While the University of Louisville has been cutting costs, the Cardinals’ football program spent more than double its budgeted amount for recruiting expenses in each of Bobby Petrino’s final two full years as head coach.

Louisville football spent $709,180 during the 2017-18 school year, after having been budgeted $320,000 for expenses, according to figures provided by the university to the Courier Journal. The previous year, it spent $563,722, with a budget of $275,000.

The program was over budget in the past four full years under Petrino by more than $1.1 million — averaging $277,042 over budget each year.

“Well, we’ve made a change,” said Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra when asked about the figures. “And I think in a lot of ways, we’re looking at the program on how we are going to be more, certainly, fiscally responsible in what we do.”

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During each of those final four full years under Petrino, Louisville’s recruiting classes ranked between No. 30 and No. 38 nationally, according to 247Sports.com’ composite rankings.

The NCAA’s definition of reported recruiting costs for schools includes transportation, lodging and meals for recruits on official and unofficial visits, postage for promotional materials, and coaches’ travel via the use of the institution’s own vehicles or airplanes as well as the value of loaned transportation.

The lion’s share of those expenses typically come through coaches’ travel. For Louisville in 2018, the cost for air travel ($185,808), hotels ($160,240) and meals ($155,921) on the road were each at least $50,000 more than the previous year’s amount.

Of the players on Louisville’s 2019 spring roster, 22 hailed from Georgia and 18 from Florida, which rivaled Kentucky (25) for the most on the team.

Tyra, who was hired full time as athletic director in 2018 after an interim period in place of predecessor Tom Jurich, fired Petrino in November amid a 2-10 season from the Cardinals and hired former Appalachian State coach Scott Satterfield as the new coach.

“I don’t look at this and say, ‘Geez, they spent all this money in recruiting and we went 2-10,’” Tyra said. “You have to believe that there’s good effort there, there’s solid effort. Maybe the frustrating part of that is when you hear your current coach say you’re out of balance by position from those efforts.

"That as much as the dollars is probably problematic, because we need to be in position to win, and maybe we weren’t as close as I thought we were.”

As much as Louisville spent to recruit in football the past two years, it still lagged behind in-state rival Kentucky. Mark Stoops’ Wildcats were budgeted for $660,000 and spent $762,518 during the 2017-18 school year. In 2016-17, UK spent $630,572 out of a budgeting amount of $636,000.

Kentucky was well below its football recruiting budget in 2013-14 ($479,782 spent from $625,000), 2014-15 ($536,744 from $675,000) and 2015-16 ($439,464 from $626,750) before exceeding it this past year for the first time under Stoops.

The Wildcats were far from the most in SEC when it came to recruiting expenditures this past year. For example, Florida spent more than $1.15 million, while Texas A&M spent $943,817.

“Our peers are the SEC, and you know, even if it’s just anecdotally, how competitive that is, especially in recruiting,” said UK athletic spokesman Guy Ramsey. “… (Expenses) have grown along with our program. We want to be a championship program in football, and I think that we recognize that in order to do that we need to provide the resources for recruiting to make that happen.”

Indiana spent $692,972 on football recruiting in 2017-18 and $577,558 in 2016-17, which were close to the amounts spent by Louisville.

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The Cardinals’ football recruiting budget stayed the same in Tyra’s first year planning the numbers. Louisville budgeted $320,000 for football recruiting, while Kentucky budgeted $685,000.

Tyra said he had “healthy discussions” about finances with Satterfield prior to the Appalachian State coach accepting the job at Louisville.

“It is trying to figure out with Scott Satterfield and his group, what is it that you need?” Tyra said. “How should we spend our money – in all facets, on how we feed the team and how we recruit the next team to come in. We’re looking at every aspect of it, salaries, bonuses, everything that goes into the whole program.”

Gentry Estes: 502-582-4205; gestes@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @Gentry_Estes. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/gentrye.

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