Mr. SEC’s website has reported that the NCAA’s top programs for revenue are as follows:

Total revenue

1.  Texas – $120.3 million
2.  Ohio State – $118 million
3.  Florida – $106 million
4.  Michigan – $99 million
5.  Wisconsin – $93.5 million
6.  Penn State – $91.6 million
7.  Auburn – $89.3 million
8.  Alabama – $88.9 million
9.  Tennessee – $88.7 million
10.  Oklahoma State – $88.6 million

Football revenue

1.  Texas – $72.95 million
2.  Georgia – $67.05 million
3.  Florida – $66.1 million
4.  Ohio State – $65.16 million
5.  Notre Dame – $59.77 million
6.  Auburn – $59.67 million
7.  Michigan – $57.46 million
8.  Alabama – $57.37 million
9.  Penn State – $53.76 million
10.  LSU – $52.68 million

There are a few interesting things here…well at least to me.

1) The other Georgia programs must make squat for the university

2) Oklahoma State must have a serious T. Boone Pickens effect going on.

3) Is it any shock that over the last decade 9 of the 10 of the football revenue leaders have been National Championship contenders by going either undefeated or with 1 loss into the bowl season?

Football revenue rules. Plain and simple. Just looking at the numbers of the schools on both lists, football makes or breaks their departments. You know where a lot of that money comes from? The BCS? A considerable chunk of change…

Truthfully, it’s the media contracts…The National. The Local. The Radio…everything. Want proof?

National TV? The SEC just signed a deal with CBS and ESPN to carry their sports programming (based exclusively off the football rights) for 15 years. Combining both contracts, each SEC school will receive about $17 million each per year. 

Radio? The University of Georgia recently signed an 8 year deal with Internet Sports Properties (ISP), a company that handles many university athletic marketing and media rights, for $92 Million. That is said to be the largest in the country.  (Ohio State has a similar deal with a competitor for $100 million over 10 years, which was the previous high)

Local Television? The University of Florida has a 10 year agreement with SunSports, a regional Florida sports network, to pay them $10 million a year. That includes PPV rights to the 1-2 games not picked up nationally, the replays on Sundays, and the weekly coach’s show.

I reiterate one of my past arguments to the non automatic BCS qualifiers…do you really think that the BCS money is the difference between you and the “Big 6″? 

I don’t.  Remember a school only gets about $5 million of the $17 million payout for going to a BCS game, the rest of the money gets distributed between the conference.  Stepping back, how does that $5 million look next to the numbers above? It’s nice, pads the wallet, but not necessary for the program to survive.

These smaller schools aren’t missing out on money because of the BCS, it’s because they don’t have the interest to demand these heavy media driven contracts that have worked their way around college sports the last 5 years or so.

One could argue that being included in the BCS would fix that. I disagree.

The Big East might be a part of the “Big 6″, but their TV contract pales in comparison (although it is higher than most non qualifier conferences) to their counterparts. When renegotiating in 2007, ESPN formed their new television contract  more towards the great basketball the conference offers, with football as an afterthought (Think reverse SEC). As a result, the football teams share about $15 million a year according to some reports, plus another few million directly related to basketball.

The question is…Even if the BCS opened up and allowed the MWC conference to be a permanent fixture in their lineup, would they really be able to compete year in and out? Or would they be outpaced by the superior media deals the SEC, Big 10, and Big 12 currently have?

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