2011 Shocker Basketball Expenditures vs. Other div. 1 schools

[shox1989]

I downloaded the 2011 Revenue and Expense data for 344 division schools into an excel spreadsheet (from the US Dept. of Education-The Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool) .

The results were interesting. WSU spends more on men's basketball than any other school in the Valley (no surprise there). Cu was second and Bu was third. Then there was a big gap between the top 3 and the others.

WSU ranked 69 amongst the 344 division 1 schools (the service academies are not included in the data).

WSU at $4,644,724 spent more on men's basketball than 13 schools from BCS conferences: Notre Dame, Colorado, Stanford, Iowa St, Rutgers, West Virginia, K-State, Texas Tech, So. Florida, Utah, Oregon St, Washington St and Ole Miss.

Creighton at $4,402,362 ranked 76th and spent more on men's basketball than 10 BCS schools (the 13 listed for WSU except Notre Dame, Colorado and Stanford) I thought it was interesting that Cu spent more than Iowa St.

WSU also spent more on Men's Basketball than EVERY school from the Mountain West, every school in the A-10 except #67 Xavier and #68 Rhode Island (both barely outspent the Shocks), and every school in C-USA except #19 Memphis and #66 Tulsa (again barely).

The only other non-BCS schools that spent more on men's basketball than WSU (other than the 4 listed above) are: #38 Gonzaga ($6.1 million) and #52 BYU ($5.7 million).

At the other end of the spectrum at #344 is Centenary with expenditures on men's basketball of just $199,277. There are 55 division 1 schools that spent less than $1 million on men's basketball and 190 of the division 1 schools that spent less than $2 million (55% of division 1 schools).

There is NO WAY that WSU should be considered a mid-major.

A couple of schools that spent a lot more on basketball than I would have thought are UNL #15 at $8.4 million (they really aren't getting a good return on their investment, spending almost twice as much as Creighton) and Okie St. at #5 spending $13.7 million (must be T Boone Pickens money).

[shox1989]

These are the numbers for just the Valley for 2011 Men's basketball:'

Institution Name	Revenue	Expenses
Wichita State University	5071471	4644724
Creighton University	5152031	4404350
Bradley University	3871835	3846345
University of Northern Iowa	2449710	2449710
Drake University	2122856	2226291
Illinois State University	2183876	2183876
University of Evansville	2133520	2133520
Southern Illinois University Carbondale	2063684	2063684
Missouri State University-Springfield	1926274	1899281
Indiana State University	1704707	1704707

You can see the HUGE disparity in spending in the Valley on Men's basketball. If I were Elgin and I wanted to keep teams like Cu and WSU from bolting then I would try and get every Valley school to commit to spending something like $3 million a year on men's basketball. And give them a few years to get there (that along with the 150 rule on the RPI could really improve this conference).

According to the report, WSU raises virtually the same amount of money from its women's team as Indy St does from its men's team ($1,704,707 from Indy State's mens team vs. $1,699,587 from the Shocker women's team). We really do NOT belong in the same conference with them.

[WSUwatcher]

A couple of remarkable things in addition to the enormous disparity noted by the other posters:

1. Despite having a much smaller seating capacity (thanks to Creighton's use of an NBA-sized off-campus arena), WSU raised only $81 thousand less than the BJs did -- very impressive revenue generation by the Shocks.

2. Five of the Valley teams who make it a mid-major league (in which WSU and Creighton are high-major programs) show up with exactly the same revenue and expense figures. How is that possible -- some sort of subsidy to make up their (probable) revenue shortfall?

[shox1989]

A couple of remarkable things in addition to the enormous disparity noted by the other posters:

1. Despite having a much smaller seating capacity (thanks to Creighton's use of an NBA-sized off-campus arena), WSU raised only $81 thousand less than the BJs did -- very impressive revenue generation by the Shocks.

2. Five of the Valley teams who make it a mid-major league (in which WSU and Creighton are high-major programs) show up with exactly the same revenue and expense figures. How is that possible -- some sort of subsidy to make up their (probable) revenue shortfall?

That appears to be the case.

[shox1989]

Another sort- there are only 7 schools without football that spent more money on men's basketball than WSU and 5 of them are in the Big East (Marquette, St. John's, DePaul, Seton Hall and Providence). The other two are Gonzaga and Xavier. And Xavier only outspent WSU by $50,000.

[im4wsu]

Very interesting. Thank you for the post.

The difficult thing when viewing data such as this is there is little uniformity among schools as to how they treat or categorize various revenuesor ecpenses. Institutional support or state funding is one culprit. The cost of scholarships (in-state vs out-of-state) is another. Football schools, particularly, may "shift" some revenues to and expenses away from the football ledger in order to make football look better financially.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of good information and potential discussion of this data.

[Aargh]

Does the amount spent by CU include anything for the rental of their facility? I don't know the arrangement CU has - they could get all the ticket sales after a certain threshhold was reached, which would mean they wouldn't show any rent payments.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

Great information. Thanks @shox1989.

I hope the athletic department is already all over this and shoves it in the face of anyone who'll listen during conference realignment discussions.

[rrshock]

Great information. Thanks @shox1989.

I hope the athletic department is already all over this and shoves it in the face of anyone who'll listen during conference realignment discussions.

I hope they do too.

[ripemupshocks]

Very interesting. Thank you for the post.

The difficult thing when viewing data such as this is there is little uniformity among schools as to how they treat or categorize various revenuesor ecpenses. Institutional support or state funding is one culprit. The cost of scholarships (in-state vs out-of-state) is another. Football schools, particularly, may "shift" some revenues to and expenses away from the football ledger in order to make football look better financially.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of good information and potential discussion of this data.

Absolutely. Tulsa would probably be a good example of that. In 2009 they spent $2,969,935.00 on basketball, and had a deficit of $3,079,858.00 in football. If their basketball expenses are now bigger than ours, they probably moved some of their football expenses to basketball. Or they're paying Manning BIG, BIG money.