That's quite a bit to talk about, particularly since I included the averages for the 63 teams in the BCS conferences (all six BCS conferences plus Notre Dame). Let's start by talking about the Big East teams, and we'll finish with relating the Big East to their BCS conference brethren, and what those numbers mean.

First of all, as Jim Alderson pointed out in last month's article "The Big East/ACC Merger," Temple's paltry revenue and expense numbers show why they were ejected from the Big East Conference recently. The $3.8 million in expenses is the major sticking point, because it is over $2 million lower than the next lowest school, Rutgers ($5.9 million).

While Temple's $3.1 million in revenue looks bad, the $3.8 million in expenses says, in no uncertain terms, "We're not spending money on our program to try and make it better." The Owls followed up their $800,000 loss in 1998 with another $800k loss in 1999.

The Owls did make some progress, and there was hope on the horizon. In late 2000, they put the finishing touches on their $7 million version of the Merryman Center, a practice-and-football-office facility called Edberg-Olson Hall. They have been promised the use of the Eagles' planned state-of-the-art stadium on Saturdays starting in 2003, and Temple showed a modest improvement on the field to four wins last year, up from two in each of Coach Bobby Wallace's first two seasons. But Temple always seemed doomed to be a victim of their commuter-school status and an apathetic fan base.

Meanwhile, Rutgers is the only other school in the Big East whose revenue and expense figures are even close to Temple's paltry totals. The Scarlet Knights had three big advantages over Temple: full membership in the Big East, their own on-campus football stadium, and a more interested fan base (i.e., better home attendance -- Rutgers averaged a not-so-good 24,556 fans per game in 2000, but it was one-third better than Temple's 18,612).

Also, Rutgers' football expenses, i.e. their commitment to the program, is much more in-line with their Big East brethren than Temple's low numbers. Rutgers' revenue could use some significant improvement, but if new coach Greg Schiano can win some football games with the home-grown talent he is recruiting, the ticket sales and TV appearances that boost revenue will follow.

Once you get beyond Temple and Rutgers, the only two programs in the conference that lose money on football, things start to look better. Pittsburgh is the only remaining team in 1998 that had less than $10 million in football revenue, and that number is probably on the uptick in the last few years. Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech all run programs with reasonable revenue and expense levels, and they all netted $2 million to $4 million dollars from football in 1998.

The picture of football financial health in the Big East is WVU, where they were second in the conference in revenue ($12.8 million) and seventh in expenses. It all added up to a whopping $7.2 million net. Those figures support the widely-held notion that the Eers got a lot of bang for their buck from Don Nehlen.

As for Syracuse's $20 million in revenue and $15 million in expenses? Methinks there might be some creative accounting going on there. Granted, the Orangemen were the Big East's BCS Bowl representative for the 1998 season, which would inflate both revenue and expenses, but those numbers are outrageous. The $20 million in revenue might be attainable, but the $15.8 million in expenses reeks to the high heavens of number-shuffling. Not that I'm accusing Syracuse of anything rotten. I just think that expense figure is artificially inflated somehow. It would be interesting to hear an explanation for it.

The bottom line for the Big East as a whole, when compared to their BCS brethren, is that the Big East's average expense numbers (as inflated as they are by the Syracuse figure) are right in line with their contemporaries. Their average revenue figure, however, is not. The result is that the average BCS team makes $3.9 million more off of football than the average Big East team.

I would imagine that the damage done here is not so much to the football programs in question as it is their non-revenue sports. If the Big East football programs are only clearing $2.5 million on average, that's less money to feed and support their non-revenue, or Olympic sports. Where conferences like the Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, PAC 10, and ACC really stand out over the Big East are in their non-revenue sports.

Speaking of how the Big East compares to the other BCS conferences, let's take a look.

The BCS Conferences are, of course, the six conferences that are part of the BCS contract: the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, PAC 10, and SEC. Let's break down total football revenue and expenses and per-team football revenue and expenses for those conferences.

These figures establish the SEC as the undisputed king of football revenue. If you ever thought that the Big Ten and PAC 10 were comparable to the SEC in football revenue (as I did), you now know that you were wrong. The Big Ten and the PAC 10 are certainly head and shoulders above the Big 12, Big East, and ACC, but the gap between them and the SEC is clear.

