Michigan Athletic Department 4th in Total Revenue, 3rd in Expenses, 7th in Surplus
Michigan's total AD revenue continues to grow under Mr. Brandon, and continues to be in the top five nationally.
A few interesting findings in the data compiled by USA Today: the tremendous growth in revenue over the past 10 years; and the fact that some of the schools with higher revenues than Michigan, such as Wisconsin and Alabama, receive huge subsidies even though they are raking it in anyhow. I'm not sure the basis of Michigan's small reported subsidy (about 250k), does anyone know? Student facility fees?
http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2014/06/michigan_athletic_dep…
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EDIT: I found a reference explaining Michigan's subsidy, from Dave Ablauf, the AD spokesman:
http://www.goacta.org/news/most_ncaa_division_i_athletic_departments_ta…
"Michigan reported receiving less than $260,000: $16,000 in federal work study funding and the remainder from the university to cover the salary of academic services director Phil Hughes, according to athletics spokesman Dave Ablauf."
This was reported last year, 2013, for the 2012 season. Thanks LSAClassOf2000 for the tip.
1st in Stauskases.
It's amazing how much some schools subsidize their athletic departments.I'm glad Michigan is on the low end of the scale there.
Coming in at number one for subsidies? Rutgers at $47M. Go Scarlet Knights!
I'm curious as to how that number changes as Rutgers B1G numbers get into the mix.
The USA Today TABLE is pretty cool, in that it's somewhat sortable. Lots of interesting nuggets there.
I think a lot of the subsidies are accounting related more than anything. Rutgers has a sizable student fee that goes directly to the athletic department. My guess is Michigan's "subsidy" is a cost accounting measure for facility maintenance or "rent" for a portion of one or more buildings.
Personally, I hate these aggregate revenue and expense numbers. I want them broken out by football revenues / expenses, basketball revenues / expenses, and then all the other sports. Football and basketball make enormous profits that are used to subsidize the other teams. Furthermore, the projected revenues from football and basketball are used to finance facilities for all the other sports. If the TV model falls apart, the university will be stuck with a big bill for what I view as completely unneccesary athletic facilities used by under 1% of the student body.
Just have sport specific revenue and expenses and then another category is AD wide (BTN, adidas) like you mention. But it's probably easier to break out. I'm sure adidas knows how many football, basketball, or other stuff they sell. Break it out into percentages. Same for BTN based on percentage of programming time or advertising money per show category. There are nerds somewhere paid to keep track of this stuff... they just don't want to tell us.
Not insulting nerds, being one myself. Just of the engineering instead of accounting variety.
From a classic cost accounting perspective, you'd look at a driver--perhaps coverage time. That said, I think it's 100% football for the cable channel. Comcast isn't carrying BTN for wrestling or basketball coverage. Without football, the network wouldn't exist. I'd allocate the BTN money entirely or nearly entirely to football.
BTN is there b/c of football, but I probably watch more basketball than football on BTN. More games, longer season. Most of UM football is on network/espn anyway.
It'd be absolutely marvelous to have the NCAA require a very specific sport-by-sport breakdown of revenue and expenses, as well as by category - that is, ticket revenue, ancillary revenue, TV revenue, coaching expenses, scholarship expenses, travel expenses, and so forth. I'd love to see that. In a sense, that's exactly why they don't do it.
Do a little mental math and make a few reasonable assumptions and you'll get an okay approximation of football revenue and costs. It's a huge, huge profit margin.
I'd guess 100% of football costs for the year are paid after the first game with minimal profit. The rest is probably profit.
Although I am not sure about the nature of the subsidies for this last complete cycle, I do know that in the previous cycle, Michigan also took a small subsidy as well to fund work study programs sanctioned by the federal government and the salary of Phil Hughes, as I recall. I would imagine that it might be sundry items like that this time around as well, but I could be wrong.
I believe that Michigan's subsidy to the AD is Brandon's salary and nothing else. He's a university employee IIRC.
But Brandon made north of 700k last year, and the listed subsidy is 250k. I believe they are all technically university employees, but that doesn't mean the U pays their salaries. There are positions all over the U that are partially or even fully funded by outside dollars.
In that case I recall incorrectly
I'm so bored! Talking about subsidies (bout practice). I never thought I would be excited for a football game against App. State but it can't get here soon enough.
I wish we could get more football wins.
the subsidy pays for the salary of the whoever oversees the academic support for the athletes
Looking at the list, Wisconsin has jumped into the no. 2 spot, which makes no sense due to their 7 million subsidy and the fact that their revenue is normally not close to the "big boys".
Does anyone know why Wiscy jumped as high as they did?
is an accounting convention. Every department is allocated a certain amount of administrative cost from the university administration, which gets carried on the books of the Athletic Department as a contribution or subsidy.
Do you have a source for that? Because if that is true, then 1) someone figured out how to convert an overhead charge, which is a cost/debit on the books, into a subsidy, which is revenue/credit on the books; and 2) the UM has absolutely the lowest administrative surcharge in the country, by a long shot, given the revenue that passes through the AD and the facilities they use.
They had a huge increase in contributions (UM = $31 million, UW = $59 million). Whatever happened to Ross's contribution of $100 million?
Usually mega-donations are technically commitments to donate the headline amount over a certain period of time (e.g., 10 years).
You may recall we went 7-6 last year. I'd say #4 is pretty damn impressive under the circumstances.