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The reason we can outbid everyone

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sfcane2

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This is pure speculation on my part, but I’ve been trying to understand how Miami keeps winning NIL battles. After piecing together different public comments and financial data, it looks pretty clear that UHealth is the financial engine behind the entire operation.

UHealth generates roughly $3.3B a year, and more importantly, it runs a large operating surplus every year. That’s extremely rare in the academic medical world.

A few numbers jumped out at me:
  • 63% of the entire university’s operating revenue now comes from UHealth.
  • Academics and athletics basically run at break-even.
  • UHealth subsidizes everything else.
Radakovich and Echevarria don’t spell out the details publicly, but the structure looks obvious:

UHealth → University Budget → Athletics (facilities, salaries, retention, stability)​

Its cashflow is the backbone of the entire NIL ecosystem.

Miami is one of the only ACC schools with:
  • a giant medical system,
  • a large private-university budget,
  • and a board actually willing to leverage both to support football.
Clemson, FSU, UNC, etc. can’t do this.

Why UHealth Is So Profitable​

Here’s the interesting part: UHealth isn’t one of the largest hospital systems, but it’s one of the most profitable relative to its size.

Most academic medical centers run on thin 2–4% margins.
UHealth posts mid–single-digit to low–double-digit operating surpluses, plus higher unrestricted cashflow because UM is private and far less bureaucratic.

The secret? South Florida’s demographics.

UHealth’s patient base is:
  • older,
  • wealthier,
  • heavily insured,
  • growing fast,
  • filled with NYC/Chicago/Latin America transplants,
  • dominated by private-pay and Medicare Advantage.
This is exactly the population hospital systems want.
The margins per patient are dramatically higher than markets like Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Cleveland.

On top of that, Miami’s hospital market is unusually fragmented and weaker compared to big medical cities.
None of them have the academic brand, elite specialists, or research footprint UHealth now does. Miami saw the gap and moved fast.

Because UHealth is so profitable and covers so much of the university’s operations, donors don’t have to be tapped for facilities, scholarships, or basic athletics infrastructure.
For context, UM received about $1.02B in total contributions across the entire university in FY 2024 — academics, med school, athletics, everything.

UHealth’s profitability lets the university pay its own bills.

How This Ties Back to Football​

Because UHealth is such a cash machine — and because leadership knows how to leverage it — Miami doesn’t need donors for:
  • buildings
  • coaching salaries
  • staff budgets
  • operations
  • recruiting infrastructure
All of that is handled by the university.

Which frees donors to focus on the only thing that actually wins in 2024:

NIL.​

Miami might be the only school where:
  • the university funds the infrastructure,
  • donors fund the roster,
  • the president’s office, UHealth, and athletics are aligned,
  • and the health system provides long-term financial stability.
No other ACC school can replicate this.
Honestly, most SEC schools can’t either.

That’s why Miami can operate with SEC-level resources while being a small private university.
 
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Bingo. I’ve been trying to tell u all for the last couple years. We won’t ever lose a kid because we don’t have the money. We might not want to match what someone else is offering because we don’t agree with an evaluation, but we won’t lose anyone because we just didn’t have the money
 
I remember when Nole fans were moaning about this a few years ago and being skeptical of it, but the way you framed it (really amazingly I might add) makes a lot of sense. It's not that U Health money goes to football. It's that it goes to the things most schools use the football money for. Interesting take.

Another unique aspect of being a school in a huge metro area.
 
And you all thought Shalala didn't do anything to support athletics...




Skeleton GIF
 
D
sfcane2 said:
This is pure speculation on my part, but I’ve been trying to understand how Miami keeps winning NIL battles. After piecing together different public comments and financial data, it looks pretty clear that UHealth is the financial engine behind the entire operation.

UHealth generates roughly $3.3B a year, and more importantly, it runs a large operating surplus every year. That’s extremely rare in the academic medical world.

A few numbers jumped out at me:
  • 63% of the entire university’s operating revenue now comes from UHealth.
  • Academics and athletics basically run at break-even.
  • UHealth subsidizes everything else.
Radakovich and Echevarria don’t spell out the details publicly, but the structure looks obvious:

UHealth → University Budget → Athletics (facilities, salaries, retention, stability)​

Its cashflow is the backbone of the entire NIL ecosystem.

Miami is one of the only ACC schools with:
  • a giant medical system,
  • a large private-university budget,
  • and a board actually willing to leverage both to support football.
Clemson, FSU, UNC, etc. can’t do this.

Why UHealth Is So Profitable​

Here’s the interesting part: UHealth isn’t one of the largest hospital systems, but it’s one of the most profitable relative to its size.

Most academic medical centers run on thin 2–4% margins.
UHealth posts mid–single-digit to low–double-digit operating surpluses, plus higher unrestricted cashflow because UM is private and far less bureaucratic.

The secret? South Florida’s demographics.

UHealth’s patient base is:
  • older,
  • wealthier,
  • heavily insured,
  • growing fast,
  • filled with NYC/Chicago/Latin America transplants,
  • dominated by private-pay and Medicare Advantage.
This is exactly the population hospital systems want.
The margins per patient are dramatically higher than markets like Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Cleveland.

On top of that, Miami’s hospital market is unusually fragmented and weaker compared to big medical cities.
None of them have the academic brand, elite specialists, or research footprint UHealth now does. Miami saw the gap and moved fast.

