Conference Recruitment Expense Series: WAC

The final conference to be evaluated in BusinessofCollegeSports.com’s Conference Recruitment Expense Series is the WAC.  In the near future,  the WAC will expand to add new members.  What sort of recruiting budgets will these new members have to adopt to be competitive in the WAC?

Recruitment expense data from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, SEC, Sun Belt conferences have been posted.  On Monday, a spreadsheet listing the top-50 spenders in terms of recruiting will be listed, sorted by total recruitment expense budget, amount spent per team on average and amount spent per player on average.

The data was obtained from the Department of Education.  Although this data is not perfect, it is the only data available for both public and private institutions.  Furthermore, the data provided is for the 2010-11 school year.  Additionally, it should be noted that the “Amount Per Player” column was calculated using the total amount of student-athletes at a given school.  The Department of Education data does not disclose how many student-athletes a school recruited in a given year.  Thus, using the data alone, it is impossible to calculate how much it cost a school to recruit a specific class.

The WAC school which spent the highest amount on recruiting for its men’s sports programs was Utah State, which spent $405,695.00 in 2010-11.  Not far behind, was Hawaii, which spent $348,783.00.  Arguably, a bulk of Hawaii’s expenses was allocated toward travel expenses.

Hawaii led the way in recruitment expenses for its women’s sports teams in 2010-11.  Hawaii spent $213,697.00 on recruiting for its women’s sports teams in 2010-11.

Be sure to visit BusinessofCollegeSports.com on Monday to see a list of the top-50 recruitment expense spenders!