OXFORD ― When Ole Miss athletics reported a loss of $8.4 million for its women's basketball program during the 2023 fiscal year in its annual NCAA financial report, it sparked a social media stir and evoked a passionate defense of the value of women's sports from coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin.

The number did not reflect major year-over-year change for the athletic department. Dating back to at least the 2018 fiscal year, the Rebels have operated with the largest women's basketball deficit among the 13 public schools in the SEC, according to Sportico's database, which had compiled 2023 data from just seven SEC schools as of Wednesday with some reports not yet available.

Women's basketball losses are reported annually by all Power Five schools. More unusually, Ole Miss has declared a men's basketball deficit in each of the last six fiscal years, too. In 2022-23, the athletic department reported a men's basketball loss of roughly $3.7 million.

According to Angela Robinson, the school's senior associate athletic director for finance, the way Ole Miss categorizes its expenditure compared to its peer institutions is the root of the discrepancy. The men's and women's basketball programs at Ole Miss each paid out about $2.37 million in "athletic facilities, debt service, leases and rental fees" that some other athletic departments allocate elsewhere in their reports.

"The debt service for the (SJB) Pavilion, the annual payment for the Pavilion was in that number," Robinson told the Clarion Ledger. "Every school is not consistent. Some schools just take their debt service, and they classify it all as non-sport-specific.

"What we've always done is put it with the sport. That can be extraordinarily unfair in some cases, in that administration is making the debt payment. Administration generally chooses what construction projects we do and invest in and what that debt payment is. For that to be reflected on the program as a programmatic expense may not be exactly the best way."

Robinson said she plans to change the way Ole Miss reports those Pavilion payments in the next fiscal year.

With the debt service payments included, Ole Miss is one of the top women's basketball spenders in the country, less than $1 million behind defending national champion LSU, which pays its coaching and support staff more than double the $2.85 million Ole Miss reported in the 2023 Fiscal Year. In Fiscal Year 2022, the Rebels spent $8.54 million on women's basketball to rank second nationally. Assign the arena debt service elsewhere, as Robinson said many of Ole Miss' peers do, and the Rebels fall to 10th among public Power Five programs in women's basketball spending.

That aligns with the Rebels' spending on McPhee-McCuin. She signed a new deal in July that pays her an average of $1.09 million per year. When USA TODAY last compiled its database of women's basketball coach salaries in March 2022, 11 coaches were making more than $1 million annually.

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Coaching staff salaries, Robinson explained, are the primary spending separators for women's sports. Gender equality when it comes to spending on things like charter flights and uniforms is mandated by Title IX, she said.

"Those two teams can generate very similar expenses when it comes to the experience of the student-athlete and investing in that," she said.

But they have vastly different revenue opportunities. For now, the NCAA does not reward its member conferences for partaking in NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament games as it does for men, meaning the Rebels did not collect direct financial gain by advancing to the Sweet 16 last season, though they certainly generated exposure for the university.

"We were on every single outlet from the New York Times, ESPN, on the Lakers game, they were talking about us," McPhee-McCuin said. "You can’t put a dollar amount on that."

The financial picture for women's sports could be changing. In January, the NCAA and ESPN announced an eight-year, $920 million agreement built around the TV rights to 40 championships. The centerpiece of that deal is the women's March Madness tournament.

Robinson said she wasn't yet sure how that would impact the women's basketball bottom line at Ole Miss.

She said that the women's basketball deficit is not viewed by the Ole Miss athletic department as an issue.

"It's our responsibility to provide opportunities for the student-athletes," she said. "And provide an opportunity that makes them relevant, helps them compete at a national level. We know going into it – I've always known women's basketball was going to have a loss. Even South Carolina, LSU, it's just part of having a big basketball program."

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Ole Miss women's basketball $8.4 million deficit explained