UCLA’s move to the Big Ten was supposed to change the math. Instead, it only made the bill look bigger.
The Bruins left the Pac-12 in 2024 with a chance to use the league’s money to steady the athletics department. That never happened.
Under former athletic director Martin Jarmond, the finances kept sliding, and on Monday the school finally pulled the plug. UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk fired Jarmond and turned the department over to UCLA men’s soccer alum and former Los Angeles Lakers executive Tim Harris.
“UCLA Athletics currently carries a significant financial deficit, and its current path is not sustainable,” Frenk said in a letter to the UCLA community. “Now is the moment to build a model for Athletics that protects the breadth of our program, creates new opportunities for student-athletes and coaches, and supports itself through the revenue it generates. I believe UCLA should help lead the transformation of intercollegiate athletics: our future must be shaped by purpose - not by pressure.”
The timing is awkward, with UCLA football set to open its season at Cal on Saturday night. But the move also reflects how bad the financial picture has become.
Since 2020, UCLA athletics has spent $222.27 million more than it brought in, and the university has covered the difference. That kind of deficit would put any athletic director on thin ice. Jarmond, hired in May 2020, stayed in place long enough for the losses to pile up past $200 million.
He didn’t seem especially alarmed when he spoke with The Athletic this summer.
“One of the things that I think is a misnomer about the finances,” he said, “is that college athletics expenses are skyrocketing now, and it started a couple years ago, and it doesn’t seem to slow down. The Big Ten has given us a stronger financial foundation, but we are like most schools in the country that are subsidized to an extent by the university.”
The Big Ten money was real. UCLA’s final Pac-12 media-rights haul was $19.93 million.
After joining the Big Ten as a fully vested member in 2024, that figure jumped to $61.26 million in fiscal 2025 and $76 million in fiscal 2026. UCLA and USC did not have to wait years for full conference payments the way Nebraska, Maryland, Rutgers, Oregon and Washington did.
But the added revenue never solved the problem. The final 2026 numbers are not complete, yet Frenk’s message made clear the trend is still headed the wrong way.
The recent numbers are especially ugly. Over fiscal 2024 and 2025, UCLA athletics spent $73.48 million more than it took in.
That total includes $52.5 million in direct university support and student fees, which pushed the campus’s combined contribution to athletics past $125 million over those two years. UCLA’s fiscal 2026 financial statement is not available, and it includes $20.8 million in athlete pay expenditures.
The Bruins are also lagging badly behind Big Ten peers where revenue matters most. In football ticket sales, UCLA brought in $18.73 million across fiscal 2024 and 2025, a figure that trailed what eight other Big Ten public schools reported in fiscal 2025 alone. In gifts, UCLA collected $27.3 million over those same two years, which was behind what 10 Big Ten public schools posted in just 2025.
That’s the strange part of the story. On the field, UCLA has been thriving.
The Bruins won NCAA titles last season in women’s basketball, men’s water polo and beach volleyball. Men’s golf finished second nationally.
Softball reached the Women’s College World Series. Baseball spent much of the season ranked No.
- Gymnastics made the NCAA semifinals.
Outside of football, which has gone through two coaching changes in 18 months, UCLA has been the Big Ten’s most dominant athletic program.
And yet the revenue picture looks nothing like that success.
That is now Harris’ problem to solve. Frenk said Harris has the relationships and experience to help UCLA build new business.
“Tim knows what it takes to grow a world-class sports organization and global brand, and he holds longstanding relationships throughout Los Angeles and globally,” Frenk said in his statement. “He brings decades of experience in creating partnerships and new sources of revenue, along with a personal focus on centering the student-athlete experience.
“Tim will develop a new strategy to grow revenue through partnerships, licensing and other ventures, while ensuring that our student-athletes and coaches have the required support to compete at the highest level.”
The obstacles are obvious. UCLA plays football at the Rose Bowl, which limits revenue opportunities. And in Los Angeles, attention is hard to monopolize, with two franchises each in the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL, archrival USC and the world’s largest entertainment complex all competing for eyeballs.
Still, the school has to find a way to stop the bleeding. UCLA ran its own $220 million deficit in fiscal 2026, and Jarmond’s departure shows there are limits to how long a university will absorb losses on this scale.
Jarmond is owed $6.5 million on a five-year contract through 2029.
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