The settlement is complete: $20.5 million budget per school starting 2025-26:
For the WCC, the Zags, SCU, Pepperdine, and USF to a lesser degree are the big winners as the institutions with the most money to spend, if they choose.
It’s bad for SMC, though they’ll find ways with the Bennett Miracle to keep it going. A school like Portland just can’t catch a break–little money and no intangibles like what SMC has.
The Beavers and Cougars are sort of winners but likely can’t afford the full $20.5 million and will need to throw 80% of what they do spend at football.
Zags and any D1 school without football (hello UConn) with deep pockets and rabid fan bases are the biggest winners. They can throw all $20M at a few, smaller roster sports and not have to spread $$$ around football. They also don’t have to worry about most non-revenue sports b/c the big cats won’t be able to hand out cash there either.
Now, this will last for all about one year until someone sues on the grounds of either an arbitrary fair market cap or Title IX grounds. And I give the Deloitte-run NIL clearinghouse or whatever it is about 2 years until it falls under its own weight of red tape.
Until Congress intervenes and either gives the NCAA an anti-trust exemption or sets the law on this topic, we are going to have to continue to endure this mess for years to come.
PS: @PattyMac I am unclear why Pepp has an advantage and SMC doesn’t. I don’t see them as much different (small, isolated). And, while were are at it, why SCU and USF are even considered winners? Maybe we could give them an edge on potential given the alumni base and SV location, but neither has proven to be advantageous at this point, at least for SCU, due to apathy (due to three decades of mediocre years of hoops) and a saturated local market with a diminished sports media presence.
PSS: I thought it was ironic that the day after Nijaree Canady signed on to Texas Tech for another year and another six figures, she was laid to waste in the first inning of the national championship game. The classic taunting chant “OVERRATED” will now officially change to “OVERPAID.” Cruel for these young people, but it comes with the territory.
In my analysis, it’s a simple money calculation. Which schools can put $3 million into basketball (or are the closest to being able to)?
Easy for the Zags with the new Pac-12 deal. Even in a calamitous deal for the Pac overall ($7-8 million per school), the Zags can put all of that toward basketball. They are big winners.
Santa Clara and Pepperdine have lots of institutional money (by far the most of the “true” WCC schools)–whether they use it on athletics is another question. USF has a bit of it and has an alumni base that is much more eager to sponsor a good basketball team than SCU’s. So USF can punch above its weight in trying to funnel money under the new system. But remember that the new system allows the schools to pay the players. That’s why it’s a big advantage to SCU and Pepperdine. They don’t need alumni to pay all of the bills directly. The House settlement makes player salaries one more line in the university budget, and SCU and Pepperdine have the largest budgets by a good margin.
SMC is in financial challenges already and is desperately trying to increase its frosh class size to keep the doors open. They have Bennett, which is why I don’t think this is the death knell for SMC basketball. But the new system puts them at a new disadvantage compared to the larger WCC schools who have more resources to throw around.
Of course, you may be right about the rules collapsing almost instantly. This has the imprimatur of a federal judge, so it may last ever so slightly longer than the previous NCAA rules (days? weeks?) But based on what’s in front of us now, it’s hard for me to see SCU as not at least a potential big winner in this, as I’ve been saying for months.
@PattyMac Thanks for the quick clarification.
Interesting about the schools being able to pay. I knew that, but you make the implications more apparent: The schools, without the help of alumns, can dip into their coffers and seed the money for the first few years. Then, gaining the momentum, can turn to alums after demonstrating some ROI.
I’ve heard SMC anecdotes and am curious as to how bad things are. I did a quick look and I see their acceptance rate is 89% (SCU is 43%). Apparently if you can put your name on the application, you are golden.
Was chatting with an SMC alum and he told me that any gift to athletics essentially doesn’t go to athletics because the university will take that money away from athletics. So its a zero sum game. He is a bitter football alum (are there any non-bitter dropped-football alums?) so there may be only a grain to the truth.
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This was posted months ago. The 100 high grossing athletic programs. I was surprised to see both USF and SCU in the range between 95-100
Are there any other surprises or schools that out earn Santa Clara that may be at risk given the new financial parameters?
I am not outright dismissing that data, but the source and methodology needs some scrutiny. The data has no context.
First, there are a lot private schools that typically don’t publish data (Stanford, USC). Second, how are the Irish sitting at 68 with their NBC deal and the likes of Xavier and Creigton nearly doubling on that revenue number?
Is this all NCAA basketball tourney shares?
Do LMU, Santa Clara and USF only make it in there based on Gonzaga and SMC tournament revenue (BTW there is no SMC on the list). Hard to believe that any of the three are grossing $7M on butts in seats.
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Wall Street Journal cites a research who is projecting value
I encourage you to take it with a grain of salt. I am not entirely sure of the details of the chart. You can search it yourself. It entitled top 100 most valuable programs according to WSJ.
The WSJ article has Santa Clara Ranked at #72 USF #71 Gonzaga #65 LMU #61
https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/ncaa-tournament-march-madness-ncaa-team-value-98c44e14
In that case, a lot of that value might just be from owning land in one of the most expensive places in the country.
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I doubt it’s land, per se, but my guess is that “market size” is given some sort of weighting which is why LMU gets the top estimate. That’s kind of exactly the wrong way to look at college sports which has always maximized value in small cities where the college is the only show in town.
The big market college teams exist but are pretty far between. How many major college basketball teams are sharing their metro with multiple pro sports teams? A few of the Big East: Villanova, Georgetown, Xavier. UCLA, sure. Memphis. But those are bucking the trend if not outright exceptions.
The Zags’ dominance of Spokane is critical to their success. It’s not really any harder for urban universities to attain success. But the fans will always be a tad more fickle than those in college towns who live and die with the local team.
And that’s real value.
The story is behind a paywall, but the headline provides the needed grains of salt. It is about the most valuable basketball teams not athletic programs.
So it must be some combination of March Madness payout success (not necessarily actual MM success (see Minnesota, Dayton and G-town in the top 20), self-generated revenue, league TV rights, and market potential.
I believe that Patty is right in that generally, the value of a college team is inversely related to actual market size because the bigger the market, the more saturated it is with competition. If you work down the first 50 teams in the list and consider the corresponding markets (without stretching that market too wide), there are only a half dozen teams in metro areas with more than one pro sports team (Minn, Villanova, G-town, UCLA, Xavier, Pitt, Northwestern). I could have missed some, but we are certainly looking at less than 15-20% of the first half of the list. For the 51st through 100 teams, at least half are in “big” markets where they get outshined by pro sports.