High dollar basketball Cards U of L spending to big to rebuild roster

By RUSS BROWN • Photos By UofL Athletics 

The University of Louisville athletics department has gone on a spending spree to restock its depleted men’s basketball roster, despite a reported an athletics deficit of $12.5 million for fiscal year 2024-25 and a reserve fund that has dwindled from $34 million to $3.4M, forcing the department to take out lines of credit with local banks. 

Taking note of Michigan’s surge to the national championship this year with a starting lineup consisting of five transfers, U of L has gone all-in on a similar strategy. While specific figures aren’t made public, the school’s basketball recruiting budget for 2026-27 has been reported as more than $12, making it one of the highest in the nation. 

And coach Pat Kelsey wasted no time dispersing the funds, signing three highly-sought players out of the transfer portal in the first week it was open for a rumored $9M, then adding one more shortly before the portal closed on April 21. As of this writing the last week of April, Louisville still had six scholarships available (of a maximum 13 allowed by the NCAA), so the Cards could conceivably wind up with the most expensive roster in the country. 

Of course, U of L is spending even bigger on its leading revenue generator, football, with an estimated payroll in the range of $22M-$25M. And on April 23, the Board of Trustees approved a contract extension for head coach Jeff Brohm through 2033 for a total salary of $64.8 million, or $8.1M per year, with bonus incentives potentially worth millions more. 

In March, athletics director Josh Heird, U of L president Gerry Bradley and board of trustees chairman Larry Benz published a white paper that declared, “College Athletics Is Running Out of Time.” 

“We’re not self-sustaining,” Benz told Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde. “We’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing—-we’re borrowing money.” 

U of L’s basketball investment headliner is former 6-foot-10 Kansas center Flory Bidunga, followed by ex-Oregon guard Jackson Shelstad and former Arkansas wing Karter Knox. The final player who committed before the portal shut down was 6-10 forward Alvaro Folgueiras, a native of Spain who was a key player in Iowa’s surprising run to the Elite Eight. 

Three days after the portal closed, Kelsey landed a commitment from another transfer target, 6-5 Dayton shooting guard De’Shayne Montgomery, who had visited the U of L campus less than 24 hours before. Montgomery also visited North Carolina State, and was linked with Oregon, Kentucky and St. John’s. 

Montgomery started his career at Mount St. Mary’s before playing a season at Georgia and one at Dayton, where he averaged 13.2 points, 3.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.7 steals this past season while shooting 49%. He has already surpassed the 1,000-point mark for his career. 

With those five players on board at that point, U of L owned the No. 1 transfer class in the nation and seems certain to finish in the top 10 when the dust settles in the next few weeks as Kelsey continues his search for pieces to fill a roster decimated by attrition through various avenues. 

“We have an administration that is leaning into this new era,” Kelsey said. “We don’t have anyone sitting around wishing it was still a bygone era. Josh and the leadership team are as forward-thinking and aggressive as any front office, if you will. Those guys put wind at our back.” 

While U of L is off to a good start, none of the future recruits will command the kind of money the Cards spent on that early quartet because 75 of the top 100 transfers have already committed to other schools. 

For the third season in a row, U of L fans will be watching basically an all-new team when the 2026-27 season tips off in early November. How did that happen? Six players -- Ryan Conwell, J’Vonne Hadley, Isaac McKneely, Aly Khalifa, Kasean Pryor and Kobe Rodgers -- exhausted their eligibility. Four players opted for the portal -- Sananda Fru, Khani Rooths, Mouhamed Camara and Vangellis Zougris. And freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr. entered the NBA Draft. 

That left only rising junior guard Adrian Wooley and former NBA G League guard London Johnson returning. Wooley appeared in all 35 games this past season, starting 16, while averaging 8.7 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists. Johnson joined the team in December, then redshirted. 

Whether all the greenbacks U of L is showering on hoops will produce success when March Madness rolls around remains to be seen, but Heird believes his department has no choice if it wants to remain competitive. . .or maybe even become another Michigan and Benz calls it “an arms race.” 

“We just have to put ourselves in the best position possible,” Heird was quoted by SI. “It goes back to the old saying, ‘It’s good to have opportunity and choices.’ Well, if we’re not successful, we don’t have opportunities and we don’t have choices. It’s the old adage, it takes money to make money.” 

U of L FORMS CARDINAL VENTURES, INC. 

On the same day that Brohm’s new contract was approved, U of L also announced that the board had okayed the creation of a new non-profit called Cardinal Ventures, Inc. the latest development in its search for new ways to fund the athletics department. The entity will pursue new revenue through marketing, branding, sponsorships and NIL-related agreements. 

The board also approved the creation of a for-profit entity, subject to further approval if needed in the future. This entity would allow for a private equity investor to purchase a stake in athletics. 

“The university does not have an entity currently that can negotiate and receive monetization dollars in the form of private capital, private equity, buying of a revenue stream — all kinds of things that are available, for example, to professional sports franchises,” Benz said. “We discovered that the scene of college athletics means that you have to be opportunistic to monetize the brand in ways that you never imagined.”