There are no guarantees about state funding for athletics, and sometimes politics results in weird outcomes. That’s the reason why Connecticut plays has its games in Hartford and our football stadium is located in East Hartford, 30 minutes off campus. both the XL Center and Rentschler field are owned by the state and run by the “CDRA” which is a quasipublic entity. For men’s and women’s basketball games, UConn has to pay $100,000 per game in leases in fees to play in Hartford. Basically, unless it is a sellout, we lose money playing in Hartford. We also have to pay to lease Rentschler field and if the stadium loses money we have to cover the first $250,000 of that. When you hear about the Connecticut athletic department, running a multi million dollar deficit, that’s a big reason why.
Still, it is a huge advantage to be able to have this state bond for buildings and facilities. On the other hand because we are a state owned entity in Connecticut we have to pay above market labor rates for construction. Sacred Heart University and UConn both built hockey rinks this year. Connecticut’s was 30% more expensive, had less seats, was begun sooner, but finished later than SHU.
Probably the biggest advantage is the fact that the state makes a huge payment to the university to subsidize the cost of education there, which, in turn, allows us to have a pretty decent size campus population.
There are definitely big advantages to being a public university, but there are a lot of quirky things that come with it.
