Gophers athletics director Mark Coyle is leaning into a conversation he had a few years ago with former football coach Chris Petersen.

After connecting during their time together at Boise State, Peterson told Coyle during the pandemic that it’s important to “focus on the next-best right thing.”

That advice has come in handy as Coyle navigates a rapidly changing landscape in college sports. Name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation for current players continues to grow, while an estimated $2.8 billion NCAA settlement in payments to former athletes and revenue sharing to future athletes will soon both be expenses added to the Gophers’ athletics budget.

“What is the next-best right thing for us to do to keep Minnesota competitive in the Big Ten, to keep us moving forward, to give our coaches the chance to compete at the highest level?” Coyle wondered during a 20-minute interview with the Pioneer Press this week. “So, that’s we’ve been trying to focus on. But it’s still bizarre the amount of changes going on right now. I mean, it’s crazy.”

The Gophers reported $148 million in revenue and $146 million in expenses in fiscal year 2023, and will need to figure out how to balance those incoming line-item costs in future years.

The Gophers received $47.8 million in media rights in 2023, and that portion is expected to grow in the first full year of the Big Ten Conference’s deal to broadcast football games on FOX, CBS and NBC. One reported estimate from ESPN had the per-school share growing from between $80 million to $100 million.

“No. If it was $80 to $100 million a year, I would not have gray hair,” Coyle responded. “Well, that is not accurate at all. There will be an increase, but I can tell you with confidence, it’s not $80 to $100 million.”

Given the anticipated budget pinch, Coyle plans to make hard decisions on how his department operates. That includes day-to-day operations, analyzing job vacancies and, for example, potentially adding more regionally based travel schedules for its non-revenue sports.

It appears that the Gophers’ decision in 2020 to eliminate three men’s sports — tennis, gymnastics and indoor track and field — will help them avoid cutting more sports in the near future.

“I felt like that put Minnesota in a very good competitive posture in the Big Ten,’ Coyle said about the U going to 22 sports after the pandemic. “If you go back at that point in time, we had the fourth-highest number of sports (and) the eighth-ranked budget in the (14-team) Big Ten.

“Well, as you look at today, I shared with the (Board of) Regents last month, with 18 members, our budget is 14th in the Big Ten. Our sport offerings are around the middle of the Big Ten Conference right now, so I feel like that’s a good space to be in for us.”

Coyle later added: “I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. … So, we’ll continue to look at all options as we move forward. But right now, (cutting) sports has not been part of that conversation.”

Future of the Barn?

Before the NCAA settlement and revenue sharing expenses came into sharper focus this summer, the Gophers started to explore potential renovations to Williams Arena, and even replacing the 96-year-old basketball venue. Coyle said the U has had a handful of meetings with outside consultants on options but is still gathering information.

“When we played UConn last year in women’s basketball, when we played Iowa in women’s basketball, the building was sold out, right?” Coyle said. “And nobody complained about the Barn, right? If we win, if we have success; we give people a reason to come to the building and be a part of that. Obviously, we had Paige (Bueckers) and Caitlin (Clark), but if we continue to have success with both our basketball programs, I feel like we’re going to have people (who) will be there.

“But no decisions have been made,” Coyle added about the future of the Barn. “And I promise we will communicate that with people before we do anything.”

NIL foundation and growth

The Gophers’ NIL collective Dinkytown Athletes uses funds from boosters and fans outside the athletics department budget. While those actual figures are held close to the vest for competitive reasons, Coyle has seen a “dramatic” growth in opportunities for players outside of a pay-for-play model.

That, for example, has helped the football program retain all but one returning starter from last year’s team.

“You always need to raise more,” Coyle acknowledged. “But we feel like we’ve been competitive. We’re growing at the right rate. With the revenue share, you’ve got to kind of manage that now because you’ve got the revenue share with the student-athletes and you have NIL on top of that. How does that all kind of play into each other?”

Coyle is especially thankful that Dinkytown Athletes has held up on its pledges to players.

“I feel like that if a Gopher student-athlete comes here and she or he has an opportunity for an NIL deal, we’ve honored those deals,” Coyle said. “You’re seeing some of our peers have not been able to do that. You’re hearing stories about that across the country. … I feel like we’re not making any false promises.”

Out of the cold

Coyle said the Gophers have reached an agreement for their baseball and softball teams to play part of their upcoming seasons at U.S. Bank Stadium in 2025. He said the U still needs to come to a solution for an early-season home field after next season.

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