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How Much Did the BCS Top 25 Spend on Recruiting?
As I continue to write about the financial aspect of college athletics, I find myself wondering about things like how much money plays a role in winning. Is there one place where you can spend more money and increase your odds of competing for a championship? Or is the Athletic Director more of a conductor choosing which instruments to highlight and when in order to produce the best sounding symphony?
I thought it would be interesting to see how much spending on recruiting plays a role in football success. The numbers reflect recruiting expenses for the 2009-2010 school year.
One thing to note is that recruiting dollars are not broken down by sport, so the numbers you see below reflect the total amount spent on recruiting for all male athletes. Since football has the largest recruiting class and we can safely presume most schools spend the majority of their recruiting dollars on football, I think the numbers still paint an interesting picture.
Below you will see recruiting dollars spent during the 2009-2010 school year for each school in the 2010 BCS final standings, when presumably the athletes recruited with 2009-2010 dollars were then members of the team:
| School | Recruiting Expenses | % of Total Expenses | |
| 1 | Auburn | $1,129,984.00 | 1.24% |
| 2 | Oregon | $844,235.00 | 1.29% |
| 3 | TCU | $438,422.00 | 0.84% |
| 4 | Stanford | $754,689.00 | 0.92% |
| 5 | Wisconsin | $473,897.00 | 0.53% |
| 6 | Ohio State | $676,966.00 | 0.65% |
| 7 | Oklahoma | $1,010,570.00 | 1.14% |
| 8 | Arkansas | $1,187,216.00 | 1.65% |
| 9 | Michigan State | $677,958.00 | 1.10% |
| 10 | Boise State | $158,355.00 | 0.63% |
| 11 | LSU | $741,762.00 | 0.73% |
| 12 | Missouri | $596,738.00 | 1.12% |
| 13 | Virginia Tech | $625,207.00 | 1.24% |
| 14 | Oklahoma State | $414,655.00 | 0.69% |
| 15 | Nevada | $216,920.00 | 1.00% |
| 16 | Alabama | $1,257,128.00 | 1.47% |
| 17 | Texas A&M | $532,641.00 | 0.77% |
| 18 | Nebraksa | $685,361.00 | 1.00% |
| 19 | Utah | $466,532.00 | 1.46% |
| 20 | South Carolina | $565,967.00 | 0.72% |
| 21 | Mississippi State | $416,333.00 | 1.15% |
| 22 | West Virginia | $669,844.00 | 1.18% |
| 23 | Florida State | $581,923.00 | 0.77% |
| 24 | Hawaii | $272,078.00 | 0.93% |
| 25 | UCF | $354,264.00 | 0.99% |
| Averages | $629,985.80 | 1.01% |
Boise State is spending the paltry sum of $158,355, which is just 25% of the average. Only 26 of the 115 on the Broncos 2010 roster hailed from Idaho, with a huge percentage coming from as far away as California and Texas. Impressive that Boise State recruits so well on such a limited budget.
As an interesting side note, Boise State spends nearly as much on female recruiting as male, with female recruiting costs coming in at $123,287. That’s 44% of the total recruiting expenditures. Compare that to the leader for male recruiting expenses on this chart, Alabama, who only spends 26% of their recruiting expenditures on female recruiting. To complete the data needed for comparison, Alabama has 10 women’s teams and Boise State has 9 (with all track-related sports combined into one in each total).
The other thing that stood out to me was that Utah spent above average in terms of the percent of their total expenses advanced towards recruiting. In fact, they rank fourth overall in terms of percentage of total expenses spent on male recruiting. I was also surprised to see Ohio State and Michigan State from the Big Ten spending so much less than Alabama, Arkansas and Auburn from the SEC. The latter three make up the top three spenders overall on the list. Did this help them in their quest to move from a non-AQ conference to an AQ conference?
What surprised you from this list? If your school is on this list, how do you feel about what’s being spent on recruiting?
ACC Football No Cash Cow
After writing about the football finances of the SEC and Big Ten, it’s the ACC’s turn. The numbers are drawn from schools’ reports to the U.S. Department of Education on the state of their athletic departments’ finances for July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. See the note at the end for more details on the data.
I don’t think the schools on top of the revenue list in the ACC will surprise anyone:
| Football Revenue | |
| Virginia Tech | $31,155,870.00 |
| Clemson Univ. | $30,994,503.00 |
| Georgia Tech | $24,870,064.00 |
| Univ. of Miami | $24,631,029.00 |
| Univ. of North Carolina | $22,077,550.00 |
| North Carolina State | $22,018,738.00 |
| Boston College | $19,184,902.00 |
| Univ. of Virginia | $19,004,653.00 |
| Florida State Univ. | $18,958,861.00 |
| Duke Univ. | $16,109,324.00 |
| Univ. of Maryland | $11,540,368.00 |
| Wake Forest University | $10,227,922.00 |
I also don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that the average revenue in the ACC ($21m) is less than half that of the SEC ($50m) and only slightly better than half that of the Big Ten ($41m). Read the rest of this entry
