Yes. We fund basketball and some other sports at a higher clip than our department revenue rankings. Football gets adequate money but it doesn’t get ‘take the next step’ money. We also do not do innovation well.
Oregon and Kentucky
- Thread starter AshWilliams
- Start date
It’s the AD making choices. He took over and we were way behind in facilities etc in everything. Basketball didn’t have a practice facility while others did, football had nothing, etc. it wasn’t just Olympic sports behind. he chose to start facility building for secondary sports first before the cash cow and basketball which does generate profit at UK. We now have adequate football $ but it’s not the ‘let’s kick this thing in the rear’ level.
No but it does show how wealthy your alumni base is. Sports schools are obviously going to give more to sports than academics.
Yes but just pointing out alumni base wealth. UT has many millionaire donors. They can come up with money at the drop of a hat. Bama can get money but they rely on everyone giving something. Mich OSU Texas and places like that probably have more millionaire donors than any other school. Stanford has wealthy donors but aren't necessarily sports fans. I don't think most students at stanford even pay tuition... I think their endowment pays for it.
This is multiplied because there is a limited number of local SEC caliber players. Gwinnette County produces enough SEC level talent to win a NC
Sanford tuition is based on income, not sure of amounts but below an x amount everything is free, if family is wealthy they pay in full. And you are correct, they put their resources in other programs. All the big Texas schools have big money boosters, mostly from energy industry and can come up with big money quick. Oregon has Phil Knight, not sure where OSU money comes from, vols have some big boosters too. fsu has a lady who come up with some slimming spandex but she can't compete with the really big boosters. Rumor is Miami may have some foreign investors helping them.
The Ivy League schools and probably some others hire really smart economist/investors to run their endowments.
Ole Miss was beaten at home by UK. That team was likely to lay an egg in any conference. That said, there is no way in hell Notre Dame is in the playoff if it played in the SEC. It beat A&M in the first game. Laid its own egg at home against freaking NIU and then played a modest schedule that would have been nothing like what it would have played in the SEC. Heck, two of the “ranked” teams it played were service academies. People complained about IU getting into the playoffs. ND was no better than Ole Miss or Bama.
One difference between a 12 team playoff and a 4 team is that now we argue about which teams we know don’t deserve a shot at the NC but will get the shot, when before we may have (rarely) argued there was one left out that actually did deserve the shot.
Sounds like there should be a middle ground.....like a 6 or 8 team playoff....... huh......what a novel thought.........hmmmmm....
lol
Hiring Mike Bellotti as OC may have been the best move he made there.
Add on top of that the fact that Kentucky is competing with every major tradition power for recruits in the south and big10. Oregon is relatively close to the hotbed of California and only competing with Arizona, ASU, USC, UCLA, Colorado for recruits who don’t want to leave the western US. Oregon is at the top of that pecking order with USC and maybe current Colorado w neon Deion bring the only real competition.
There isn’t a magic number but you better around 20m in NIL in football to build a roster that can compete for a title. That will be a moving target depending on the market.
I would say 15m would give you a playoff roster if the right acquisitions were made. Money ball the shit out of it 12m-13M but you better have a soft schedule.
Then you have to deal with basketball. In the near future 10M-15M probably needed.
To be championship level it is crazy what will have to be invested. Do you money ball the shit out of football and invest at championship levels for the other sports. That is the question for the UK and Louisville type programs that have to get money from everyone.
I would say 15m would give you a playoff roster if the right acquisitions were made. Money ball the shit out of it 12m-13M but you better have a soft schedule.
Then you have to deal with basketball. In the near future 10M-15M probably needed.
To be championship level it is crazy what will have to be invested. Do you money ball the shit out of football and invest at championship levels for the other sports. That is the question for the UK and Louisville type programs that have to get money from everyone.
While administratively under the University of Florida President (and the State Board of Regents), the University of Florida Athletic Association is a separate entity which is totally funded through booster donations, ticket sales, licensing agreements, and revenue sharing from the SEC & NCAA. Phil Knight (Nike) actually donates money to the Oregon athletic department (and, I assume) the university itself.
