Dear Wildcat Family,
I want to wish you all a very Happy New Year as we prepare for more championship excellence. With my first Wildcat Wednesday email of 2024, I would like to provide key updates, celebrate our achievements, and share with you my vision for Arizona Athletics moving forward. Our plan forward will stay true to our Wildcat Way mission to develop student-athletes into academic, athletic and life champions.
Successful Start
Head coach Jedd Fisch and the Arizona Football program picked up a monumental victory in the Valero Alamo Bowl by defeating No.12 Oklahoma by a score of 38-24 in San Antonio. Our football program finished the 2023 season with 10 wins, marking just the fourth double-digit win season in school history. The thrilling victory at the Alamodome was a national statement, broadcasted by ESPN, to nearly four million viewers for our most-watched football game in nearly a decade. Arizona Football ended the season ranked 11th in the final AP poll of the year, which marked its highest national ranking since the 2014 season. This historic football season is a recent example of our latest high-profile success stories of 2023-24.
Arizona Men's Basketball is near the midway point of another excellent season that saw the program reach the No. 1 overall ranking in the AP poll for the first time in a decade. McKale Center has been home to some of the top college basketball games this season with capacity crowds regularly filling up our historic venue. Coach Lloyd, in his third year guiding the program, continues to reinforce the program's position as one of the best in the nation. Coach Barnes and Arizona Women's Basketball are also amidst another terrific season that includes a thrilling upset of No.15 Utah earlier this week in McKale. Our women's basketball program continues to compete among the nation's best while maintaining its status as one of the attendance leaders in the country. As our other winter and spring sports begin preparations for their seasons, we are expecting even more competitive excellence in the months to come.
Continual Performance
In the last three years alone, our athletics department has produced
3 Individual NCAA Champions, 52 All-Americans, 13 Pac-12 Players of the Year, 6 Pac-12 Coaches of the Year, 7 Pac-12 Championships, 16 Individual Pac-12 Championships, 17 Academic All-Americans, and 7 Pac-12 Scholar Athletes of the Year. We also had 23 former student-athletes competing or coaching in the Tokyo Olympic Games. We've accomplished this while setting records in the classroom with historical department GPA's each semester alongside new department highs in graduation rates. Our department's Fall 2022 overall GPA of 3.300 was an all-time high, and our Spring 2023 GPA of 3.296 marked the highest Spring semester GPA ever. Our most recent cumulative GPA for our 500 student-athletes was 3.332, which is the highest in department history. Our overall Graduate Success Rate (GSR) score announced last month was 89 percent, which is also a department record. We are also expecting more academic records to be broken in the Fall 2023 semester.
Arizona Athletics has continued to evolve with the monumental shifts in NCAA legislation and positioned itself as a national leader for our student-athletes in a variety of spaces that include Name, Image and Likeness and the 5980 Academic Fund. We have also been intentional with our investment in our greatest resource: people. The outstanding coaches and staff who lead and support our 22 sport programs and 500 student-athletes are the best of the best. Prioritizing the retention of these leaders has been critical to our success.
Financial Planning
All our work to bolster the position of Arizona Athletics as a premier athletics department comes at a cost. Like many premier programs across the country, we are facing financial challenges, which we have already begun to address. Please know that we have refrained from commenting publicly on our financial position out of respect for and support of the process outlined by University Leadership and the Arizona Board of Regents. At this point in time, I want to share the key components of our plan which is in alignment with our campus partners and the structure of the University of Arizona's Financial Action Plan.
• Arizona Athletics has no immediate plans to eliminate sports
• The athletics department will continue the hiring freeze that it instituted this fall
• All new major construction projects will be paused after the completion of the William M. "Bill" Clements Golf Center
• Budgets have been pared back in areas that do not impact the health and wellbeing of student-athletes
Our plan also includes the growth of key revenue streams and areas of investment.
• Increase ancillary revenue from multimedia rights agreement, facility usage and other areas
• Comprehensive look at enhancing ticketing revenue through market-driven pricing
• Strategically invest in our marquee programs that generate substantial revenue
• Continue to build on record-breaking fundraising efforts by creating new opportunities for donor engagement and support
Moving Forward
As we add more chapters to the rich legacy of Arizona Athletics, we will do so with a continual focus on long-term sustainable models to support competitive excellence, doing so both efficiently and effectively. The unwavering support of the entire Wildcat Family, which has powered our championship success for decades, remains a source of pride for us. We will continue to work together to ensure a bright future for our student-athletes, our University, and our community.
Thank you for being a part of our success! Here's to an exciting New Year!
Sincerely,
Dave Heeke Vice President and Director of Athletics