Ohio St., Alabama, top list of big spending football programs

[Auggie]

Associated Press / December 30, 2010

(SNIP)

Ohio State and Alabama each spend more than $31 million a year to run their football programs, while nine other teams closing out the season at one of those 35 bowl games spend $20 million plus.

The cheapest bowl-bound program? That would be Troy, winner of the New Orleans Bowl on the first postseason weekend, at just a shade over $5 million. That's nearly $23 million less than they spend an hour away at top-ranked Auburn, where the Tigers are playing for the national title this season. Auburn's opponent in the BCS game, Oregon, spends $18 million -- 16th among the bowl-bound schools.

The statistics come from the Department of Education, which has required universities to submit the amount they spend on sports since 2000 as part of the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. With that information, the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool was created. And while the database comes with disclaimers and caveats stating that there are no hard-and-fast guidelines as to what schools count under the term "expenses" and "revenue," these are the numbers they report to the federal government.

After OSU ($31.7 million) and Alabama ($31.1 million), the rest of top five biggest spenders include Notre Dame, Auburn and LSU, according to the database. Most schools' figures were for the fiscal year that ended June 30. Broken down on a per-student basis, the Irish spend the most, the database says. Their trip to the Sun Bowl is coming at a price of $3,531 for each of Notre Dame's 8,351 undergraduates -- an overall budget of $29.4 million -- while TCU spends $2,822 per student to run its Rose Bowl-bound football program.

LINK: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/bowls10/news/story?id=5970794

Rankings:

Top 10 spenders:

1. Ohio State, $31,763,036
2. Alabama, $31,118,134
3. Notre Dame, $29,490,788
4. Auburn, $27,911,713
5. LSU, $25,566,520
6. Florida, $24,457,557
7. South Carolina, $22,794,211
8. Wisconsin, $22,041,491
9. Arkansas $22,005,014
10. TCU $20,609,361

[hughee99]

1. To continue with the argument going on earlier, Is Ohio St. ruining college football?

:hide:

[Auggie]

2. I'm blow away at the cost per undergraduate...

Notre Dame: $3,531 per student.

:wow:

[madinmaryland]

3. Hmmm. I would say the SEC (minus Vanderbilt) is ruining college football.

:hide:

Which thread was that?? I need to jump into that one!

[hughee99]

7. The most recent was the "Are the Red Sox ruining baseball".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=215&topic_id=168683&mesg_id=168683

[madinmaryland]

8. Well, considering they are spending like drunken yankees...

Yes.

[El Supremo]

4. How much of TCU's is for their remodeled stadium?

I doubt they could afford that for a football program with only 8,799 students enrolled. Are they counting donations?

[lazarus]

6. Bama did some remodelling, too

also, big bonuses paid out for the Championship. That had to change things.

[Upton]

5. Look at TCU..

we're supposed to believe the media hype that they're the poor little underdog school that could...and here they are with a football program spending like they are in the SEC or Big Ten.

[charlie and algernon]

9. $20-30 million for ONE sports program?

Let's just call the D-1A college football programs a professional sports league and be done with it. It's essentially the NFL's minor league anyway.