How does Virginia Tech stack up in athletics revenue?
The Virginia Tech athletic department’s revenue neared $67 million in 2010-11, the fourth-highest of the ACC schools who reported figures in a USA Today report published Monday night.
The Hokies had $66.9 million in revenue in the most recent year NCAA filings are available. That’s over $18 million more than Virginia Tech generated in 2005-06, the first year of data listed, although the numbers are not adjusted for inflation.
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The athletic department’s total expenses were $62.6 million, meaning it covered costs by $4.3 million. But that net gain is in part due to a $7.5 million subsidy, nearly all of which is through student fees (something my predecessor wrote about last year). That number accounted for 11.3 percent of Tech’s total revenue.
Only 22 Division I athletic departments operated in the black, generating enough revenue to cover athletics expenses without the aid of subsidies.
The report broke down each school’s revenues and expenses further. The Hokies earned $19.5 million in rights/licensing, $18.9 million in ticket sales, $15.8 million in contributions, $7.2 million in student fees, $354,000 in school funds and $4.9 million in “other revenues” that includes some TV income, tournament/bowl revenues and food/concessions, among other things.
Virginia Tech’s costs were $19.8 million in coaching salaries, $16 million in facilities, $9.4 million in scholarships and $17.3 million in “other expenses.” That includes guarantees paid to other schools, severance payments to former coaches. recruiting, team travel, equipment and uniforms, game day costs, fundraising/marketing costs and medical expense/insurance, among other things.
The report shows how much the cost of college athletics is rising these days. The Hokies earned $48.7 million in 2005-06 and had expenses totaling $45.3 million that year.
The figures come with this disclaimer on the USA Today site: The school’s president or chancellor reviews the data before it’s submitted to the NCAA, which also does a general audit of the data. In an effort to standardize reporting, NCAA staff members have worked with the National Association of College and University Business Officers for formulate definitions for each category. Still, some schools interpret the reporting rules slightly differently.
Here’s how Virginia Tech stacks up in the ACC. Remember, only public universities are required to release data. That exempts Boston College, Duke, Wake Forest and Miami.
ACC schools by revenue (rounded off, figures in millions):
- Florida State — $78.6
- Virginia — $78.4
- North Carolina — $75.6
- Virginia Tech — $66.9
- Clemson — $61.2
- Georgia Tech — $54.3
- Maryland — $61.6
- N.C. State — $51.1
ACC schools by expenses (rounded off, figures in millions):
- Florida State — $86.9
- North Carolina — $74.3
- Virginia — $72.4
- Virginia Tech — $62.6
- Maryland — $61.6
- Clemson — $58.4
- Georgia Tech — $55.1
- N.C. State — $50.6
- Virginia — $6 gain
- Virginia Tech — $4.3 gain
- Clemson — $2.8 gain
- North Carolina — $1.3 gain
- N.C. State — $0.5 gain
- Maryland — $0 gain/loss
- Georgia Tech — $0.8 loss
- Florida State — $8.3 loss
Comparing those figures to those in the SEC and around the country, you can understand why the idea that Florida State would look to depart the ACC might make sense (even though that talk cooled Monday, particularly after the school president shot down many of the board of trustees member’s arguments in a well-reasoned memo).
The numbers are hard to ignore, though. Florida State was the ACC’s top revenue generator, but it still trailed nine SEC schools, not counting Texas A&M, which will play in the league this season. Some of the revenue totals are staggering. Here are the top 10 (rounded off, figures in millions):
- Texas — $150.3
- Ohio State — $131.8
- Alabama — $124.5
- Florida — $123.5
- Michigan — $122.7
- Penn State — $116.1
- LSU — $107.3
- Tennessee — $104.4
- Oklahoma — $104.3
- Auburn — $104.0
Florida State makes an appearance at No. 24. Virginia Tech is No. 32, right behind Washington ($70.2 million) and Kansas State ($69.9 million) and ahead of Purdue ($66.2 million) and UCLA ($66.0 million).
For the Hokies-should-go-to-the-SEC crowd, keep in mind that Virginia Tech would have ranked 10th in total revenue of the SEC teams last year and would drop to 11th once Texas A&M joins the league. That’s in a virtual tie with Missouri ($64.1 million in revenues) and only higher than Mississippi State ($58.9 million) and Ole Miss ($49.2 million), two schools that struggle to compete on and off the field with the SEC’s big boys on a regular basis.
Yes, additional TV money would make up some of the difference, but certainly not anywhere close to the $57.6 million gap between the Hokies and SEC-revenue leader Alabama. It wouldn’t even approach a pair of the league’s middle-tier revenue producers like Georgia ($92.3 million) and Arkansas ($91.8 million).
