UNLV undoubtedly scored one of the hires of the offseason by luring Dan Mullen out of his analyst role with ESPN and back to the sidelines.
Mullen signed a five-year deal worth $17.5 million to take over the Rebels, who were coming off an 11-win season under head coach Barry Odom. Odom opted to leave to become the head coach at Purdue.
Despite the best football season in school history, UNLV is facing some serious money issues, and the athletic department ended 2024 in a major hole.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal shares that at a recent meeting athletic department Erick Harper told the Board of Regents the Rebels athletic department is somewhere between $26 million and $31 million in debt.
That prompted a concerned question from regent Joseph Arrascada on how they plan to pay the contract of the newly hired Mullen.
Harper answered by sharing they've got the funding in place to pay Mullen for the first two years of that deal, and hopes to soon raise the rest of the money.
“We have the funds to pay the coach over the next two years,” Harper shared. “We have been working with our donors to assist with philanthropic dollars. We have one that has already paid their commitment, and that money is in an unrestricted line and that will be utilized in the future to help with the salaries.”
The momentum from an 11-win season under Odom and his staff, combined with the hire of Mullen - the former Mississippi State and Florida head coach - has led to nearly 1,000 new seasons tickets heading into the 2025 season. The increase in season ticket sales, as well price increases for single-game tickets, VIP tickets, and suite rentals has equated to $2.5 million in revenue
But we all know those figures can change dramatically with a year that doesn't live up to the expectations of fans, and it feels safe to say expectations have never been higher in the desert.
So how about more "reliable" money coming in?
UNLV is expected to get somewhere in the neighborhood of about $20 million for agreeing to stay with the Mountain West conference while a handful other programs left for the new version of the Pac-12. However, that money is sure to get tied up in litigation. For how long is anyone's guess.
Then there's the buyout owed by Odom. When he left for Purdue, his his contract called for a buyout of $3 million, and that is being paid by Purdue in $1.5 million installments over the next two years.
A former head coach of two SEC programs, Mullen knows the work that lies ahead in building a program in his image while also competing for not only conference titles but also a spot in the 12-team playoff.
Now he has to take that on with a huge question mark hanging over the program on how they're going to pay him
All things considered, the situation at UNLV will be an interesting storyline to monitor this season, next season, and beyond - and it should go without saying that UNLV is far from the only Group of Five program facing this amount of financial insecurity.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.