Money Talks

[FirefightnRick]

I was interested in if the money rich BCS and other high budget programs might affect the ncaa tourney so I used a budget report out of a florida paper posted on the football board to go by. Of course I don't have the budgets for the non D-1A football programs like Xavier and St Jo's, but as expected some of the biggest money programs are in the sweet 16. 11 of the 16 are BCS. It is easy to see a correlation between money spent and the usual teams you see every year in the tourney. It may be considered to name the largest upset of the tourney so far by Alabama, with a basketball budget of $3.2Mil(would still be considered above average) knocking off Stanford with it's $17Mil budget, the highest by more than 8 times the average budget in the nation. And I thought Stanford was just an incredible program but it seems if you pay enough you will make your share of appearances in the NCAA tournament.

As expected all of the usual teams that are in the tourny every year have some of the highest budgets in the nation. As I said before I don't have Xavier and St. Jo's but I would guess without looking that since both make usual visits in the tourney that they are at or above the average. At a guess the average looks to be around $1.8 to $2.0 million per program for the 117 D-1A programs.

Budgets for programs in the sweet 16:

Syracuse........$8.4Mil

U.Conn...........$5.3Mil

Duke..............$5.0Mil

Texas.............$4.0Mil

Vandy............$3.6Mil

Bama.............$3.2Mil

W. Forrest......$3.1Mil

Ok St.............$3.0Mil

Ill....................$3.0Mil

Kansas............$2.6Mil

Pitt.................$2.5Mil

Georgai Tech..$1.9Mil

UAB...............$1.4 Mil

Xavier.............?

St. Jo..............?

And of course my favorite for obvious reasons: Nevada...$983K

Other big money teams who either didn't make the tourney or the sweet 16:

N. Carolina...$3.9Mil

Oklahoma.....$4.1Mil

Iowa.............$3.8Mil

Mich St..........$4.4Mil

Cincy.............$3.1Mil

Memphis.......$3.7Mil

Arizona.........$4.3Mil

UCLA............$4.3Mil

Florida..........$3.7Mil

Kentucky.......$5.1Mil

Miami............$3.4Mil

By the way, North Texas spends $878K on basketball. That's not very much comparing to the group above. But it's more than ULM and Idaho who spends $318K and $167K respectfully.

Rick

[NT80]

How can Syracuse spend $8.4 million on basketball, 8.4 MILLION? That's a lot of basketballs. That's more than some complete SBC athletic budgets for ALL sports!

Edited March 22, 2004 by NT80

[JayDub]

Perhaps they have a real marketing department. Something North Texas should consider.

[CMJ]

Even though Syracuse and some of those schools play football - Basketball is where their real interest lies. I'm really not surprised by some of those budgets. I'm kinda pulling for nevada myself, though I was sorta bummed that Gonzaga was knocked off.

Gonzaga shows it is possible to be a nowhere program and build into a National powerhouse.