It’s one thing to add to your revenue pot, but you also want to be a place where you can compete with teams that are in the same ballpark financially. I’d say the ACC suits Virginia Tech quite well in that regard, despite the desire of some fans to look elsewhere. Over the long haul, that’s an important thing to keep in mind.
May 15, 2012 - 12:06 AM
How in the world does UVA-c Have more revenue? Less football attendance, no bowl exposure, basketball pretty even. Does women’s lacrosse have a tv deal we don’t know about?
Darren, my guess would be contributions.
Darren, That is your tax dollars at work!
The reason UVa has more revenue is based on a number of factors, my guess is that primarily contributions. Without knowing the numbers, I’d bet UVa donors give 50% more than VT donors.
Another factor – Student fees at UVa are triple those at VT. Tech hasn’t raised student fees in over two decades, if I remember correctly. Ticket sales is reflective of higher ticket prices and more luxury box revenue, remember.
UVA has more revenue, but if you look closer they also have almost $10M more in expenses than Virginia Tech. Of course, were it not for the subsidies mentioned in the article, VT would have a $3.2M loss instead of a $4.3M profit.
The important number, anyway, is profit margin. Andy didn’t list the profits of the top ten schools, so we don’t know what kind of budgets they’re working with to determine their profit margin, but if you ranking the eight ACC teams by profit margin…
8.07% – Virginia
6.43% – Virginia Tech
4.79% – Clemson
1.75% – North Carolina
0.99% – North Carolina State
0.00% – Maryland
-1.41% – Georgia Tech
-9.55% – Florida State
@Darren – UVA brings in far more money in donations.
Readers have it nailed: contributions. Virginia had $34 million last year. Virginia Tech $15 million.
As for the top revenue generators, they almost all pulled a hefty profit (although they all still spent a lot). Texas had a $17 million profit without any subsidies.
Contributions most likely allow UVA to finish higher. All ACC schools also share in bowl revenue. Btw Basketball is not even. More sellouts at JPJ (with larger seating capacity) than at Crapsell. Probably had 10x the attendance for Baseball in Charlottesville too. CWS revenue as well.
Tech actually had $18 million in ticket revenue to UVa’s $12 million last year.
Texas probably have it right. Their athletic department’s budget are separated from the academic budget. There’s a concept that should work, unfortunately, not many schools have the clout Texas have except for Notre Dame, maybe. With the Longhorn Network and other TV deals for Texas, they are basically a kingpin.
I find it incredulous that a school with history of winning traditions would be in the red. I have the feeling that contributions for the ‘noles may be drying up to a degree. If I’m not mistaken, I think the state of Florida are struggling with their budget similar to California. I may be wrong about that.
The disparity in UVa contributions and VT contributions is pretty amazing. I’d bet the number of ‘big’ donors is the difference. UVa probably has some seven figures donations each year, while VT gets one every few years.
Oh, the comment above about UVa baseball generating revenue was pretty funny. I’d be surprised if their baseball ‘revenue’ covered half of their baseball expenses. There’s a reason baseball is considered a non-revenue sport.
Swift, comparing baseball ticket sales is irrelevant. VT doesn’t charge for baseball games.
Swift, does the difference between Tech-UVa basketball attendance makeup for the fact that UVa is 8th in the conference in football attendance to VT’s 3rd? Remembering of course that the 2 teams ahead of VT, FSU and CU have stadiums which hold up to 17,000 and 15,000 more? That VT is the only ACC school that sells out every home game and that UVa attendance stands at 74%? That UVa’s last sell out before their home game with VT this past year (I can only assume the fans were interested to show up, if only for the first half) was in 2008. At VT the last sell-out is always the most recent game played there…
It would be interesting to see the same lists without the subsidies. Hard to say the program is breaking even if you count the subsidies as revenue.
Scott Whitaker,
and your point is? The point I take away from this is that VT fans want to win as long as it does not impact the personal wallet. VT is significantly larger than UVA and has a football team with 10 or more wins and can only raise half the money as UVA. If I was in charge of fundraising at VT I think I might be concerned about my job security.
crooked, you do not remember correctly, Tech has increased student fees for athletics, but one thing that doesn’t fall into the “fee” category is the fact that, despite paying these fees, students are not guaranteed a ticket to an event, but to get one guaranteed, they buy a “student season ticket” which is likely hitting the ticket sales line.
The “fee” that Tech gets is a far bit more than this information likely shows.
Quite frankly, students should be able to opt out of this fee, if the university cannot adequately provide an equal return, in terms of attendance. Not just Tech, but all of them.
