NCAA money?

Submitted by TheIcon34 on

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5100441

At the bottom...NCAA makes nearly 98% of its money from the men's basketball tournament.

For some reason, I thought the NCAA would earn a lot more from college football, but now I am thinking the NCAA gets nothing from college football.

Would it mean the NCAA would have a lot more to gain from a college football playoff system?

Noahdb

April 16th, 2010 at 7:31 PM ^

Television will dictate whether or not there's a football playoff, not the NCAA. And right now, the way the bowl system is structured, they make far more money that way then they would from a playoff.

The networks (ESPN particularly) would actually LOSE hundreds of millions of dollars if there was a playoff.

jmblue

April 16th, 2010 at 9:46 PM ^

The only way that could possibly be true is if the entire bowl system were scrapped in favor of a very small playoff. Neither of those is likely to happen. If/when a playoff is adopted, it will almost certainly have 16 teams, and bowls will exist for other teams.

BornInAA

April 16th, 2010 at 7:41 PM ^

like concerts or sports has to have a underwriter or promoter (like a movie producer) that organizes the whole thing and bucks up the initial investment to get back the biggest cut of the proceeds.
In football games the home team makes the dough as the promoter. In bowl games the bowl organizer / main sponsor make the dough.
NCAA doesn't make squat from these.
But the NCAA BB tournament is organized (promoted) by the NCAA so they get this sweetest cut.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

April 16th, 2010 at 8:03 PM ^

Would it mean the NCAA would have a lot more to gain from a college football playoff system?

No. The NCAA is nothing more than the association of the schools that comprise it, which means that the money that the NCAA earns is funneled to the members.

The schools don't care that the "NCAA" earns no money from college football because they get it directly and eliminate the middleman. This isn't a reason to expect a playoff in the future; rather it's the reason you don't have one now.

Seth9

April 17th, 2010 at 12:01 AM ^

The other is that the BCS bowls pay out to a much smaller selection of schools than a playoff would require. It is conceivable that a College Football Playoff could make do without the NCAA running the structure and TV deals. However, that could easily wind up backfiring as more non-BCS conference teams could make the playoffs.

Also important in the CFB playoff discussion is what happens if the Big Ten expands. Should the Big Ten take a Big East team, the Big East would almost certainly lose their BCS bid (maybe not if the team is Rutgers, but still, they probably would) which would have major ramifications with regard to the BCS structure, depending on what contract they wind up drawing up.

Zone Left

April 17th, 2010 at 12:18 AM ^

The NCAA might see a shift in it's revenue sources depending on how a hypothetical playoff's revenue distribution is set up. The big issue is that the large conferences, whose members make up most of the FCS and have the largest bankrolls in college athletics would probably have to distribute that revenue more equitably among the other FCS schools, which is likely a no-go for big schools, and because the NCAA is nothing without the big schools, it probably isn't worth it for the smaller schools to push too hard. The big schools could simply walk away if the rest of the NCAA demanded too much of their pie.

Don

April 16th, 2010 at 8:27 PM ^

As soon as the schools agree on having a formal playoff, the NCAA steps in, and then that means the stranglehold that the schools have on how the money is handled is broken. For some strange reason, university presidents and athletic directors are loathe to see the dough they get for football being divvied up with the fine people at the NCAA.

mgowin

April 16th, 2010 at 9:39 PM ^

Exactly. I don't know how many CFB playoff arguments I hear and no brings this up. Yes, we can have playoff games at bowl sites and everything else and make it all work out, but at the end of the day, the universities don't want another portion of the pie going to the NCAA. No one wants to give the NCAA the same powerful position in CFB that they enjoy in CBB.