The college football world is abuzz with the potential of conference realignment once again. With name, image, and likeness hitting the sport, as well as the ability to transfer one time without penalty, and the expansion of the College Football Playoff likely, it’s a time of change. Add that to the fact that television deals are going to hit, and that’s why we’re hearing that Texas and Oklahoma are far down the path of leaving the Big 12 and defecting to the land of sweet tea and grits in the SEC.
It got us thinking about the value of a college football program. What if teams were valued much like they are in professional sports out on the open market?
Lucky for us, the Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required) went through that exercise not too long ago. It seems like the WSJ would be a pretty solid source to start with on that type of thing so we’re going with it. It did so by analyzing “each program’s revenues and expenses along with cash-flow adjustments, risk assessments and growth projections.”
Sounds good to me.
There are surely some nuances that have changed things a little since this was all done in 2019 as of 2018 numbers, and there hasn’t been another evaluation because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’ll still give you an idea of the value of each program. You can keep it all in mind for when mass chaos ensues because of teams positioning themselves for the future.
So here we go. Here are the 20 most valuable college football teams as assessed late in 2019 by the Wall Street Journal.