Wisconsin Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez painted a dark picture for fans in a Thursday message.
In a message released to the Wisconsin faithful spread out across the world, Alvarez said the Badgers stand to lose “more than $100 million” in revenue because of coronavirus and that the “financial crisis threatens” Wisconsin’s “ability to sustain the success we’ve celebrated.” (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
You can read the full message below.
“The experience we love as Badgers and the legacy of our extraordinary athletic department is at risk.
“We will have two choices: remain at the head of the class or fall behind.”
A message from Coach Alvarez pic.twitter.com/CRYkKzKlfj
— Wisconsin Badgers ???? (@UWBadgers) July 23, 2020
Two big takeaways here. First and foremost, that’s about the darkest message I’ve ever seen tied to Wisconsin sports, and it’s a blunt reminder of how badly coronavirus has damaged sports.
We’re talking about a single Big 10 school losing $100 million or more with the uncertainty surrounding coronavirus and football. That’s not a lot of money. That’s a shocking amount of money, folks.
If the Badgers are about to lose $100 million, then I don’t even know what our athletic department will look like moving forward.
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That leads me to my second point. It certainly feels like Alvarez is setting the stage to ask big donors to open their checkbooks and starting writing fat dollar amounts to the school.
He’s not even being shy about it. He’s saying they either get the money or the Wisconsin athletic department will fall off a cliff.
We simply can’t allow that to happen.
I don’t have a concrete answer on how we fix this shortfall if football doesn’t happen, but something clearly needs to be done.
Losing $100 million will make this situation an absolute crisis!