The good folks at USA Today have put out their latest look at the dollars being spent and brought in by all the NCAA Division I athletic programs across the country. What they’ve found is that Texas continues to be the richest program in the country (and getting richer)… overall schools are spending more on athletics than they’re making… and Alabama led the way in Southeastern Conference revenue last year.
The database is wildly interesting, but it’s not quite perfect. First, only public schools are required to share their expenses and revenues so Vanderbilt and other private schools are not included. Second, schools fudge numbers, cook books, or any other cliches you can imagine. There is no definitive number that can be used to compare School X to School Y because the two schools might tally up their numbers in totally different ways.
Having said that, these numbers are about as close as one can get to actually determining the health — or illness — of an athletic department in a given year.
In the chart below, we’ll use USA Today’s data to show you the total revenue, total expenses, and total net profit for each SEC program in 2011. But remember, Vandy isn’t included and Missouri and Texas A&M were making Big 12 money in all of the years studied:
| Rank | School | Total Revenue 2011 | Total Expenses 2011 | Total Net Profit 2011 |
| 1 | Alabama | 124,498,616 | 105,068,152 | 19,430,464 |
| 2 | Florida | 123,514,257 | 107,157,831 | 16,356,426 |
| 3 | LSU | 107,259,352 | 91,796,925 | 15,462,427 |
| 4 | Arkansas | 91,768,112 | 79,392,988 | 12,375,124 |
| 5 | Georgia | 92,341,067 | 80,759,498 | 11,581,569 |
| 6 | Texas A&M | 87,296,532 | 78,310,805 | 8,985,727 |
| 7 | Miss. State | 58,981,769 | 51,588,743 | 7,393,026 |
| 8 | Tennessee | 104,368,992 | 97,580,406 | 6,788,586 |
| 9 | Auburn | 103,982,441 | 100,497,784 | 3,484,657 |
| 10 | S. Carolina | 83,813,226 | 80,525,711 | 3,287,515 |
| 11 | Ole Miss | 49,180,892 | 47,109,301 | 2,071,591 |
| 12 | Kentucky | 84,878,311 | 82,840,006 | 2,038,305 |
| 13 | Missouri | 64,146,530 | 64,160,358 | -13,828 |
Again, these numbers can be doctored by the schools to appear any way they like. In several years we’ve seen SEC programs report a net profit of exactly $0 for a year. Maybe they pulled a Michael Scott and spent their surplus at the last minute, but we think it’s more likely they’re tweaking things as they see fit.
But…
Looking at Missouri’s net athletic profit in 2011 — according to USA Today’s numbers — it’s not to hard to figure out why the school is jumping to the SEC this year.
Not sure where USA Today is getting there numbers, but financial data for ALL schools, including private, is available here: http://ope.ed.gov/athletics for the 12 months ended June 30, 2011. All institutions participating in Title IV federal assistance aid programs to file financial disclosure with the Department of Education. Big discrepancy on Miss. State #'s: $58.9M per USA Today vs $49.9M per Equity In Athletics.
More proof that Mal Moore was a genius in spending so much money to get Saban and not demanding a buyout. We'll see if Dave Hart learned anything from him at the end of this season.
Interesting that Miss State has about half the budget of Tenn but comes in about half a million ahead on net profit. And Auburn is spending a LOT of money for not that much return.
Home | Recruiting | Over Time | Blue Chip Stories | MrSEC Shop | RSS Feeds | About Us & Contact Us
Team Pages: Alabama | Arkansas | Auburn | Florida | Georgia | Kentucky | LSU | Mississippi State | Missouri | Ole Miss | South Carolina | Tennessee | Texas A&M | Vanderbilt
Copyright (c)2013 Malt Shovel Media | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Partner of USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties. From:
[...] is at the bottom of the barrel in terms of revenue in the SEC – 10th (out of 11 because Vandy is a private school). Ole Miss is 12th, but they claim to [...]