Houston we have a problem. Watch how the ACC will ignore this problem. ACC is loaded with schools with Texas, Michigan, Ohio State type money (endowments, wealthy alumns, etc).....they just don't want to play this game. But THAT is the core issue ....isn't it?
You can just about rank-order the conferences in terms of overall strength by looking at the percentage of student/academic subsidies the athletic side is getting.
Number of schools with less than a 5% subsidy percentage:
SEC:...... 10
B1G:....... 8 (B1G has most schools with less than 2% subsidy rate)
Big 12:..... 5
PAC:....... 3
ACC: ...... 0 (most ACC schools have less than a 15% subsidy rate)
TOP SCHOOL REVENUE
| Oregon | PAC-12 | $196,030,398 | $110,378,432 | $2,155,099 | 1.10 |
| Texas | Big 12 | $161,035,187 | $154,128,877 | $0 | 0.00 |
| Michigan | Big Ten | $157,899,820 | $142,551,994 | $256,316 | 0.16 |
| Alabama | SEC | $153,234,273 | $120,184,128 | $5,997,100 | 3.91 |
| Ohio State | Big Ten | $145,232,681 | $113,937,001 | $0 | 0.00 |
| LSU | SEC | $133,679,256 | $122,945,710 | $0 | 0.00 |
| Oklahoma | Big 12 | $129,226,692 | $113,366,698 | $0 | 0.00 |
| Wisconsin | Big Ten | $127,910,918 | $125,096,235 | $8,073,360 | 6.31 |
| Florida | SEC | $124,611,305 | $109,690,016 | $4,308,442 | 3.46 |
| Texas A&M | SEC | $119,475,872 | $95,663,483 | $1,241,457 | 1.04 |
| Oklahoma State | Big 12 | $117,803,302 | $109,648,000 | $7,521,475 | 6.38 |
| Penn State | Big Ten | $117,590,990 | $117,440,639 | $0 | 0.00 |
| Auburn | SEC | $113,716,004 | $126,470,602 | $4,384,800 | 3.86 |
| Tennessee | SEC | $107,499,732 | $106,153,854 | $1,250,000 | 1.16 |
| Minnesota | Big Ten | $106,176,156 | $106,176,156 | $7,011,066 | 6.60 |
| Iowa | Big Ten | $105,958,954 | $102,278,847 | $683,917 | 0.65 |
| Florida State | ACC | $104,774,474 | $98,866,182 | $7,980,366 | 7.62 |
| Michigan State | Big Ten | $104,677,456 | $107,422,832 | $1,094,958 | 1.05 |
| Georgia | SEC | $103,495,587 | $92,560,956 | $3,274,712 | 3.16 |
| Washington | PAC-12 | $100,275,187 | $86,097,137 | $3,549,679 | 3.54 |
| Arizona | PAC-12 | $99,911,034 | $95,524,260 | $7,901,134 | 7.91 |
| South Carolina | SEC | $98,619,479 | $95,762,786 | $5,631,976 | 5.71 |
| Kansas | Big 12 | $97,681,066 | $90,056,511 | $2,564,374 | 2.63 |
| Arkansas | SEC | $96,793,972 | $94,640,408 | $1,936,405 | 2.00 |
| Kentucky | SEC | $96,685,489 | $94,612,431 | $861,548 | 0.89 |
College athletics finance report: Non-Power 5 schools face huge money pressure
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified
The rich are different from you and me,
The so-called Power Five conferences are different from the American Athletic and
Wood Selig knows all about that. He is athletics director at
That puts Old Dominion in a double-bind: Trying to increase its football profile while trying to decrease its dependence on a primary source of revenue. Others in the AAC, Mountain West and C-USA face different challenges, but similar pressures: They are schools in lesser leagues with designs on keeping up with Power Five programs, but typically without the means to underwrite their dreams.
DATABASE: A look at every Division I public school's finances
"I think the pressure is going to get intense in the next five years," Kansas State president and NCAA Board of Governors chair
By the NCAA's benchmark for self-sufficiency, just 24 of 230 public schools in Division I stand on their own, up from 20 a year earlier, according to an analysis of the 2013-14 school year by USA TODAY Sports, based on data gathered in conjunction with
By NCAA definition, self-sufficiency means an athletic department's generated operating revenues — not counting money from student fees, university funding or direct government support — are at least equal to its total operating expenses, which is legalese for taking in more money than you spend.
Oregon led the nation with $196 million total operating revenue and an $83.5 million difference between its generated revenue and its total operating expense of $110.4 million. However, the school reported that its revenue included in-kind facility gifts of $95 million — the value of a football training facility funded primarily by Nike co-founder
The other 23 schools meeting this standard are all from the Southeastern, Big Ten,
The
Rutgers, which was then in the AAC but has since moved to the Big Ten, had 2013-14's largest deficit at $36.3 million. The AAC's Connecticut had the third-highest ($27.1 million), ODU the fourth-highest ($26.8 million) and Mountain West's Air Force the sixth-highest ($25.8 million).
The deficits get smaller and the number of self-sufficient schools gets larger if viewed another way. Though athletics departments get money from student fees, university funds and government support, they also send money to their schools through payments for scholarships and facilities and through transfers like Texas'.
When those amounts are balanced, USA TODAY Sports found, all 50 of the public schools that were in a Power Five conference in 2013-14 were self-sufficient. But only three Bowl Subdivision schools outside the Power Five and two non-FBS schools were self-sufficient.