This part I know.
The part about Gatorade not donating anything to athletics, I didn't. Thank you for that information. Hard to believe that the sports program got nothing financially out of Gatorade. Sort of insane really
I do know that Gatorade helped their sports image a ton in the years that I was involved in sports. Really took off in the late 70s though
I double-checked what you were saying @NoviG8r and there's some conflicting info with what you said. Gatorade established the Gatorade Football Endowment and contributed substantially to it separate from the 20% royalties they were required by the courts to return to the University of Florida in the early 70s.
Last edited:
Northern California is awesome. If you can get past the massive cartels who run the forests.
You are correct regarding the settlement of a lawsuit, which could have resulted in different amounts ultimately, but was seen at the time (as I understand it) as being like the old adage "one in the hand is worth 2 in the bush". You are also correct about the immeasurable value fpr image and publicity. As I understand it, the settlement did not require any contribution to the athletic association, only revenues to the university, though Gatorade (now Pepsico) may well have chosen to do so. Possibly unrelated, but Pepsi replaced Coke as the "official" and exclusive cola sold at UF athletic events about 20 years ago. Thanks for the input.
If we didn't have a QB making his first start I would feel OK about the ND game. But we have been so inconsistent all year it is hard to be confident that UGA will come out on top.
Oregon is very much in the southeast and Texas when it comes to recruiting.
Yes correct, just as the SEC recruits California. . But they are also an easier choice for the west coast talent. Believe it or not, not every 4-5 5 star wants to travel across the country to play ball. Often, the finalist list includes intangibles such as “I wanted to play close enough to home where family can visit easier etc”.
You’re looking at this from the Georgia Football perspective, not the Kentucky perspective…which was the comparison (size/resources/demographics).
The question was:
“How did they become/build what they are?” Not what are they now and where do they recruit now
The point is, 5 stars may not mind traveling cross country to go to an Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama but the California talent that would prefer to stay on the west coast (and there are a lot of them), there are less west coast big brand options that take football seriously…and Oregon is higher up that pecking order than Kentucky is comparatively.
So Kentucky is lower down the pecking order already, on top of having many more national brand name football schools recruiting the same regions so we can’t sell location as a benefit of KY. We did successfully sell “play in the SEC while staying close to home” and it’s allowed us to recruit Ohio 3-4stars and some B10 territory effectively but Ohio state and ND and the entire SEC are still the first options (and bama/UGA isn’t that far from Ohio, unlike California to Kentucky)….
We are way down the list compared to our neighboring schools. There are more big options east of the Mississippi.
Oregon a top 2 option in the west coast (old Pac12) territory and is just as close to Texas as an Ohio State/Tennessee.
Having Nike resources to build the best facilities on the west coast making them the premier option for the last 20+ years, while having less competition in the California pool allowed them to be option A for all the west coast 4 star talent that didn’t get snatched up by Bama/Georgia/Ohiostate for a decade+, which allowed them to build into a national brand of theirselves and extend their reach into Texas and the south.
Kentucky isn’t option A and able to hoard all the South’s and Ohios leftover high 3 and 4stars that didn’t make the top 10 program recruiting cut…all that talent gets spread out to the rest of the SEC/Big10 that are major footballl brands as well. We get some, but not all. Oregon benefited from getting most of that same type of talent out west that wasn’t top 10 team 5star talent, sharing with largely only USC as a regional competitor…with great marketing 15+ years ago with the jersey gimmick that made them trendy…eventually they sustained enough top 10 success playing in a weaker Pac12 that they became a national brand considered equal to Bama, UGA, Texas, OhioState
Last point of “How they became what they are”, Recruiting hasn’t always been as national as it is today. Even the big boys were largely recruiting regional hotbeds 30+ years ago (especially pre 80s-90s before the ESPN/tv boom) with a couple exceptions….which emphasizes the importance of the fewer regional competitors that were taking athletics seriously from a funding perspective.
Last edited:
