs weren't made in regards to employee performance. The decisions were made because of the reality of the situation they find themselves in.

“We are prioritizing the areas of our athletics operations that directly support our student-athletes,” he said. “We’ve collectively thought as a group if we could all do this together it would minimize. We’ve had to lay off some folks in terms of job eliminations and that’s been really hard."

The furloughed workers not only include Harlan himself, but also include Larry Krystkowiak and Kyle Whittingham, the head coaches for the men's basketball and football programs respectively. Both coaches are on contracts that pays them out north of $3-million per year.

According to athletic department's staff directory, the department contains more than 200 employees — but Harlan didn't specify who or how many employees were terminated.

Despite news of the layoffs, Harlan expressed gratitude regarding news that broke Thursday night. The Pac-12 announced a partnership with Quidol, a diagnostic company with rapid COVID-19 testing that can produce results in 15 minutes.

"We’re doing our thing and obviously with yesterday’s news I think everyone pretty much saw that as a big step,” Harlan said. “And so, at the same token, we’ve got to manage our expectations. It doesn’t mean we’re going to start a game tomorrow.”

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