In reality, a lot of them did. You aren’t seeing any more major facilities capital expenditures anymore. Certain positions were cut or reassigned. Other costs were simply absorbed because the cost of running the day to day functions of the department have not increased on nearly the scale of player compensation demand or SEC Network revenue.
Think about it this way, in 2010, we didn’t have to pay players anything, but we also didn’t have $70 million per year simply handed to us just for being SEC members. How did we pay for all the other functions of the department back then? Seems like the current situation is much better financially. Yes, expenses have greatly increased, but not nearly as much as revenue has increased. Its still a net gain over the pre-NIL / pre-SECN days, which is why the money going out to players keeps going up. We still haven’t hit an inflection point to where it’s no longer feasible.
We added tens of millions in TV revenue 14 years ago. We just added the tens of millions to pay players like 3 years ago. The argument doesn’t hold water. Everybody had it really good for over a decade until it became time to pay the piper.
Yes, alumni also have to pitch in way more, too, but their contributions pale in comparison to the TV money.
