You're right, I missed this in the link: "Payment of principal and interest on athletic facilities debt, leases and rental fees in the reporting year." To be fair, I did say it was likely I was missing something! Found an article:
Writing for Sportico, University of Illinois professor and athletic board member Michael LeRoy paints a picture of massive athletics debt and misleading administration on his campus and beyond.
www.athleticbusiness.com
So a few things. This article seems to have the problem going back to 2014 ("Simply put, Illinois’ athletic program has been deeply mired in debt since 2014.") That's pre-Whitman. I suppose you can blame Whitman for not going into belt-tightening/austerity mode. But that means no facilities upgrades, no coaching changes, no pay increases to retain talented coaches and assistant coaches. And at the end of the day, that likely means bad teams in both revenue sports, and probably a lot less revenue. Not sure that ultimately helps the debt situation.
2nd, the article shows this is a widespread issue. Iowa's annual debt service is over $32 million a year, with Alabama and OSU not far behind. In a lot of ways it appears to be the cost of doing business.
Last, it appears a good chunk of this debt is to the University. Not sure if that's actually better than it being to a bank, but I guess it makes me feel a little better that a good chunk of this annual debt service is going back to the University, and presumably to academics.