Because UHealth is so profitable and covers so much of the university’s operations, donors don’t have to be tapped for facilities, scholarships, or basic athletics infrastructure.
For context, UM received about $1.02B in total contributions across the entire university in FY 2024 — academics, med school, athletics, everything.

UHealth’s profitability lets the university pay its own bills.

How This Ties Back to Football​

Because UHealth is such a cash machine — and because leadership knows how to leverage it — Miami doesn’t need donors for:
  • buildings
  • coaching salaries
  • staff budgets
  • operations
  • recruiting infrastructure
All of that is handled by the university.

Which frees donors to focus on the only thing that actually wins in 2024:

NIL.​

Miami might be the only school where:
  • the university funds the infrastructure,
  • donors fund the roster,
  • the president’s office, UHealth, and athletics are aligned,
  • and the health system provides long-term financial stability.
No other ACC school can replicate this.
Honestly, most SEC schools can’t either.

That’s why Miami can operate with SEC-level resources while being a small private university.
Click to expand...

Others can replicate this. Duke Health, UPMC, UVA Health (1 hospital in VA), UNC health

Indiana, Michigan, Vandy, Colorado are some of the largest outside of the ACC.
 
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Miami contributes about 40% of the athletic department's budget.

Many other athletic departments are still required to be self-funding.

thank god things changed, and yes, Donna deserves credit for the original vision on UHealth, but Joe deserves the credit completely for cleaning up the mess and turning it into a public good and massive ATM for the university
 
Last edited:
Ispyin said:
UCLA in theory could as well. UCLA medical all over the place in southern cal
Click to expand...
I was just going off the top of head. I’m sure I missed some. Heck, Cal is part of the UC Health System much like UCLA.

Stanford also has a health system, billionaires, etc
 
I wanted to write this up the other day when we were talking about patches but I was too lazy tbh. UHealth and Hard Rock would do numbers with with jersey patches showing on every down in a football game on TV here.
 
90scane said:
D


Others can replicate this. Duke Health, UPMC, UVA Health (1 hospital in VA), UNC health

Indiana, Michigan, Vandy, Colorado are some of the largest outside of the ACC.
Click to expand...
Other schools have big hospital systems, but the Miami model still isn’t something they can easily copy. There are two main reasons:

1. No major football school relies on its health system the way Miami does.
At UM, UHealth produces about 63% of the entire university’s operating revenue. That level of dependence is unique. Even Duke — which is private — doesn’t have its university financially structured around Duke Health to that degree. At Michigan, UNC, UVA, Indiana, Colorado, etc., the health system is huge, but it isn’t the central financial engine of the whole university the way UHealth is for Miami.

2. Miami has a cleaner, more flexible governance structure than the public schools mentioned.
UNC Health, UVA Health, Michigan Medicine, Indiana Health, and Colorado Health are all tied into massive state systems and political oversight. Their surpluses get diluted across statewide priorities. Miami — and Duke — don’t deal with that. The difference is that Miami’s university leadership actually leverages UHealth’s surplus to stabilize athletics, whereas Duke’s model is far more siloed and conservative.

So yes, other schools have hospitals.
But none combine Miami’s revenue dependence on its health system with Miami’s willingness to use that advantage to support athletics — and that’s why it isn’t easily replicated.
 
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Ispyin said:
UCLA in theory could as well. UCLA medical all over the place in southern cal
Click to expand...
UCLA has a monster health system, no question. In raw size, UCLA Health blows UHealth out of the water. The issue isn’t scale — it’s how the money actually moves.

UCLA could in theory do what Miami is doing, but in practice they can’t because:

1. UCLA is stuck inside the UC system.
Every dollar runs through a massive public-university bureaucracy. The reinvestment rules, union structures, state oversight, and political bottlenecks are on a completely different level. UCLA Health generates a ton of revenue, but it can’t just pivot that money into athletics or university flexibility the way a private school can.

2. Their surpluses get swallowed by the bigger UC machine.
UCLA Health helps stabilize UCLA, sure, but it also props up the rest of the system. That’s not happening at Miami. UHealth’s surplus goes straight into UM’s budget, not into some giant statewide structure.

3. UCLA Athletics actually runs behind, not ahead.
If UCLA could leverage its hospital system the way Miami does, they wouldn’t have needed the Big Ten bailout to dig themselves out of an athletic department deficit.

So yeah — UCLA has an elite medical footprint. But having hospitals doesn’t mean you can use the money the same way. Miami’s advantage isn’t just that UHealth exists; it’s how central it is to the university’s revenue and how freely UM leadership can deploy that stability.

That’s the part most schools — including UCLA — just can’t replicate.
 
5XNC said:
Bingo. I’ve been trying to tell u all for the last couple years. We won’t ever lose a kid because we don’t have the money. We might not want to match what someone else is offering because we don’t agree with an evaluation, but we won’t lose anyone because we just didn’t have the money
Click to expand...
Yeah, I honestly never put 2 and 2 together until recently. It clicked for me when Radakovich was asked about the $23M Miami was getting from the playoff run and he immediately pivoted to talking about everything the university already finances behind the scenes. Then you add in Echevarria on McAfee basically laying out how massive UHealth is and how intertwined it is with the rest of the school… that’s when it finally made sense.

It’s not that Miami is just throwing around donor money. It’s that the school itself has a financial engine most people don’t realize exists — and because of that, we’re never going to “lose a kid because we don’t have the money.” If Miami doesn’t match an NIL number, it’s because they don’t think the player is worth that number, not because they’re broke.

The whole setup is way more stable than people outside the program understand.
 
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