“The report shows how much the cost of college athletics is rising these days.” No, the report shows the runaway salary cost of college football and basketball coaches, that’s what it shows, and the student fees are an easy way to exort money from kids/families/financial aid, to keep paying for these ridiculous compensation packages these people get. College athletics would become a lot more enjoyable if some sort of salary/spending cap regulation was put in place.
Salary cap works in the NFL . . . . most popular sport in America.
I’m a little confused. I’ve always heard the justification for having a big athletic program was to bring money into the college. According to these figures without subsidies most of the programs would lose money. So it looks like the academic programs are funding the athletic programs instead of the other way around. This is a bit contrary to what I’ve always heard. Am I understanding this correctly?
Also uniforms in the expenses. I was under the impression that most schools had pretty lucrative sponsorship deals for uniforms. This makes it look like Maryland actually paid for those ugly football uniforms last year.
Agree with zeke, big time sports should be sending money back to the academic side. Tennessee athletics gave 500k per year to support the library, not sure if they still do.
I think there are ancillary benefits to a university from having successful big-time sports. Applications increased after VT made the BCS title game, adding to the quality of the student pool at the school.
Also, I’m sure there are folks who make donations to the university in part because of the enjoyment they get from the athletics teams. I don’t have any figures, but my guess is the exposure a strong football team like VT has benefits the school, even if indirectly.
Zeke – why be confused? You are reading this perfectly. The issue is the goal vs. the reality. Sort of like playing the lottery.
Goal = brass ring and riches beyond compare
Reality = you aren’t going to win
Look at the disparity between Florida and FSU. FSU wants to close the gap so at least one of their Trustees wants to sell their souls to Texas in the hope of closing the gap.
People tease themselves into thinking that they can join the big money party and start down the road. Then it turns out that its harder (and more expensive) than you think. Then ego kicks in and the desire to join the party becomes a matter of “survival” and “branding” and so on.
I am watching UTSA start down the road now at close range. I have watched VT work at this for 40 years.
In some ways it is a “con” game. You are chasing something that you can’t get but you don’t realize it is a false dream.
Sort of like the notion that publicly funded sports stadiums are a good deal for the public. or that you have to have a major sports franchise to be a “major city”. If you break down the logic its just silly really.
If you are really concerned about education then you have to wonder why our schools prostrate themselves to athletic dollars they can’t get. This is the whole basis of those who question the effect of big-time sports and the need to be a “winner” that corrupts universoties (i.e. drives them to make allowances for felons who are great athletes).
This is not hard to dope out. it is all about EGO the most dangerous weapon known to humankind.
And I am guilty as hell………
#15 Guess you missed I was responding to the derogatory comment made by one of the posters regarding VT basketball. Nothing to do with money. Simply asked why UVa’s football attendance is so mediocre. You can tell your friend it’s Cassell and not “Crapsell”.
Andy, yes, applications increased to VT after 1999, but that was more quantity, not necessarily quality. Unless you get the admissions office to provide some serious statistical analysis, no way you can ever tell.
And, quite honestly, can you really get a correlation? Probably not – not in this world of high school grade inflation, a re-centering of the SAT score (the same score today would be a hundred+ points lower a couple decades back) – its apples and oranges. More might apply, but that doesn’t mean the quality of the pool has risen.
Yeah, Tech benefitted from a lot of app fees for kids they rejected. So what?
I think the answer as to why UVA has more revenue then VT is because of contributions from donors. UVA graduates lawyers and doctors (both well paid professions & many become millionaires) and while the hokies travel well to support their team, UVA fans support their team by another method and that is by writing a check. Have you ever noticed (by some of the contracts to coaches) that UVA seems to have money to burn? Well they do, and it’s not all from big donors. I give them 25K a year, not much but it adds up!
There is a real interesting (long) article) on Tomahawknation.com about the “values” of the ACC schools to the conference. This supplies fuel for the beef of the football schools (FSU, Clemson, VT) for wanting additional revenues.
Rick H. – let us suppose you are correct that the quantity of applicants increased but the quality didn’t change. In this case, if applicants were ranked, there would be a distribution of scores. The distribution would look the same now as it used to with the exception that there are just more. The quality of students would increase because now VT would be accepting, for example, the top 30 percent instead of the top 60 percent.
