OT:Football Budgets

Submitted by coachclen on

Two weeks ago, fanhouse ran a story regarding the 2009-2010 football budgets for every school in the country. This topic was introduced by Maizedandconfused at that time: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/slightly-ot-report-schools-football-expenditures. I by no means want to highjack his post, but it did inspire me to do some rudimentary math. 

 

The story at fanhouse (http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2010/11/16/mcmurphys-law-ohio-state-still-big-spender-with-alabama-irish/) was from 2009-2010 as mentioned above. I wanted to break down how much each school "pays for a win" just to see what the numbers were. 

In 2009:

Big Ten:

  • Ohio State had a budget of 31.76 million and won 11 games= 2.88 million a win.
  • Wisconsin: 22.02 million/10 Wins = 2.2 million a win
  • Penn State: 19.78 million/11 wins=1.79 million a win
  • Iowa: 18.46 million/11 wins= 1.67 million a win
  • Michigan: 18.32 million/5 wins= 3.66 million a win
  • Nebraska: 17.93 million /10 wins= 1.79 million a win
  • Michigan State: 17.46 million/6 wins= 2.91 million a win
  • Minnesota: 17.43 million/6 wins= 2.9 million a win
  • Northwestern: 15.75 million/ 8 wins= 1.9 million a win
  • Indiana: 12.82 million/4 wins= 3.20 million a win
  • Purdue: 11.82 million/5 wins= 2.36 million a win
  • Illinois:11.09 million/3 wins= 3.69 million a win

Others of Note:

  • Alabama: 31.11 million/14 wins= 2.22 million a win
  • Auburn: 27.91 million/ 8 wins=3.48 million a win (as in previous thread: easy Cam Newton Joke)
  • Florida: 24.45 million/ 13 wins=1.88 million a win
  • South Carolina: 22.79 million/7 wins= 3.25 million a win
  • Oregon: 18.07 million/10 wins=1.8 million a win
  • Texas: 25.31million/13 wins= 1.9 million a win
  • USC: 21.37 million/9 wins= 2.37 million a win
  • Cincinnati: 11.59 million/12 wins = 0.9 million a win
  • Pittsburgh: 17.44 million/10 wins=1.74 million a win
  • Notre Dame:29. 49 million/ 6 wins= 4.9 million a win (!)
  • TCU: 20.60 million/ 12 wins-1.71 million a win
  • Boise State: 6.85 million/14 wins= 0.48 million a win (!)
  • Eastern Michigan: 5.03 million/ 0 wins= derp!
  • Central Michigan: 6.05 million/12 wins= 0.5 million a win
  • Western Michigan: 5.6 million/5 wins= 1.0 million a win

Now I know some people really just don't care about these things, but I really do think it is interesting to look at the numbers and see how programs do given the amount of resources they put in. Obviously, I understand that "just the numbers" don't always tell the whole story, because most years (not 08 or 09) the money Michigan puts into its football program is usually good for more than 3.6 million a win...etc...etc.. 

Some things do stand out:

  • Call me ignorant but I was surprised to see TCU has a larger football budget than Michigan.
  • Regardless of strength of schedule, Boise State has a great thing going. Will be interesting to see how re-alignment affects the program.
  • Notre Dame=Wow.

Thoughts? 

[Please don't turn this into Rich Rod Fire Banter=== "Rich Rod can only beat the teams  with the three smallest budgets in the conference"==== that is not what this is about]

 

 

 

MGoShtoink

December 2nd, 2010 at 9:34 AM ^

but I'm not sure it really tells us anything.  Year by year expeditures can change.

What would be most interesting is if some enterprising MGoCommunity member does this for all-time wins.  Then we can really see the "value" of our athletic budget.

coachclen

December 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 AM ^

I am enamored with the idea of college football as a business. I know this is not a new idea, but the money that goes into these programs and how it all works (including the BCS, etc.) really intrigues me. 

Just seeing how much money programs spend and what it got them (Again, only one year of data, and excludes other factors... I know) in 2009 is worth a look in my opinion. 

Obviously as mentioned above, an All-Time look would probably be a more effective approach.

Feat of Clay

December 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 AM ^

It's interesting that U-M is in the middle of the pack (for expenditures) because relative to other public Big Ten schools, it costs it a lot more to provide scholarships to OOS athletes.   Of course, scholarships are not the biggest component of the budget, but the high tuition at U-M (and high cost of living in AA) definitely drives up costs.

BlockM

December 2nd, 2010 at 9:53 AM ^

Would a sizeable chunk of this be travel costs? For instance, flying the whole team, coaches, etc. to Texas for the Alabama game in a couple years, putting them up in hotels, paying for food, etc. could get pretty expensive. 

Does TCU travel a lot more than we do, adding to their expenses?

Admittedly, I haven't done any number crunching on this...

BlockM

December 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 AM ^

It could, but since our athletic department is financially independent I don't think they're really held accountable by the government all that much. (I could be wrong.) They're taking no support from taxpayers, so I don't think they have much to worry about on that front.

ChasingRabbits

December 2nd, 2010 at 10:06 AM ^

[Please don't turn this into Rich Rod Fire Banter=== "Rich Rod can only beat the teams  with the three smallest budgets in the conference"==== that is not what this is about]

Of course it isn't, but thaks for pointing it out anyway.

This woudl be more interesting if you had more than one year so that you could see if there was any correlation between budgets and wins at the same school. Was the 3 win season a smaller budget?  Was the 7 win season a bigger budget?

w2j2

December 2nd, 2010 at 10:08 AM ^

If OSU is spending 70% more than UM, they may have a big advantage.

If RichRod needs more resources, provide them.

The G.S. opinion talked about details throughout this program.  Well maybe coach needs to develope a bigger , more effective organization so that his people can recruit, teach & monitor a lot more details .

tlh908

December 2nd, 2010 at 10:18 AM ^

I found the data interesting, thanks for the post.  I was suprised though by Michigan being ranked in the middle of the pack as far as dollars spent.  I would have thought they would have a bigger budget, closer to what OSU spends.  It is impossible though to make conclusions from one year of spending details. 

Brown and Blue

December 2nd, 2010 at 10:46 AM ^

Does anyone have any speculation as to why Ohio State is spending so much more than everybody else?

(I can think of some obvious joke responses, but what's the real answer?)