This much was confirmed about Ryan Alpert when he was introduced as Georgia Tech’s new athletic director Wednesday.
He’s here to bring in more revenue and a lot of it. Alpert, hired from his post at Tennessee as senior deputy athletic director, made it obvious himself. He said that revenue generation will be critical and “a No. 1 priority, not just as a financial necessity but as a driver of excellence.” There never has been a time in college athletics, he said, “when revenue growth and winning have been tied together as it is today.”
He called himself a “grow-the-pie guy” and he wasn’t talking about apple, pecan or 3.14.
Alpert’s predecessor, J Batt, left for a better-paying, higher-profile job at Michigan State presumably in no small part because he was able to shake donors loose of their millions and enable the Tech annual budget to grow from $94.9 million in the fiscal year before his arrival in the fall of 2022 to $159 million as he walked out the door.
But now, Alpert not only has to maintain and build on the profitable relationships and partnerships that Batt and his predecessors established but also find more sources to tap.
It would seem at once an encouraging and challenging position for Alpert. He will benefit from the momentum that Batt built in his brief tenure at the helm of the Tech athletic department, but there’s presumably fewer apples left to pick on the tree, as it were.
I asked Alpert where he felt there was more juice to squeeze.
“We have some of the best alums of any institute or university in the country,” Alpert said. “So, I’ve got to deepen my relationships with them. I’ve got to build a vision.”
He also mentioned season-ticket sales, sponsorships and “very sophisticated people in Atlanta.” But he came back at the end of the answer to donors.
It is the enduring challenge for the Tech athletic department, to find donors from among the institute’s wide array of financially successful alumni and partnerships in Atlanta’s corporate world.
And with power-conference schools now needing to find $20.5 million annually to pay athletes as part of the House v. NCAA settlement, the bar has been raised even higher. Schools also continue to be supported by name, image and likeness collectives paying athletes millions on top of what they’ll be receiving directly from their athletic departments.
The revenue difficulties are why, for instance, Batt moved the November home game against Georgia to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in exchange for $10 million.
One method by which the institute could benefit the athletic department is by taking care of the enormous debt that it has racked up in building facilities over the years, which ranks among the highest in college athletics. It was $264 million at the end of the 2023 fiscal year and is now believed to be closer to $300 million.
The annual debt service in the 2023 fiscal year was $13 million, which accounted for about 10% of the athletic department’s budget. I asked Cabrera if it would be possible for the Tech Foundation, which at the end of the 2024 fiscal year had amassed an investment pool of $2.6 billion, to take action such as absorbing the debt and reissuing financing that is more favorable to the department.
It would fit with his stated commitment to do “whatever was necessary” for the department to compete at the highest levels.
For some Tech fans more attuned to the athletic department’s financial matters, that long has been a wish-list item. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
While the foundation does the Tech athletic department the valuable service of investing the money in the athletic department’s own foundation, “The Georgia Tech Athletic Association has found and will continue to find its own path to deal with these challenges and its opportunities,” Cabrera said.
If you’re wondering, one possible reason for the foundation not stepping in to play a bigger role with the debt is that it might not be fiscally prudent to drop that much cash, especially when investments have performed so well. It’s similar to how, when interest rates are low, it can be more prudent to take out a loan to purchase a house rather than to pay cash up front, even if the money to do so is available.
Alpert seems as if he is positioned to do well. He has a track record of success in revenue development. It spoke well of him that a number of his colleagues from Tennessee came to Atlanta for the news conference.
At Tennessee, Alpert played a large role in the creation of a stadium club for Neyland Stadium, the addition of a party deck in one of the end-zone stands and the implementation of the Neyland Stadium Entertainment District, which is a public-private partnership that has been compared with The Battery Atlanta at Truist Park.
He comes in at a momentous time, as the House settlement takes effect. The ACC is in a battle for viability.
But also at a fortuitous time. The football program is in solid shape with coach Brent Key and could achieve its greatest season in at least a decade. In less than three years, Batt laid a solid foundation after taking over a department that needed improvement after the uneven tenure of former AD Todd Stansbury.
“I think he started building something, but now we’ve got to take it to the next level and continue to improve and invest in our programs,” Alpert said.
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