Looking at the per-team revenue figures, you can draw a line between the trio of SEC/Big Ten/PAC 10 and the trio of Big 12/Big East/ACC. The per-team net figures aren't quite so clearly split into two groups of three, thanks mostly to the Big 12. On average, Big 12 teams don't bring in much more revenue than ACC and Big East teams, but they're much more frugal, leading to a higher per-team net. As you can see, the Big 12 is not far behind the PAC 10 in per-team net.

The Big East and ACC were almost dead-even in 1998, although the figures were skewed in both cases (revenue and expenses) by Syracuse's totals.

Expenses are fairly uniform across the BCS conference teams. The conferences all spend within the range of $5.9 million to $7.9 million per team. But revenue fluctuates between $9.9 million (ACC) and $18.7 million (SEC) per team.

One big reason for the difference in revenue is stadium size. It's impossible for a Big East team like Tech with a 56,000-seat stadium to match the ticket revenue totals of Michigan, with their 107,500 seat stadium. As a rule, SEC, Big Ten, and PAC 10 stadiums are bigger than Big 12, Big East and ACC stadiums, and they are generally packed with more fans.

I wish I had time to research the stadium size and attendance figures, but we'll have to give a hypothetical example, instead. Using the Virginia Tech/Michigan example, if both teams sell out their stadiums for 6 home games at $30 a ticket, Michigan would make $19,350,000 off of ticket revenue to Tech's $10,080,000. That's a $9.27 million difference over the course of a season.

That's a sloppy example, because not all tickets are paid for in either scenario, and other factors affect ticket revenue, but you get the idea. The SEC and Big Ten, with their huge stadiums and large fan bases, generate millions more than other conferences from ticket revenue alone.

There are other factors that influence revenue, most notably TV contracts and bowl tie-ins, but stadium size is a big factor that can't be overlooked.

As you would expect, football revenue falls off sharply once you get beyond the non-BCS conferences and start looking at Conference USA, the MAC, the WAC, etc. Here's a look at the previous per-team revenue table, with non-BCS conferences added in:

Some important notes about this data:

1.) In 1998, Conference USA did not include East Carolina, but the data shown in the table does include ECU.

2.) In 1998, the Mountain West did not exist. At the time, its 8 teams were combined with 8 WAC teams in a 16-team WAC. The 8 present-day Mountain West teams broke away to form a new conference, and the 8 leftover teams added Nevada to form a new 9-team WAC. For purposes of displaying their data, the teams are broken out into their present-day configurations.

The split between the WAC and Mountain West (explained in item #2) is very interesting. The 8 teams that broke away from the 16-team WAC are essentially the money-making teams. The 8 that were left behind were the money-losing teams. Only 3 of the 8 teams that broke away lost money in 1998: Colorado State ($23,611 loss), UNLV ($664,545), and Wyoming ($653,623). Of the 8 teams left behind, only 2 made money in 1998: Fresno State (a $602,430 profit) and Southern Methodist ($16,439 profit).

Of course, part of the reason the money-losing WAC teams failed to turn a profit was the travel expenses associated with being in a 16-team WAC, so their position may have improved since the split. But in general, that was a case of the haves leaving the have-nots. The breakaway teams included relatively high-profile programs like Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, San Diego State, and Wyoming. The left-behinds included Fresno State, Rice, San Jose State, and Tulsa.

The next three tables present:

1.) The top 10 money-making schools in terms of total revenue
2.) The top 10 money-making schools in terms of net income
3.) The bottom 10 money-making schools in terms of net income

Note that the figures are presented for the BCS conferences and Notre Dame only (63 schools). This only affects the last table -- if all Division 1 teams were included, the first two tables would not change.

The Data

As usual, the data that went into this report are available. If you want to see the complete set of data for football revenue and expenses, you can access the data as a web page, or you can download the Microsoft Excel 97 file.

Web Page link -- note that this is a large file, but it still loads fairly quickly:

http://www.techsideline.com/tslextra/issue007/footballrevenue9899.htm

MS Excel File (Excel 97 compatible):

http://www.techsideline.com/tslextra/issue007/footballrevenue9899.xls

(Right-click the link and do a "Save Link As" or "Save Target As" to save the Excel file to disk.)

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