‘The priorities are beyond backwards’: KIRO producer rips college sports spending amid UW’s $16M athletics deficit

The University of Washington (UW) Athletic Department is projected to have a $16 million deficit for 2027, though it’s an improvement on the $19 million the university was expected to lose.

While UW athletics have not generated net positive revenue since 2023, KIRO producer Andrew Lanier griped about college athletics in general, noting that the exorbitant amount of funding dumped into the programs supports an “extremely niche” audience and neglects struggling small businesses.

“I want to stop pretending like college sports, football in particular, is like some big net gain for the university,” Andrew said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “I would prefer that people just come out and say, ‘You know what, there are a lot of things at the university that don’t make money.’ We like to have nice things, and we think sports are cool. That is the only reason we have it here, because it’s cool and fun. It doesn’t make money, and that’s fine.”

KIRO producer turned his focus to taxpayer-funded stadiums, WA’s small businesses

KIRO host Gee Scott let Andrew step on the soapbox and air out his qualms with athletics in general, as Gee has noticed a long-standing feud between Andrew and publicly funded athletics.

“I’m going to open the door for you. People have been hearing it for years. You hate sports and everything that it does,” Gee said. “Taxpayers having to be on the hook. Tell us what makes you so mad about college sports and the connection with education and all that.”

“It’s the massive hypocrisy that we spend so much money and spend so much attention on this one thing that serves an extremely niche audience,” Andrew said. “The fact that taxpayers get soaked for hundreds of millions of dollars for publicly funded stadiums for privately owned businesses, but we have Ma and Pa’s chip shop, which says they can’t survive in this business environment. You have small businesses that cannot compete; they go under day after day, and we’re going to spend hundreds of millions to prop up a billionaire who could purchase a stadium on his own.”

Conversation shifts to how UW’s spending affects local admissions

Andrew continued to explain how UW is spending lots of money on marketing, leading to local students who aspire to attend the university being passed up at higher rates, and why he believes the priorities society has currently set are “beyond backwards.”

“Local students cannot afford to get into the premier educational experience that is the University of Washington, because they’re chasing foreign students who want to come in, and we’re spending tons of money to market the university nationally for what is prestige,” Andrew said. “The UW wants prestige; that is what college athletics brings. They don’t need the marketing. I want local kids to be able to get a great education without having to cut each other’s throats to get into the university.

“My grandpa went to the UW, my parents went to the UW, my brother went to the UW, and there is no guarantee that unless my kids are damn near perfect in school, they’ll be able to attend that university, and that it’s ridiculous,” he continued. “The priorities that we set in this society are beyond backwards, and I find it appalling. Even if those priorities, when it comes to sports, are fun. I hate the dichotomy, because I enjoy watching sports, but the money conversation kills me.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.