Matthew Moore: Late last month, the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees passed a resolution that the university would begin feeding money to the school’s athletic department. Zach Arns is the program director at ESPN Arkansas. He joined me yesterday in the Bruce Applegate News Studio Two, and he says this is a huge deal in a lot of ways.
Zach Arns: This is a mafia-style payment plan. The university received $4.86 million from the athletic department in an annual payment for whatever that went toward. Well, the athletic department gets that back now. The university, and this is I think the thing that caught my attention, this is the University of Arkansas, not the athletic department, not the foundation, nothing to do with athletics, but the University of Arkansas. The academic side is now in the football business. And that, to me, is alarming. That should be sending off alarm bells through the academic community.
In essence, every year the University of Arkansas has to pay the athletic department $6 million. Had a bad year. We don’t care. Pay us. Enrollment’s down. We don’t care. Pay us. This is the scene from Goodfellas. I love that movie to death. But that was the first thing I thought about, that no matter what happens, the University of Arkansas owes the athletic department $6 million. And if you read the entirety of the decree, that cost is only going to go up. So next year it’s going to be six-plus, and then it’s eventually going to hit seven, and it might hit eight and it might hit nine.
There’s only three ways you can do this. Charles Robinson went and said, "I don’t have this." There’s only three ways you can do this. You can increase fees, and that gets passed along to the student body, which isn’t going to be very popular. You can cut jobs and programs, which is what most big businesses will do, or you can get a hybrid of the two. None of these are going to be popular in any way, shape or form.
The part that I think gets overlooked in all of this is $15 million, because you’ve got the $4.86, you’ve got the six, that’s $11. There’s got to be a joint venture between the university and the athletic department to bridge that $4 million gap. How do you do that? The University of Arkansas is in the football business, and to me, that’s wrong.
The University of Arkansas athletic department failed in every way, shape and form, every conceivable measurement on how to attack the NIL era. They have failed. What they’ve received is essentially a bailout. And as the University of Arkansas board voted 7–3 to do this, to me, that’s terrifying that they can unilaterally just say the University of Arkansas owes the athletic department $15 million because we want to be good at sports.
Moore: How common is this sort of arrangement in colleges around the nation?
Arns: I think there is a struggle for universities and athletic departments to come to a point to do this. I know there are schools that have a pattern very similar to this, schools within the conference. Is this the way we should be handling this, that your athletic department wants to be good but they’re not good at raising money. Well, that’s their problem in my view. That’s the University of Arkansas athletic department’s problem. It shouldn’t be passed on to me or the students or anyone else.
You’ve gotten enough breaks. Your athletes get tax-free NIL money. You don’t get tax-free money. I don’t get tax-free money. But because we want to be good at sports, now all of a sudden it gets passed on to them. You got that break. Okay, fine. That’s what you want to do. But now we’re taxing the students for a young man or woman that comes to the University of Arkansas who has no interest in athletics. You’re going to get taxed because we want to be good on Saturdays. To me, that’s not what we’re here to do.
Moore: In 2023 there was a football team in a power four conference that went 3–9. They only won one game in their conference. Two years later, they went undefeated and won the national championship. Would we be having this conversation right now if it weren’t for the Indiana Hoosiers. I think so.
I don’t think what people don’t understand about Indiana University is that they have the largest alumni base in the country. Curt Cignetti had a plan when he went in. He took a bunch of guys from James Madison University with him. Forty-plus guys came with him. He utilized the transfer portal, sold them on an idea. And what happens when you start winning is people start donating.
This is the exact opposite. This is we can’t figure this out on our end, so let’s tax the university. Arkansas has always been very, very good about keeping athletics and academics separate. Really good at that, almost to a fault. They’ve managed to do this. And now you’re basically telling the University of Arkansas students you have to pay for this. It’s a private endeavor.
What’s the ROI, the return on investment for this. You beat Western Carolina on a Saturday. Fifteen million dollars in the NIL era isn’t going to change the dynamics of what’s happening within your program.
Indiana gives everybody hope. Indiana is the outlier. This is an odd case, and I’m very big on data points. Do it again. Show me you can do it again. You made the playoffs last year. They softened up their schedule at Indiana. They’re not playing anybody but Big Ten opponents. They got rid of everybody that could beat them in the nonconference. They softened their schedule to a point where if they just go and win the Big Ten, they’re good. Okay, do it again. Then do it again. And if that becomes the model, fantastic. But right now you’re looking at the outlier.
Moore: You say $15 million isn’t enough. What is enough?