Steve..that is actually not the case. If tech accepts 13 thousand out of 21 thousand but the quality of the applicants didnt actually increase, they are taking a “percentage of their applicant pool” just by taking the fewer top students of the applicants, they would still have the same stats (if the increased applicants were just more students, not better students)
Josh, are you talking about the quality of the applicants or the quality of the accepted students? I maintain that the quality of accepted students would go up if the quality of applicants stayed the same, provided that the number of accepted doesnt increase proportionally. That is, VT could be more selective. It’s simple statistics.
The quality of accepted applicants DEFINITELY went up after 1999 when the number of applicants raised. I was at VT at the time, and I watched friends with 1400+ SATs and 4.0 (and over) GPAs get turned down for acceptance, no matter what their major was. That wasn’t happening before 1999.
There were statistics published after the big 1999 application increase that showed how the average SAT scores and GPAs of accepted students at VT jumped up. I can remember seeing them on campus and even talking about them in my statistics class that next semester, but I don’t know where you’d find that info now.
Actually, with the quantity of applications the quality did rise. Both of my kids applied and didn’t get into VT with 3.5+ GPA’s. Friends who got in had very high GPA’s like the old UVA days when i was in college. Both colleges are great but the success VT has had on the field has increased quantity of applications and VT can take the cream off the top. All students today need high GPA’s and SAT’s to get into the college of their choice. It’s tough out there.
Josh, your logic isn’t holding up. If the number of applicants raised, and the quality ratio across the number of applications stayed the same, but the number of accepted students did NOT change, then of course the quality of the accepted students must go up. There’s no other way to see that.
Example:
School A accepts the 5000 best applications.
School A gets 10000 applications. Let’s just say that of those 10000, 3000 (30%) are 4.0 GPA applications, 3000 (30%) are 3.5 GPA applications, and 4000 (40%) are 3.0 GPA applications.
For a simplified explanation, that would lead you to believe that the 3000 4.0 GPA applications would be accepted, and then 2000 of the 3.5 GPA applications would be accepted, right? Basically, School A would be accepting the top 50% of applications.
Now, let’s say School A suddently grows to getting 20000 applications, but still is only going to accept the top 5000 applications.
The quality of students ratio stays the same in the 20000 students as it was in the 10000, so that means that you now have 6000 (30%) 4.0 GPA applications, 6000 (30%) 3.5 GPA applications, and 8000 (40%) 3.0 applications.
Since the number of acceptances doesn’t change just because the number of applications went up, now the top 5000 applications would come entirely from the 6000 4.0 GPA applications. So now, School A is basically only accepting the top 25% of their applications.
If the number of acceptances is not going to change, and the ratio of the “quality” of applications stays the same while the total number of applications increases, then the percentage of applications accepted goes down, meaning that the quality of the accepted applications must go up.
According to the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia, the number of applications jumped from from 15,883 in 1999 to 18,407 in 2000 and admissions rates dropped from 72% to 63%. But before we attribute all this to football success, you have to notice the something similar happened in 1992 when admissions jumped from 15,985 appilcation in 1991 to 17,110 in 1992. This was after the Hokies finished with a losing footbal record and 7th in the Big East.
Year Applied Accepted Rate
1991 15,985 11,267 70.5%
1992 17,110 11,110 64.9%
1993 15,712 11,719 74.6%
1994 14,925 11,705 78.4%
1995 14,779 11,662 78.9%
1996 16,285 13,207 81.1%
1997 16,922 12,382 73.2%
1998 16,109 11,937 74.1%
1999 15,883 11,616 73.1%
2000 18,407 11,539 62.7%
Although, Tech did add a new tennis center in 1992, so maybe athletics was the driver there too.
When I was growing up Tech was know for having a great engineering school. Now they are known for almost winning a national championship, Mike Vick who went to jail, and the massacre. I don’t think that is really an improvement.
Andy,
Do you know what those schools on the top 10 list have in common and who is not included on that list?
Stack, I’m sure you’ll tell us.
Come on Andy, at least play along…it’s a pretty easier question…those are all schools that have won National Championships. It’s an easy correlation, you have to spend money to make money and in this case, you have to spend money to win National Championships. Also, you know who is not included on this list…
So which games this year will any team get an automatic Win just because they have a past national title?
What? You mean to tell me that past national titles don’t mean diddly squat for wins and losses on the current schedule? Preposterous!!
Nebraska’s at $83 million, but yes, your point is well taken.
There are exceptions to any rule, but Nebraska at $83 million is only slightly below FSU, another team that has won a National Championship, and we can only speculate about Miami…
You could technically include Washington ($70M), Clemson ($61M) and Colorado ($60.9M) too, although their national titles (or shared ones) are starting to push the boundaries of when money started skyrocketing in college athletics.
I’m sure Southern Cal has a big budget too, although it doesn’t have to report it.