UCF, USF athletics continue rise in athletic revenue

[Brad]

UCF, USF athletics continue rise in athletic revenue

 

DAVID DORSEY, DDORSEY@NEWS-PRESS.COM 5:21 p.m. EDT June 12, 2015

 

 

The Universities of Central and South Florida are neck-and-neck, near the top of the middle-tier list of money-making athletic programs.

 

UCF in Orlando and USF in Tampa ranked 56th and 57th, respectively, among the 230 public Division I universities that submitted 2013-14 revenue, expense and subsidy records to USA Today.

 

Both schools have recruited athletes and landed large percentages of students over the years from Southwest Florida.

 

UCF generated $49.7 million with $45.3 million in expenses, while USF generated $48.3 million with $46.8 million in expenses.

 

Those schools each have about 120 athletic department employees and 420 student-athletes. By comparison, the Lee County government has 2,286 full-time employees who combined for $103 million in annual salary. The Lee County School District has about 10,550 employees who combine for $542.6 million in annual salary.

 

Combine the revenue and expenses for USF and UCF, both American Athletic Conference programs, and they still cannot match the $104.7 million in revenue and $98.8 million in expenses by 17th-ranked Florida State or the $124.6 million in revenue and $109.6 million in expenses by ninth-ranked University of Florida.

 

But this isn't about the "haves" and "have nots." This is about two programs that have and will continue to challenge their bigger Florida peers in wins despite having fewer resources, smaller fan bases, smaller stadiums and, the key to it all, lower TV revenues.

 

But that TV revenue can only go up in future years, the athletic directors from both schools said.

 

"I think it's more than realistic," UCF athletic director Todd Stansbury said. "The interesting thing about UCF, is while a lot of our state's programs have established where they are in the pecking order of college athletics, we're such a newcomer that our DNA as a program is still evolving. What is it that we're going to become?

 

"Our football program is really a peak into the future. This year, we won seven conference championships. We're also not a program where we have a football team and that's it. This year: football, volleyball, women's soccer, women's golf and softball won conference championships."

 

Stansbury had another reason to be optimistic about his athletic programs, and it had little to do with money or football.

 

"Football is generally going to get most of the attention," Stansbury said. "But when you look at the overall program, we have the No. 1 graduation rate for student-athletes out of any public institution in the country. Our graduation success rate was 95 percent for the latest six-year average."

 

The UCF football team is coming off three consecutive winning seasons, including a 12-1 record in 2013, in which the Knights defeated Baylor 52-42 in the Fiesta Bowl and finished with a No. 15 national ranking. The Knights play in 45,000-seat Bright House Stadium on campus compared to the 88,548 Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida or the 82,300-seat Doak Campbell Stadium at FSU.

 

At USF, the football team hasn't had a winning record since going 8-5 in 2010. The Bulls haven't been nationally ranked since appearing at No. 16 in September, 25, 2011 and have gone 10-34 since then.

 

Attendance at 65,000-seat Raymond James Stadium has slipped to an average of below 20,000 last season.

 

But USF athletic director Mark Harlan remained undaunted.

 

"From a financial perspective, we are moving forward in our new conference dynamics," Harlan said. "We're proud to compete in the American Athletic Conference. We're a very young, growing conference.

 

"There are other conferences that have higher revenue with their bowl agreements and TV revenue. But what we decided to do here is take on the attitude that we are going to generate revenue in the manner to best give our coaches and athletes the ability to win not only on the field but in the classroom.

 

"I've been in this business a long time. I think it's unreasonable to look at that list and judge a program by their ranking of their revenue. It just gives an inaccurate picture. We made the elite eight in golf. Our tennis team made the Sweet 16. Our baseball team made the NCAAs. Our basketball team came a game away from making the Sweet 16. We're really excited about where we are as an athletic program."

 

Link

[Triple B]

The worst years in our existence versus the best years in theirs and we're still neck-and-neck?? That bodes well for us ....

[Who'sYourData?]

I know we have spell checkers and newsrooms are understaffed and all that.  But is it really too much to ask a professional writer to use peek instead of peak when appropriate?

[Brad]

It doesn't take much these days ...

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

I could've sworn we got left in the dust. This just corroborates what we knew already from the license plate data.

[Gismo]

I could've sworn we got left in the dust. This just corroborates what we knew already from the license plate data.

What is the license plate data?

[Gismo]

 

Combine the revenue and expenses for USF and UCF, both American Athletic Conference programs, and they still cannot match the $104.7 million in revenue and $98.8 million in expenses by 17th-ranked Florida State or the $124.6 million in revenue and $109.6 million in expenses by ninth-ranked University of Florida.

 

Maybe if we combine our programs, take the best coaches and players from each team, combine them into 1 team, we can compete with UF and FSU and join the SEC or ACC?

 

I really like our options for the combined mascot:

 

[GaUSFBull]

I could've sworn we got left in the dust. This just corroborates what we knew already from the license plate data.

It also confirms the Facebook data mikey posted was pure ********. He almost had me convinced on that one.

[smazza]

The worst years in our existence versus the best years in theirs and we're still neck-and-neck?? That bodes well for us ....

 

 

 really, it looks pretty bad for us to most

[Bull Matrix]

I believe USF is still getting the money owed by UL, Rutgers, & WVU for leaving