Expansion By The Numbers 6: Athletic Budgets

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Money equals facilities.  Facilities equal recruiting.  More money equals better facilities.  Better facilities equal better recruiting.

When it comes to college athletics — especially college football — money is the lifeblood of a program.  The deeper a program’s pockets, the more likely that program can build state of the art facilities and travel the nation looking for prospects.  The more likely it can hire a flashy head coach and a proven staff of ace recruiters with NFL experience.

Check the nation’s Top 25 each year and you’ll find many of America’s biggest-spending athletic departments represented.  So in Part 6 of our series on SEC expansion, we’ll look at the total dollars spent by 35 different potential — though many are highly unlikely — dance partners for the Southeastern Conference.

This Category:  Athletic budgets

Why:  There’s no better way to gauge both a school’s resources and its commitment to winning than by checking the US Department of Education’s yearly reports on athletic spending.  That doesn’t, however, mean that these numbers are perfect.  Schools can use different methods of budgeting, for example.  That’s why we’ll look only at the total athletic expenses for each school and not at individual program spending (like football versus basketball versus. badminton and so on).

Some schools like Mississippi and Mississippi State use a bit more private booster club money to help pay for expenses.  A school like Arkansas has very little debt which allows UA to reach deeper into its boosters’ pockets than these numbers might suggest.  The US Naval Academy doesn’t even report its athletic expenses (though, they’re believed to be rather small, which is why we’ll rank them at the bottom of our list).

In addition, most schools joining the SEC would see an increase in athletic department revenue which in turn would result in an increase in athletic department spending, too.

So we’re not talking a pure apples-to-apples comparison here.  But these are the best numbers available.  They’re the numbers turned in by the schools to the US Department of Education for school year 2009-2010.  If the numbers are good enough for the government, they’re good enough for us.

Below are the total athletic expenditures for the 35 schools we’re comparing in our series.

* Look at the top 10 budgets on the list.  Those are budgets comparable to big-time SEC budgets.  Especially the top five budgets on the list.  Those are SEC-level programs in terms athletic commitment.

* Missouri — the SEC’s most likely 14th school as of today — ranks pretty far down the list in terms of athletic spending.  But MU’s facilities are still large (football) and new (basketball).  The Tigers would be a perfect example of a school that would have more cash to throw around in the SEC than they did in the Big 12 in ’09-’10.

* Admit it… you’re surprised to see potential SEC wish-listers Virginia Tech and NC State so far down on the spending list.  When it comes to bang for the buck, the Hokies are the Tampa Bay Rays of college football.

* The viral marketing kings of East Carolina would be the lowest-spending program in the SEC upon entry, but their dollars would increase exponentially if they were to receive a highly unlikely bid from Mike Slive.  (They’re “The Blair Witch Project” of expansion candidates.  For a school with such a small budget, their fans are pushing the “Undaunted” Terry Holland sales pitch video anywhere and everywhere.  And, yes, we posted it on this site when it came out weeks ago.)

For comparison’s sake, the SEC’s budget numbers are listed below:

* The SEC’s total athletic expenditures in 2009-10 were $908.3 million.  That’s an average athletic budget of 75.69 million.  No wonder the SEC reigns supreme in most mainstream college sports.

Up next, we’ll look at facilities in Part 7 of our series tomorrow.