"You've still got 300 other Division I men's basketball schools where" self-sufficiency doesn't exist, Schulz said. "So, even if we give that broader definition, I still think that pressure on those 300 schools is going to be intense. … There are a lot of really outstanding schools (that) have to rely on state dollars coming from general funds to do those athletic programs and to remain competitive with the haves."
But clearly many schools and states find value in financially supporting major college athletics programs. Public officials in at least three states — Wyoming, Utah and North Carolina — are appropriating taxpayers funds or increasing student athletic fees to prop up athletics programs in conferences below the Power Five. But none of that works for Old Dominion because Virginia does not allow tuition money or state appropriations to subsidize the auxiliary side of universities. And now state schools can no longer easily raise student fees.
An analysis by USA TODAY Sports found Old Dominion's athletics department subsidy from student fees for 2012-13 was 73% and for 2013-14 was 65%. Selig said ODU would need to increase its revenue from outside sources by roughly $3 million to reach a 55-45 ratio. "The law puts more onus on athletics to generate more revenue privately," he said, "but that was already a path that we were taking before the bill was introduced."
STATES' DIFFERING APPROACHES
Kirk Cox, a Republican Virginia state delegate who sponsored the new law, said there was a good deal of "angst" among Virginia public colleges when the bill was in the discussion stages. "We wanted to start bending the cost curve," Cox said.
HB 1897 takes effect on July 1, 2016, and schools will have five years to get into compliance. If not, schools can get five more years, "but then it's like double-secret probation," Selig said. "We're not acting as if the back five-year window exists. I daresay Old Dominion will be in compliance well in advance of" the original deadline in 2021.
Here is how the law will work: Schools from Power Five conferences will be able to get no more than 20% of their budgets from student fees and other university sources — that means ACC members Virginia and Virginia Tech, which are already below that threshold — while
Old Dominion is Virginia's only FBS school outside of the Power Five — and the only school to have its student-fee threshold set at 55% by the new law.
"ODU was a unique case," Cox said. "Basically, we created another category for them."
So ODU and C-USA number-crunchers looked at the subsidies that their FBS peers were getting in five conferences outside the Power Five: C-USA, AAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Mid-American. Selig said ODU president John Broderick provided the results to staffers for the state General Assembly, who in turn were conducting independent research of their own.
"It was a collaborative exercise in trying to be fair," said Tony Maggio, a legislative fiscal analyst for the state's House Appropriations Committee. Maggio said the numbers each side came up with were close.
Cox has not heard from legislators in other states who may want to pass similar laws, but Selig thinks it is only a matter of time. "I don't think this is going to an anomaly," Selig said. "My sense is other states are going to take note."
In Utah, Wyoming, and North Carolina, however, more help is on the way for athletics.
In February, the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors approved student athletic fee increases for the 2015-16 school year for all of the system's 11 Division I schools except
In March, Wyoming lawmakers approved up to $4 million in taxpayer money that will be given to the
About a week after Wyoming's action, Utah's legislature approved an additional $1.5 million annually for the athletics department at
"I'm convinced we'll make more than that (amount) in economic development — from people coming to the games," said Hillyard, who added that the legislature has provided other help for college athletics programs in the state, including letting all of them retain sales tax dollars as long as the money is used to support women's teams.
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
New NCAA legislation will allow schools to pay the full cost of attendance for scholarship athletes. That will not be a challenge for many of the schools in the Power Five conferences, but it will be for schools like Old Dominion.
"We have done the calculations," Selig said. "We have 16 athletic programs and if we pay full cost of attendance to all of our athletes, that would represent $800,000 more of cost — $800,000 that we would have to find from private resources. There is no way we can get it from student fees. Now, if we do it need-based that would cost $250,000. Or we could do some hybrid model in between. We're still trying to formulate our strategy."
Selig said ODU has looked at as many as 40 options on what that model might be. He said the full cost of attendance is an extra $2,975 per student, but that $1,100 of that is the estimated cost of three round-trip airfares per school year. Given that at least half of ODU's athletes are from in-state and would not need airfare, "maybe there's some wiggle room there. … Philosophically, we are in favor of supporting student-athletes to the highest allowable possibility. But there is also reality and we need to make sure that we have ample funding to cover those costs."
So where can ODU find more money? Selig said much of the athletics department's increased revenue in recent years has come from donations to the ODU Athletics Foundation, which has increased its donations markedly since the school moved up to major college football in 2009.
"We have challenged all of our revenue-generating areas to increase 10% each year," Selig says. "For example, the foundation is raising $4.2 million in unrestricted annual gift support so a 10% increase means we need to generate $420,000 more next year and we have been able to do that for the last three years. You keep doing 10%, 10%, 10% — it's aggressive but you make great strides."
Selig spent 11 years in the
ODU moved to C-USA from the
"The high-resource schools have means available to them that most of us will never enjoy," Selig says. "That's OK. Because at the end of the day, in football they can still only sign 85 scholarships. In (men's) basketball, they can only sign 13. There are thousands of great athletes throughout this country and internationally that give Division I institutions a huge pipeline for athletic talent that goes beyond those 65 high-resource institutions. They just can't capture all the talent, despite all the facilities they're going to build and all the coaches they're going to pay."
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