I think it’s pretty fair to say that fans of the Oregon Ducks think highly of themselves and the programs they root for. That’s not a bad thing, either.
For the most part, Duck fans should be incredibly proud of the teams they cheer on yearly. Consistently, they have a football team that ranks among the top 10-15 teams in the nation, sometimes better; they have a pair of basketball programs that have made multiple deep trips in the NCAA Tournament; they also have really solid baseball and softball program, and the track and field program is consistently among the best in the nation.
Behind all of that are Nike and Uncle Phil Knight, who are inarguably among the best donors in the world of college athletics.
So with all of that in mind, you would think that the Ducks have one of the top athletic departments in the Pac-12 if not the nation, right? Well, depending on how you look at things, that may not be the answer.
The past week, well-respected Mercury News columnist Jon Wilner debuted his Pac-12 athletic department power rankings. In essence, he wanted to look at which schools in the conference got the highest number of wins per dollar spent on athletics. With a focus on the “revenue sports” of football, and both men’s and women’s basketball, Wilner compared operating expenses to the number of wins across those three sports.
In his rankings, Wilner has the Ducks ranked as the No. 8 athletic department in the Pac-12, giving the following reasoning:
Football success was impressive but just short of the top tier; the Ducks didn’t qualify for the conference championship or reach the New Year’s Six. However, the twin regression by the basketball programs guided our calculation when comparing the Ducks to departments ranked above them. The more you spend, the more difficult the wins-per-dollar road becomes to navigate.
Here are my quick takeaways…