It Must Be Nice -

MeanGreen61 · April 10, 2008

Off the muts board. Those poor BCS folks really suffer.

Georgia Tech sell 241 tickets & nets $150,000 from Humanitarian Bowl

...Georgia Tech sold only 241 tickets to the Humanitarian Bowl. Its allotment was 3,000.

But what might sound like an embarrassingly low sales figure wasn't unprecedented for an ACC team playing in the Boise, Idaho, game. And what sounds like a recipe for financial distress turned out to be nothing of the sort.

Tech netted almost $150,000 from its trip to Boise. The Yellow Jackets lost the game 40-28 to Fresno State on Dec. 31, but they didn't lose money.

There are three reasons. First, the ACC gives its Humanitarian Bowl representative $950,000 plus 3,000 tickets to sell at $50 apiece. That $1.1 million expense allowance is larger than the amount the conference gives to participants in easier-to-reach locations in the South. No ACC team has sold out its allotment in at least five seasons, Humanitarian Bowl executive director Kevin McDonald said, and Miami's sales for the 2006 game were "right in the same ballpark" with Tech's.

But although Tech had to eat $137,950 in unsold tickets, things could have been far worse. The 3,000-ticket allotment is less than a quarter of the 12,750 tickets Tech was responsible for in the Gator Bowl a year earlier. The small size of the Humanitarian Bowl allotment limited the price the Jackets paid for having their fan base in the midst of the coaching change blahs.

And finally, Tech held the line on expenses by limiting the number of band members, athletics department officials, university administrators and faculty representatives. All 330 members of the band went to the Gator Bowl after the 2006 season, but only 50 went to the Humanitarian Bowl in 2007......

...The expense-cutting wasn't universal.

"We made sure the kids [on the football team] weren't disadvantaged," Tech athletics director Dan Radakovich said. "We went right up to the NCAA maximum [for bowl gifts]."

Radakovich serves on the NCAA committee that certifies bowls, and he has seen a lot of bowl expense reports. The report Tech submitted to the NCAA, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained under Georgia's open records law, shows the school's largest expense was the $267,400 in transportation costs for players, coaches and other team staff. Another $200,000 went toward bowl bonuses.

The bottom line: Tech had $1.1 million in expense allowance, including the 3,000 tickets, and $951,850 in expenses, including the unsold tickets, for net revenue of $148,150. Schools are allowed to keep any unused portion of their expense allowance, ACC associate commissioner Mike Finn said.

Tech's big bowl payoff comes later this month when the ACC shares its bowl revenue. The conference splits the money 12 ways, with each member getting an equal amount. Total ACC revenue distribution from all sports totals about $11 million per school per year......

ARTICLE

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/g...hbowl_0410.html