Arns: Forty. Forty-five. Fifty. It’s only going up in the NIL era because nothing is reported. Or if it’s reported, it’s generally exaggerated. We don’t know what these teams are spending.
Ohio State in the 2024–25 season spent $33 million. That was the number they reported. There were teams that reported $40 million in 2025. What’s 2026. Is it going to be $50 million. Sixty. What is enough. Nobody knows. You can’t keep throwing money at it.
How many people do we know throw money at a problem and it never gets fixed. You have to have the right people to spend the money the right way.
Moore: Two of the no votes were people that stick out to me for very specific reasons. One was former football player Steve Cox. The other was Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ deputy chief of staff, Judd Deere. Those two names feel pretty significant as no votes.
Arns: I think the athletes of today or the athletes of yesterday see the dangers, the path that we’re heading down. From an academic standpoint, you can’t be leaning on the university because that is ultimately the students and their parents who pay the bills and are going to suffer for it.
I think it’s reasonable. Arkansas out-of-state tuition for certain states is reasonable. If you want to raise that and bring it to a competitive level, I don’t have a problem with that. But if I’m going to charge Matt Moore $300 more, and Matt is a biology major with zero interest in athletics, that’s unfair.
We were doing the math the other day. Twenty-five thousand times $300 is $7.5 million. There’s your money. That’s what you’re looking for right there. It’s $300 per student for an activity fee. Why? So you can be better on Saturdays.
Basketball got an angel investor in John Tyson. He comes in and drops his money in. Basketball’s competitive. Now we’re trying to do this with football. Now we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Moore: One of the things that sticks out to me is this idea that if there’s enough money, we’ll be the best team.
Arns: Not a chance. Money isn’t the fix. You’ve got to have the right people in charge.
Curt Cignetti at Indiana is the right guy to manage the money. Nick Saban has said this a hundred times. You can spend $25 million. If you spend it poorly, where are you. You just spent $20 million.
I wrestle with this all the time because the people who are supposed to be teaching our children how to live are so bad at managing business. They’re terrible at it. When I saw the spreadsheet and saw $195 million generated for fiscal year 2024–25 and you’re still crying poor, I have a problem with that.
As somebody who doesn’t make $195 million, it’s hard for me to work through that. Those are rich people problems. Figure it out. Stop asking me for money.
Moore: The athletic department also announced last week it would enter into a strategic partnership with a group to secure live event bookings. One of those announcements includes a Post Malone and Jelly Roll show at Razorback Stadium. Is that enough revenue to bridge the gap?
Arns: That’s the million-dollar question, or the $15 million question. They’ve had so many harebrained schemes over the last couple of years. I’m in wait-and-see mode.
On paper, bringing artists into Razorback Stadium is a good idea. They had Garth Brooks a couple of years ago. Sold it out. They’re bringing in two soccer matches in the spring. I’m for this. This is the proper fundraiser. Instead of raising prices, this is a good idea.
People in Northwest Arkansas show up for concerts. It’s packed night in, night out. I’m willing to wait and see.
Moore: Let’s say Hunter Yurachek gives you a call and says give me three ideas of ways that we can make a difference here. Ways that we can keep from raising prices for students. Ways that we can keep from doing this sort of thing that will harm the University of Arkansas as a whole.
Arns: Again, $15 million. Question number one, don’t go after the students. Don’t raise their tuition. College is expensive enough. And now you’re taxing them for a football team.
Second, and this is probably a little bit more nebulous, you have to spend your money better. Paying coaches $8 million, $10 million, $12 million with massive buyouts on the backside. That is not good business.
And this is probably something that no one wants to talk about. But collegiate athletics, intercollegiate athletics is very expensive. You need to look at possibly cutting some programs. I know the SEC has some parameters on that, but it’s not fiscally possible if you have to keep going back to your fan base every year and saying, well, we need more.
I can find you $10 million. Anybody who’s balanced a spreadsheet can go track and field loses you $10 million. We either cut costs there or in another program. I think tennis made like $82, but spent a million. That’s a bad business model where you’ve got these cost centers, if you will, to use a corporate word. You’ve got these cost centers losing millions. Well, there’s your money right there.
And I’m not saying you have to do this, but it’s something you need to genuinely look at. Or cutting costs in some of those areas. Fix the problem yourself. Don’t ask me to bail you out, which is what they’ve always done. And their costs, or they keep spending more and more and more and more. But they don’t spend the money responsibly.
Zach Arns is the program director at ESPN Arkansas. He joined me yesterday in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two.
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