Fresno State’s exciting Pac-12 preview comes with sobering financial realities | Opinion
Fresno State has an appointment with soon-to-be Pac-12 rival Washington State at Valley Children’s Stadium, giving Bulldogs fans a great chance to size up the competition.
Except the final score of Saturday’s football game will hardly matter in the long run if university officials can’t find some way to reduce a severe financial deficit in their future conference. And soon.
For most of Fresno State’s time in the Mountain West, the Bulldogs ranked at or near the top in athletic department revenues and spending on football. Since the pandemic, they’ve slipped toward the middle of the pack.
But when Fresno State begins Pac-12 play in 2026, they’ll be at or near the bottom in both. The Bulldogs will be the MW equivalent of San José State or Nevada – the schools being left behind in this conference realignment shift.
In 2022-23, Fresno State reported $48,938,712 in athletic department revenues to the Department of Education. That may look impressive, but it’s actually the lowest among the Pac-12’s seven future football-playing members. Even lower than Utah State’s $51,789,705.
In football expenses, it’s a similar story. Fresno State spent $16,874,669 on their flagship sport in 2022-23, a $4 million increase from the previous year. But even that bump still left the Bulldogs trailing Utah State ($20,824,804) and San Diego State ($20,142,240) on the bottom ladder rungs.
It’s certainly true that money and victories don’t equate. Look no further than Colorado State, which spent $29,782,795 on football that year and went 3-9. However, Fresno State cannot reasonably expect sustained success in the Pac-12 if future student-athletes and coaches are perpetually made to overcome steep financial odds.
The primary responsibility for increasing Fresno State’s war chest belongs to recently hired athletic director Garrett Klassy, who arrived from Houston following a four-year stint at Nebraska with the billing of a proven revenue-generator.
For the Bulldogs not to fall on their faces in the Pac-12, he’d better be.
Klassy faces a massive challenge, one his two immediate predecessors could never surmount. (The guy before that, hired to clean up Title IX messes, hardly tried.) He must find a way to squeeze money out of one of California’s poorest regions.
There are reasons why the Pac-12 wanted Fresno State. Chief among them: The Bulldogs win a lot of football games, they sell a lot of tickets for football games and their televised football games draw a good number of viewers.
Fresno State commands a captive, enthusiastic fan base. Problem is, those fans on average aren’t in a financial position to pay the freight for big-time college sports.
Fresno’s financial realities
The median household income for Fresno County is $71,689, according to census data. That’s 33% lower than the state median. Nearly 18% of county residents live in poverty compared to 12% statewide. For adjacent counties, the median incomes are lower and poverty rates higher.
California is home to 57 companies listed in the latest Fortune 500 rankings, more than any other state. None are headquartered in the San Joaquin Valley, nor the Central Valley for that matter. (San Diego has three Fortune 500 companies and Boise, Idaho, two, in case you’re wondering.)
For all of Fresno County’s agriculture riches, the goods and services produced here are small economically compared to the rest of California. Fresno County’s gross domestic product of $45,388,356 in 2022 ranked 13th statewide, according to the Department of Commerce.
How far back is 13th? Even if Fresno County’s GDP is added to the combined GDPs of Tulare, Merced, Madera and Kings counties, the resulting total of $84,946,244 still wouldn’t equal that of 10th-ranked Riverside County ($95,159,114).
The point I’m trying to make is this isn’t an affluent region. And the individuals and firms that have the money and willingness to donate to Bulldogs sports are, by and large, already doing so.
Fresno State’s Pac-12 entrance also coincides with statewide budget cuts to the CSU system that has resulted in a gradual erosion of university subsidies to the athletic department. Campus groups want that trimmed even further.
Klassy is further handicapped by the financial albatross that is Save Mart Center (i.e. no parking or concession revenues and a bill every time someone flicks on a light switch), not to mention new NCAA rules that allow athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness.
While NIL collectives operate outside a university’s official fundraising arm, they compete for a lot of the same dollars. Which around here are scarce to begin with.
Washington State is a 3½-point road favorite for Saturday’s game. But unless Fresno State manages to climb out of its financial hole, the Bulldogs will be even bigger underdogs in the future.
