This is a budget analysis of D1. I decided to do this as there are whispers that the end result of the moritorium will be to create new rules regarding classification based off athletic budgets instead of past criterias like attendendance or stadium capacity.

I used 2007 numbers to put this together and I didn't list them all out as the numbers are far less important than the approximate ballpark. In general, most schools stay in the same approximate ballpark from year to year, but some schools do spike up and some are unequivicably expanding their athletic budgets like UNT, UTSA, Texas State, and one or two other sunbelt schools. Let's start with FBS.

1 Ohio State 109M
2 Tennessee 92M
3 Florida
4 Texas
5 Wisconsin
6 Southern California
7 Louisiana State
8 Penn State
9 Alabama
10 Iowa
11 Nebraska
12 Michigan State
13 Texas A&M
14 Oklahoma
15 Auburn
16 Michigan
17 Virginia
18 Stanford
19 Georgia
20 UCLA
21 Arkansas
22 Kentucky
23 North Carolina
24 Kansas
25 Notre Dame
26 South Carolina
27 Boston College
28 Virginia Tech
29 Minnesota
30 Purdue
31 Arizona State
32 Connecticut
33 California
34 Louisville
35 Texas Tech
36 Washington
37 Oregon
38 Miami (Fla.)
39 Georgia Tech
40 Missouri
41 Clemson
42 Duke
43 Maryland
44 Oregon State
45 Illinois
46 Rutgers
47 Syracuse
48 West Virginia
49 Oklahoma State
50 Indiana
51 North Carolina State
52 Arizona
53 Northwestern -41M
54 Baylor -40M
55 Florida State -40M
56 Colorado - 40M
57 Kansas State -40M
58 Texas Christian (non-BCS) - 39M
59 Vanderbilt - 39M
60 Pittsburgh - 37M
61 Iowa State - 37M
62 Wake Forest - 37M
63 Cincinnati - 34M
64 Mississippi - 34M


This is where non-BCS FBS schools start en masse.

I think looking at the above the idea that pops into my mind is how much is membership in a BCS conference worth? Specifically, in terms of increased TV revenue, bowl payouts, increased visitor attendance by being in a conference of haves...What dollar value does that equate to? 5M? 10M? More?

I look at the bottom 10-12 BCS schools and wonder if the rest of their leagues would love to kick most of them out if they had a clear path to it. (Obviously, not Northwestern, Colorado, WSU, or FSU, but the rest....?) What would the budget of those schools look like in lesser conferences? 30M? Less?

65 Brigham Young -31M
66 San Diego State -30M
67 Washington State (BCS) -30M
68 Central Florida -30M
69 Memphis
70 Houston
71 South Florida (BCS) -28M
72 Southern Methodist
73 Hawaii
74 New Mexico
75 Rice
76 Utah
77 Temple
78 Mississippi State (BCS) -26M
79 UNLV
80 East Carolina
81 Fresno State
82 Tulsa
83 Miami (Oxford)
84 Boise State
85 UAB
86 Wyoming
87 Texas-El Paso -21M
88 Central Michigan
89 Nevada
90 Buffalo
91 New Mexico State - 19M
92 Tulane
93 Marshall
94 Eastern Michigan
95 Western Michigan
96 Ohio
97 Colorado State
98 Florida International
99 Akron
100 Middle Tennessee State
101 Western Kentucky
102 Kent State
103 Toledo
104 San Jose State
105 Northern Illinois -16M
106 North Texas -16M
107 Bowling Green -16M
108 Ball State -16M
109 Southern Mississippi -15M
110 Florida Atlantic -14M
111 Troy -13M
112 Utah State - 13m
113 Idaho -12M
114 Louisiana Tech -12M
115 Arkansas State - 10M
116 Louisiana-Lafayette -10M
117 Louisiana-Monroe -7M

I was a little suprised by a few of these schools. I thought the top 3 non-BCS would be BYU, Utah, TCU. Not quite.

NMSU and SD State have much larger athletic budgets than I thought. (How the hell does SD State not kill the WAC in football With that budget and sole ownership of football hotbed San Diego? There is something seriously wrong with that athletic department/school.) Miami (Oxford) and Buffalo were suprises to me too. CSU's budget was suprisingly small to me. S. Miss being #109 is not a huge suprise. It is a very poor state. I wonder if Ol' Miss and Miss St. would be any higher if the SEC dismissed them and they had to play a CUSA schedule.

