I want football. You want football. We want football. Asking questions about a world in which we don’t have football this fall, however, is not a hostile act. It is not an implied statement of approval about a no-football fall.
Exploring a fall without football is meant to get a sense of how the landscape of college sports will change. The economics of college football exist at the heart of this. It is certainly in the public interest to know what the consequences of a college football-free fall might be. Hopefully, the sport can be played in September and October, but that hope shouldn’t preclude us from looking into this unpleasant scenario.
Steve Berkowitz, who heads up USA TODAY’s research into the economics of college sports — you might recognize him as the person who regularly tweets during college football season when any FBS coach meets one of the incentives on his contract — worked with Tom Schad in this USA TODAY report on how the economics of college football would be affected by an autumn with no games.
I won’t try to drown you in information — that’s what reading the full article will do — but I will select a few particularly noteworthy highlights.
This is one:
“According to a USA TODAY Sports analysis of schools’ financial reports to the NCAA, the 50-plus public schools in the Power Five conferences have at least $4.1 billion in fiscal-year revenue tied to football — which is more than 60% of their athletics departments’ combined total annual operating revenues, based on amounts reported for the 2019 fiscal year.”
This is another:
“At present, schools are holding hundreds of millions of dollars in football season-ticket money and seating-rights payments. During the 2019 fiscal year, FBS public schools had nearly $1.1 billion in total football ticket sales, according to school financial reports.
“‘In our case, about 80% of our tickets have been renewed and 80% of our annual giving has already been received,’ Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione said. ‘The question is, what do those donors or ticket holders want in terms of their commitment in regards to those gifts or pledges?’”
That gives you a small taste of the mountains of money athletic directors normally count on — and would have to do without if there is no football this fall. One shudders to think about sports cut, administrative and support staff positions gutted, and lives put on hold (if not worse) if there isn’t football this fall.
A final note: 54 different athletic directors at FBS programs told Berkowitz and Schad they did not have emergency reserve funds set aside for a rainy day such as this. There was no breakdown among Power Five or Group of Five programs for that survey response.
Let’s all hope we can play at least some college football this fall. If we don’t, though, you can see how damaging the scenario will be for the finances of college athletic departments.