In the five months since he was hired as the athletic director at Colorado, Fernando Lovo has been able to get his family settled in Boulder.
The Lovos have sold their house in Albuquerque and bought a new one in Colorado.
“The personal side of the transition has been going really well,” he said in an interview with BuffZone.
Lovo believes the professional transition, while challenging, has also gone well.
“When you take over, and I said this in my press conference, I think itap our obligation as a leader to look, learn, and listen,” he said. “So, I’ve done that. I’ve been able to really dive in with a lot of our coaches and my staff and understand what makes this place tick and how I can make it better.”
A big part of Lovo’s plan to make CU better is to generate revenue.
When hired in December, Lovo took over a department facing a for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Since then, he’s worked with his team, including outgoing athletic director Rick George, to find ways to produce revenue, not just to cover this year’s deficit, but for long-term success.
“The challenges for me have been navigating this new landscape of college athletics and understanding how Colorado can succeed in that new world,” he said. “But, I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it, that we have everything we need here to be successful. Every challenge that I’ve faced, I’ve found a solution. It may not be right away, but I can see the pathway to overcoming those challenges. And they are opportunities for us because if we can overcome them, I think we can be a force to be reckoned with in this new world of college athletics.”
Many athletic departments around the country are facing similar financial challenges in a new era of college sports that includes revenue sharing for student-athletes and name, image and likeness.
“Colorado’s not alone, but we’ve had a lot of success early on since I’ve been here formulating what a plan looks like moving forward,” Lovo said. “We’re going to be very creative. We’re going to uncover every stone to try to find a vertical of revenue that doesn’t exist right now. And the ones that we have, we’ve got to enhance those.”
Lovo knows, of course, that success in football is a major factor in the financial success of the athletic department. CU is coming off a 3-9 season in 2025, while head coach Deion Sanders and his staff strive to turn that around this year.
“We’ve got to have a successful football program to be able to help our bottom line, obviously with ticket sales and the other ancillary revenue streams that come off of it,” he said.
CU also continues to look for ways to use the facilities, such as Folsom Field and the Events Center for non-CU events.
“We have to have Folsom be used 365 days a year so that we can keep those revenue streams coming in and there’s not peaks and valleys,” he said.
Lovo added that naming rights for Folsom and the Events Center are a priority. Folsom Field has never had a naming rights partner and the .
“Thatap a big priority for me,” Lovo said. “We’ve been really aggressive on the naming rights front. I’ve been involved in a number of different pitches, and we’ve got a great thing to sell. We’ve got to capitalize on some of those. We’ve got to close some of those deals. We’re pushing really hard.”
There has been good momentum on the philanthropic side, as well, including a record-breaking $6 million gift from donor Jeff Crawford and his family last month.
“We need to develop a culture of giving that can take us to the next level,” Lovo said. “And thatap been so well received by our donors. We’ve had a really good push early on. … We’re pedal to the metal, as I say all the time. Now’s the time we’ve got to seize momentum, and we’ve got to capitalize on these next few years so that we’re prepared for whatever is coming in the future.”
For Lovo, the challenge isn’t as quick and easy as moving the family from Albuquerque, but itap a challenge he enjoys.
“I love it,” he said. “Here’s the reality: we live in an amazing market. This area, obviously, itap a saturated market, we know that. We have the Nuggets, the Broncos – you can go on and on – that are successful. So, we have to compete against that.
“I’ve started a revenue generation leadership team that meets frequently, and itap really a think tank. We come in there and I say, ‘There’s no bad ideas. Letap throw it all on the wall and see what sticks.’ We’ve already come up with some really exciting things, some of which we’ve implemented, others that we’re going to do as we go into the fall and into next year. So, yeah, it excites me every day when I come in because, one, we need to do it in order for us to survive and thrive in this new world, but there’s so much opportunity and potential here.”
