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RE: Institutional and Sports culture in the ACC
(04-10-2018 03:38 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote: (04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote: (04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote: (04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote: I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.
For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.
I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)
The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.
Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.
Hail CrazyPaco!
I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.
As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:
1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet
Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?
There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.
That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.
My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.
Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..
Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).
This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.
Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.
But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.
Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.
Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.
Cheers,
Neil
If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.
Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.
I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.
Another rape scandal and the concussion issue could trigger some of the privates to drop out.
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