I did a similar thing last year, but between work, Glee, and Never Say Never being released, my 2011 time management has been just awful. So here is the list of the top 140 football and basketball programs compiled by the SportsBizMiss, Kristi Dosh, and where they came in on revenue for the 2009-2010 year. Please click that link, she did some nice analysis in there.
As for the Oklahoma State viewpoint....
- Oklahoma State Football came in at #20 in Profit (revenue - expenses), and #21 in Overall Revenue.
- Oklahoma State Basketball comes in at #100 in terms of Profit, and #85 in total Revenue.
Impressive numbers from the football program there, no? These numbers are from the "cursed" season of 2009 where ticket sales were nice (especially season tix). All around good stuff for football, and should be taken into account when thinking about how we stack up with other programs nationally.
So this is all great news for the football team, but what about that spending in basketball? In terms of profit, Oklahoma State basketball comes in as the 100th ranked overall program, and 44th in basketball only (7th in the Big 12, in front of K-State, Tech, and Baylor). But in terms of revenue, the OSU bball program is the 21st best revenue generator in college basketball (behind only Kansas and Texas in the Big 12), and #85 overall. So the problem is in the expenses.
Here are the top 5 basketball programs in terms of expenses:
| Rank | School | Revenue | Expenses | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | Duke (Basketball) | $26,667,056 | $12,286,475 | $14,380,581 |
| 71 | Univ. of Kentucky (Basketball) | $16,781,239 | $11,573,283 | $5,207,956 |
| 73 | University of Kansas (Basketball) | $16,116,502 | $10,984,833 | $5,131,669 |
| 100 | Oklahoma State (Basketball) | $12,085,306 | $9,477,405 | $2,607,901 |
| 21 | University of Louisville (Basketball) | $25,890,003 | $9,089,769 | $16,800,234 |
So essentially, we spend like Kansas and Louisville, but bring it in like UCLA and Washington.
I think we all know that the ticket sales are most likely the culprit here as far as revenue is concerned. Hell, I am amazed that the bball program brings in as much as it does considering that GIA is half-empty (or half-full, depending on your viewpoint), for many conference games, and might be as low as 1/3rd full for bad non-conf games. Usually the official ticket sales numbers say 10k or more for attendance for every game, so I guess the university is still making some money off those no-show empty seats, but I get pretty excited thinking about where the bball program would be on this list were GIA packing them in like it did 5 years ago.
I do have one question though that will hopefully be answered over the next week or so.... what is with all the expenses? What is OSU basketball spending money on that other schools are not? Research and answers to this question pending. (My current theory is that it is mostly being spent on LeBryan and Cezar's Lexus payments... kidding of course. When you are recruiting so well that jokes about paying players are believable, you are doing a nice job Coach Ford.)