Like a lot of schools, the University of Tulsa is enduing a budget shortfall right now. Here's an idea of what the school is going through at the moment, according to The Frontier:
According to the school's financial documents, Tulsa went from a $2.3 million budget surplus in 2011 to a $26 million deficit in 2016, and a $134 million increase in overall funds generated dropped to an $84 million loss over that same period.
As the school looks to tighten up its budget, Tulsa's top three athletics employees have taken a perhaps unprecedented step of voluntarily accepting pay cuts.
Tulsa AD Derrick Gragg, head football coach Philip Montgomery and head men's basketball coach Frank Haith will all give back portions of their paychecks.
“Basically, the budget reductions to me are a microcosm of what’s going on, not just at TU but across the country at a lot of different places,” Gragg told the Tulsa World. “We’re like a lot of other athletic departments — we’ve been asked to tighten our belt.
“We approached it with a combination of things. We did have some budget reductions. We did have some head-coaching salary reductions. My salary has been reduced the past three years. That’s the way we’ve dealt with some of that. You don’t want to negatively impact the student-athletes in any way.”
According to USA Today's most recent salary database, Montgomery earned just under $1.4 million in 2017.
The amount of the trio's pay cuts is not known.
In addition to surrendering a portion of his salary, Montgomery will also pitch into the university's budget by leading the Golden Hurricane into two guarantee games this fall. The Golden Hurricane visits Texas on Sept. 8 and Arkansas on Oct. 20; the payouts for those games are expected to top the $2 million mark.
After a 6-7 debut season, Tulsa rocketed forward in Montgomery's second season, posting a 10-3 mark with a Miami Beach Bowl win in 2016. Tulsa went 2-10 in 2017.