FCS
1 Pennsylvania -27M
2 Delaware - 25M
3 James Madison - 25M
4 New Hampshire - 22M
5 Villanova - 22M
6 Massachusetts -21M
7 Stony Brook -21M
8 Lehigh -20M
9 Hofstra -19M
10 Colgate -18M
11 Liberty
12 Yale
13 Rhode Island -17M
14 Southern Illinois
15 Cornell
16 Northeastern
17 Princeton
18 Delaware State
19 Harvard
20 California-Davis
21 Holy Cross
22 Columbia -16M
23 Richmond -15M
24 Coastal Carolina
25 Old Dominion
26 Bucknell
27 William & Mary
28 Dartmouth
29 Sacred Heart
30 Maine -14M
31 Towson
32 Furman
33 Montana
34 Northern Iowa
35 Missouri State -13M
36 Montana State
37 Texas State -13M
38 Illinois State -12M
39 Brown
40 Cal Poly
41 Sacramento State
42 Elon
43 Albany
44 North Dakota
45 Lafayette
46 Eastern Kentucky
47 Northern Arizona
48 Wofford
49 Gardner-Webb
50 North Dakota State
51 Eastern Illinois
52 The Citadel -10M
53 Youngstown State
54 American
55 Appalachian State
56 Monmouth
57 Chattanooga
58 Jacksonville State
59 Samford
60 Robert Morris -9M
61 College of Charleston
62 Howard
63 Georgia State
64 Virginia Military Institute
65 Stephen F. Austin
66 Tennessee State
67 Indiana State
68 Davidson
69 Portland State
70 Bethune-Cookman
71 Central Connecticut State
72 Murray State
73 Campbell
74 Idaho State
75 South Dakota State
76 South Dakota
77 Iona
78 Eastern Washington -8M
79 Wagner
80 Western Illinois
81 Southern
82 Marist
83 North Carolina-Greensboro
84 Jacksonville
85 Southeast Missouri
86 Western Carolina
87 North Carolina A&T
88 Tennessee Tech
89 Saint Francis (PA)
90 South Carolina State -7M
91 Northern Colorado
92 Sam Houston State
93 Morgan State
94 Hampton
95 Tennessee-Martin
96 Central Arkansas
97 Southeastern Louisiana
98 Charleston Southern -7M
99 Georgia Southern -6M
100 Presbyterian
101 Norfolk State
102 Northwestern State
103 Jackson State
104 Weber State
105 Grambling State
106 Texas Southern
107 Southern Utah
108 Alabama State -6M
109 McNeese State -5M
110 Austin Peay
111 Alabama A&M
112 Florida A&M
113 Arkansas-Pine Bluff
114 Morehead State
115 Nicholls State -5M
116 North Carolina Central -4M
117 Prairie View A&M -4M
118 Mississippi Valley State -4M
119 Winston-Salem State -4M
120 Alcorn State -3M
121 Savannah State -2M





It is interesting to see that there are 93 FCS teams that had budgets larger than ULM. Some would take that to mean that all of those schools could potentially play FBS football if a conference was despirate enough. I disagree strongly with that view.

IMO is should be looked at from exactly the opposite perspective. It is more something that should raise red flags about the situations facing schools on the bottom end of the FBS budget list. If your target school projects as a similar FBS program to one of those FBS schools, you may want to seriously rethink moving up. I think that to look at things more clearly you have to see if the target school has the kind of good support (attendance) needed for FBS and do they have the enrollment (or for privates, endowment) to make up the annual budget shortfall from upgrading.

That said, somewhere around 70 FCS schools are ALREADY running at $9M budgets or more. I think to you have to get those budgets up to about $15-20 to be stable at the FBS level, but if those schools have most of the following --- acceptable stadiums, strong attendance, and can leverage students via student fees or fans and alumni via endowments --- they could successfully make the jump to FBS.

There are some obvious schools (Savannah, Alcorn) that look a bit over their head at the FCS level, but honestly, not as many as I thought. Still, I would prefer to see FCS have a minimum attendance threshold for schools and conferences --say 6K --- and a seperation of football from D1 status. If that were combined with a 96 team NCAA bracket with 32 slots earmarked for DII teams, you could strengthen the sports and make the schools' programs more profitable. A lot of these schools would be a lot more profitable playing DII football, but don't want to give up the NCAA tourney revenue.

The glaring point to me is how many of the top bugets are on the east coast...even discounting the small Patroit League universities. Delaware, James Madison, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Stony Brook, Hofstra, Liberty, Rhode Island, Northeastern, Old Dominion, William & Mary, Maine....Discounting the stadium situations of some and just looking at the schools, that could quickly become a very nice FBS conference. Temple, Army, and Navy might want in. Buffalo might as well.

It is also quite impressive when you look at the Ivy league schools. They provide athletic opportunities for an astounding number of student athletes. Quite admirable IMO.

