BCS Expense Report Data (56 Schools)
Main post here, and an equally interesting story about the runaround required to get the reports from some of the schools here.
Not a ton of surprises if you've been following this narrative over the past couple of years, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The only thing that's really Michigan-specific is that the athletic department ate the cost of over 7K tickets for the Gator Bowl...all that does is prove how prescient our fans are. Unfortunately I was not one of them. I think individual school reports are going to be released later on.
Alabama received criticism for the upgrades after it was revealed the team was recruiting linebacker Brent Calloway and running back Demetrius Hart from the school, two players it eventually signed.A friendly reminder of the one that got away. But thanks for posting, it's an interesting read.
Calloway was not from Dr. Phillips.
You've got to remember, the contracts for the bowl games stipulate that schools sell a certain block of tickets at a certain price. Unfortunately for the schools, the bowls also sell tickets to other brokers at a price the market will actually bear. For the BCS title game, those tickets will probably be much more expensive than the school price. For just about every other game, the tickets will be a lot cheaper if they aren't purchased through the university.
I've said this a bunch, but the power conferences and Big 10 and SEC especially shouldn't be accepting these deals from the bowl games. If they want ratings and high attendance games, getting a high pick of Big 10 teams will get you that. The bowls can coerce the Sun Belt if they want, but the Big 10 can say no and still get the pick of bowl games. After all, the participants make the game, not the other way around.
the 7K above market payment (and rest of the above market sales) are used to fund the freebies the athletes get for playing in the bowl.
The NCAA allows $500 in gifts for 125 participants on each side ($125k). Those 7,000 tickets were probably in the 100-150 range, so assuming 3,500 $100 tickets and 3,500 $150 tickets, that's $875,000 in "absorbed tickets" compared to a payout of $125k to the participants. Also, MSU (NTMSU) probably had unsold seats as well.
Edit: Even going with Iowa's Insight Bowl numbers, which averaged $65.60 per absorbed ticket, would put the bowl profits at ~$460k, or over triple the amount payed out to M and Miss. State athletes combined.
It kind of makes sense so that you have a section of fans that root for one team and another section that roots for the other. It might also help in cutting down on the number of fights and stuff. But to make schools buy the tickets kind of doesn't make sense.
Yeah, but you could have a picture on the game's website that shows a section for team A and a section for team B that accomplishes the same thing. It's not like a fan from school B couldn't buy a ticket from school A if there wasn't much demand. Regardless, I think it's a holdover that hasn't gone out of style yet.
But I think you're getting at that's it is more of way to guarantee revenue for the bowl rather than being helpful for the schools.
I would pay 7K in tickets to have the Gator Bowl memory erased.
It seems like the power conferences can/should get together and champion some sort of bowl reform. There's money to be made by both sides (schools and bowl hosts) and the schools should hold enough power to make the financial terms more balanced.
wasn't that the Bowl Coalition and then the BCS?
I'm not very knowledable of the management structure of the BCS, but just looking at the outcome the bowl hosts seem to have the better end of the agreement (financially). I'm not sure when the contracts would be up for negotiation, but it certainly wouldn't be unprecedented for one party (in this case the schools) demand renegotiation based on unfairness. Yes I know that the schools only have themselves to blame if they agreed to the terms in the first place but in my opinion it shouldn't stop them from trying to perhaps work something out through arbitration. The whole system feels like a house of cards to some extent anyways... not sustainable if for no other reason than eventually the public outcry will demand changes (at least I hope the public will get sick of stupid meaningless bowl games).
TL;DR: Just because the schools got themselves into this mess doesn't mean there aren't options to fix it... I think they have enough leverage to do so.
I really don't understand why the conferences haven't used their leverage to remove ticket guarantees. This to me is the biggest mystery in the whole bowl system.
The only people really benefitting from the bowl games financially are the robber barons who run them. The BCS is in trouble just as much for the sorry financial arrangements with the smaller games as the bigger ones.
I have said before a playoff is inevitable because of the money. But if the Big conferences want to stave that off for a few years and keep their greed monopoly, they need to lay out rules for the non BCS bowls that guarantee that all the schools that participate come home with an actual and not paper profit.
The tremendous financial losses schools suffer to play in low grade bowl games are a principle factor in getting lawmakers sniffing around the entire system.
my god 'Bama spent 3 million on a week in Florida? and I thought Disney World was bad..