The University of Kansas has received a donation of approximately $300 million, one of the largest contributions in the history of collegiate sports.
The university states that the gift will “enable KU to take the next step in cementing itself as a national leader in college athletics”.
The donation highlights the changed landscape of college athletics as a result of the House settlement, which was approved June 6th. The price for success in college athletics is growing as a result of its provisions, and many collegiate programs have ramped up their fundraising efforts in order to fund athlete payment expenditures. So far, alumni have been willing to foot that bill.
Among other things, the settlement allows schools to directly pay athletes for their services. The money pool for those payments can be up to 22% of the school’s athletic revenue. These payments come in addition to existing scholarships, educational benefits, and third-party NIL deals.
For SwimSwam’s breakdown of the settlement and its effects on roster size, click here.
The donation was made by University of Kansas alum and Dimensional Fund Advisors founder David G. Booth. A hefty subset of Booth’s donation, $75 million, will be used to help fund “The Gateway District”, a planned development on the north entrance of the university’s campus that will include a new hotel, student housing, and improved parking, among other things.
The project also received a $94.6 million package of financial incentives from the city of Lawrence, which included STAR bond districts and Tax Fund Increment Financing.
University of Kansas athletic director Travis Goff affirmed that their objective is to begin demolition of the development site at the end of this fall’s football season.
The remainder of Booth’s gift will “allow Kansas Athletics to be strategic, innovative and maintain a leadership position in college athletics”. SwimSwam has reached out to the University of Kansas to ask if the swimming program will be directly impacted by the donation, but have not received a response.
Nothing to do with this university or any one that works for this university or has worked. but is it legal for a head coach of a swim program to make athletes that are leaving sign a contract saying they won’t transfer to another team in the same division?
What size is the little baglet for swimming?
Bravo – great to see!!!
I doubt Booth cares much about football, I’d guess it’s to support all sports more broadly.
The football stadium at KU is named after him…
This donation will benefit all sports within the athletic department. The Olympic sports teams may not each see a bag of money to spend at will, but the athletic department as a whole won’t feel this intense squeeze in the NIL era requiring cuts to maintain competitiveness in the sports that literally bring home the bacon.
And Kansas taxpayers paid for their new football stadium. Smh
This week Phil Knight donated $2 billion to Oregon for cancer center.
It baffles me that Oregon, with all of its Nike money, does not have men’s and women’s swimming and diving, especially when they already have a recreation facility that would be adequate (although not great) – 12x 25yd lanes with starting blocks and diving boards.
They hosted men’s Pac-10s in 1985 (at Tualatin Hills in Beaverton, 90 miles from campus).They cut the programs shortly after that. Knight has never cared about any sports other than football, basketball or a sport that Nike can exploit (T&F, women’s soccer, etc).
I’m prepared to be immensely disappointed by how much of this gift will go towards Olympic/non-revenue sports. I sure hope I’m wrong.