IAAA

1 Georgetown -27M
2 Saint John's -27M
3 Boston University -22M
4 Marquette -22M
5 Denver -21M
6 George Washington -17M
7 Fordham -17M
8 Dayton -16M
9 Seton Hall
10 Wichita State
11 Providence
12 San Diego
13 Loyola Marymount -15M
14 DePaul -14M
15 Vermont -13M
16 Santa Clara
17 Pacific
18 Fairfield
19 George Mason
20 California-Santa Barbara
21 Pepperdine
22 Virginia Commonwealth
23 Drexel
24 Creighton
25 Long Beach State
26 Saint Joseph's
27 Xavier -11M
28 California-Irvine
29 Drake
30 Saint Louis
31 Binghamton
32 Quinnipiac
33 Bradley -10M
34 San Francisco -10M
35 La Salle -10M
36 Long Island
37 Butler
38 Saint Mary's -10M
39 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
40 Gonzaga
41 Rider
42 Loyola (MD) -9M
43 Charlotte
44 Illinois-Chicago
45 Wright State
46 Portland
47 Cal State Fullerton
48 Duquesne
49 Maryland-Baltimore County
50 Hartford
51 Valparaiso-9M
52 Oral Roberts
53 Winthrop
54 Texas-San Antonio -9M
55 Cal State Northridge
56 Cleveland State
57 Siena
58 South Alabama
59 Niagara
60 Oakland
61 Stetson
62 California-Riverside
63 Evansville
64 Canisius
65 Belmont
66 Arkansas-Little Rock
67 Loyola (Il)
68 Manhattan
69 Missouri-Kansas City
70 Mount Saint Mary's
71 Cal State Bakersfield
72 Detroit
73 North Carolina-Wilmington
74 Saint Bonaventure
75 New Jersey Tech
76 Radford
77 Texas-Arlington - 6M
78 North Florida
79 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
80 Kennesaw State
81 Lipscomb
82 Wisconsin-Green Bay
83 High Point
84 Saint Peter's
85 Centenary
86 Utah Valley University -5M
87 Fairleigh thingyinson
88 Longwood
89 Mercer
90 East Tennessee State
91 Texas-Pan American
92 Lamar
93 IUPU-Fort Wayne
94 IUPUI
95 Chicago State -4M
96 Maryland-Eastern Shore
97 Florida Gulf Coast
98 Coppin State -3M
99 New Orleans -3M
100 North Carolina-Asheville -3M
101 South Carolina-Upstate -3M
102 Saint Francis (NY) -3M


While stadium availabilty is obviously the final arbitrar, with 60 IAAA schools with budgets over $8M and 21 with budgets over $12M, it is easy to envision a lot of these schools adding football one day soon.

IMO, one of the most glaring is Wichita State. They have an enrollment of 15,000 and have 30,000 seat Cessna Football Stadium being wasted on track. They could likely support football, could pay the budget shortfall for football and the matching women's scholarships, and don't really have a lot of local competition for the public's entertainment dollars. Additionally they have the MVFC, one of the elite FCS conferences, waiting for them and are near a host of OOC team at the FBS level as well as at the top of the DII level who could travel fans.

The VCU situation practically makes my brain bleed so I am going to leave that alone.

Lamar is glaring. With a 2007 budget of 4.4M, a stadium seating 17.5M , a small DMA, no inviting FBS conference, and an enrollment of 13K, on the surface the idea of jumping to FBS seems daunting at the minimum. But Lamar has some things in it's favor. The region is football crazy. Since talks of football have gone around Lamar's enrollment has gone (back) up by about 3,000. There was talk of this being the kind of situation where FBS football might push university enrollment growth and that does seem to be what has occurred. Students voted en masse to pay athletic fees to get football back at Lamar. The 79% to 21% results speaks volumes about student body support. At the time of the vote it was estimated that the fee would raise $2M for the reinstatement of football. I think the number may end up being closer to $3.5M when 2011 rolls around, bringing the budget to about $8M. That may not be enough to get them over any new NCAA upgrade thresholds based off budget, but it will get them into the upper half of southland budgets... WITH a totally rebuilt stadium ($20M renovation). If Lamar enrollment hits say 15K by 2015, that could add another 500K to their budget under that athletic fee. If their students decide to bump up the athletic fee to the Texas maxium of $20 at that point, with an enrollment of 15K, that would yeild another $5M for an FBS budget of about $14M. That is a ton more viable at the FBS level than ULM.

One other item to note. Lamar is a member of the Texas State system, which means student fee increases go to the board governing the Texas State system. Unlike schools in the UT system like UTPA or UTA, they won't have UT politics leading to delays or an outright rejection of any student approved athletic fee increase. UT may not want any large texas publics taking up FBS football. On the other hand, Texas State, as the largest member university in the Texas State system, can use more FBS members as they need a conference home. SHSU is also a member of the TS system.

With the exception of UNO, the last 7 schools hit me as DII schools in disguise. Perhaps it says something very pointed about IAAA status. Maybe part of the requirements of IAAA/FCS should require a minimum of a $5M budget? FBS $15M?

Budgets at a few schools change a decent bit per year. Most don't change too much. This is more to give you an idea where these schools are grouped by spending.

From here you can look at enrollments and see what budgetary range is reasonable to see a school reaching.