Saturday Millionaires: How Winning Football Builds Winning Colleges

by Kristi Dosh

Overview

Last year Football Bowl Subdivision college football programs produced over $1 billion in net revenue. Record-breaking television contracts were announced. Despite the enormous revenue, college football is in upheaval. Schools are accused of throwing their academic mission aside to fund their football teams. The media and fans are beating the drum for athletes to be paid. And the conferences are being radically revised as schools search for TV money. Saturday Millionaires shows that schools are right to fund their football teams first; that athletes will never be paid like employees; how the media skews the financial facts; and why the TV deals are so important. It follows the money to the heart of college football and shows the real game being played, covering such areas as:

Myth #1: All Athletic Departments Are Created Equal
Myth #2: Supporting Football Means Degrading Academics
Myth #3: College Football Players Could Be Paid Like Employees
Myth #4: Football Coaches Are Overpaid
Myth #5: A Playoff Will Bring Equality to College Football
Myth #6: Only a Handful of Athletic Departments Are Self-Sustaining

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118386651
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	741,761
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kristi Dosh is the sports business reporter for ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, she was a practicing attorney and a sports business analyst for Forbes.com, Comcast Sports Southeast, The Pulse Network, and the Arkansas Radio Network. She was also a frequent guest on shows such as the Tim Brando Show. Kristi founded BusinessofCollegeSports.com, a nationally recognized news source for the business of college sports.

Read an Excerpt

From the Preface:

Proposals for improving college football are like assholes: everyone has one. That's how we describe an excess of anything in the South. That’s not what this book is about.  

This is the untold story of college football.

Once upon a time I was just a simple college football fan sporting my orange and blue in The Swamp every Saturday, trying to look cute while glistening (Southern women do not sweat) in the Central Florida heat. When the Gators only road to the National Championship in 2006 rested upon what I considered an improbable loss by USC to UCLA in the final week, I agreed with my friends that college football needed a playoff.
Back then, the only aspects about college football that made sense to me were why Ben Hill Griffin Stadium was called The Swamp (the air is thick and full of Gators!) and that something special would happen every time Tim Tebow stepped on the field.
As I reflect upon how I transitioned from there to playing devil’s advocate on topics including pay-for-play and whether an antitrust suit would have brought a playoff to college football, I realize it’s the access I’ve had to athletic departments via my former positions with SportsMoney on Forbes.com, Comcast Sports Southeast, my founding of BusinessofCollegeSports.com and my current position as ESPN’s sports business reporter that have made all the difference.

I remember naively wondering why no AQ conference (that’s Automatic Qualifying, as in the big 6 conferences: SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, ACC and Big East) had snapped up Boise State after it began posting winning season after winning season. By the time the Pac-12 and Big East announced adding Utah and TCU, respectively, in the fall of 2010, I knew why they had ascended to the highest tier of college football: they brought top television markets. Winning teams come and go, but a top market you can count on long-term.
There was the time I thought athletic departments, particularly those in AQ conferences, were printing money. I’ll never forget the dose of reality I was served along with each school’s line item budget I received. If we’re talking about only football, yes, dozens of schools turn a profit. Some healthier than others.

That football profit doesn’t simply sit in a vault marked “Property of State University Football”. It typically supports most of the other sports in the athletic department, nearly all of whom operate at a loss. At University of Florida, one of the healthiest athletic departments in the country, the average sport outside football and men’s basketball loses $1.4 million per season. Fortunately for the Gators, the profit from football covers all that and then some.
At schools where it doesn’t? That’s when the athletic department will reach into the pockets of students or the university’s general fund. Which brings me to another lesson learned: not all direct institutional support or government support reported on a school’s NCAA disclosure is what it seems. It could be state lottery funds designated for Title IX usage or waivers for out-of-state student-athletes so the athletic department only has to be in-state tuition on those students.

We’ll also take a look at how television changed the course of college football in a 1984 Supreme Court decision and the periods of conference realignment that followed. Lest you think television runs college football, we’ll also delve into conference television networks and the latest long-term television deals. You’ll see it’s the conferences who are the real power brokers in college football today.

Saturday Millionaires will take you inside the athletic departments at a variety of schools from one of the top departments in the country at Ohio State University to smaller departments like Western Kentucky University. I’ll show you their line item budgets, highlight where they excel and explain their struggles. You’ll see how an Athletic Director can change the course of an entire department, like Tom Jurich has at Louisville.

I will also show you how NCAA regulations and federal laws impact decisions made in and around college football. You’ll begin to understand why Title IX complicates pay-for-play plans whether the money comes in the form of an increased scholarship to cover cost-of-attendance or from the pocket of a donor. I’ll show you what would happen if athletic departments lost their tax-exempt status. I’ll even explain why the threat of an antitrust suit has perhaps done more for college football than an actual suit would have accomplished.

Lastly, we’ll talk about the intersection of athletics and academics. There are those who say athletics has destroyed academics at universities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Tim Brando

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Does Football Pay for Itself (Even if the School Pays for Football)?

Chapter 2: Are Coaches Overpaid and Bowl Appearances Overrated?

Chapter 3: Why Student Athletes Can Never Be Paid

Chapter 4: Conference Realignment 

Chapter 5: Why AQs Should Form their Own Division

Chapter 6: Call Them What You Want, but There Will Always be Non-AQs

Chapter 7: What Makes a Good AD?

 

Chapter 8: Why Notre Dame Grads Are Paying More for Cable So Indiana Grads Can Watch Their Team

Chapter 9: What Has Football Done For Us? 8 Reasons Football Raises the University

Editorial Reviews

Kristi Dosh was the first sports business writer who wanted to learn how the actual financial side of a college athletics department works and how football drives (and spends) the revenues for an athletics program. Her legal training gives her great perspective explaining the impact of Title IX, television contracts, and pay-for-play with its tax implications for athletic departments. Kristi takes you into what Saturday football games really mean to universities across the country.” —Ben Jay, Director of Athletics at University of Hawaii; former Executive Associate Athletics Director, Finance & Operations at The Ohio State University

“The business of college football has changed dramatically in the past twenty years, and Kristi’s understanding of why schools decide what they do separates her from anyone else I know in my industry. This is a book I’ve been waiting to read for years.” —Tim Brando, CBS Sports studio host and play-by-play announcer and host of the Tim Brando Show on Sirius/XM College Sports Nation

“Saturday Millionaires provides an inside, in-depth look into the money machine known as college football. It is a must read for anyone who enjoys the business of college football. The book takes the reader through the various myths that are often associated with big time col- lege athletics. As a Sport Management professor, [I’ve found] this book will provide analysis and information that is relevant to many different aspects of our field.” —Matthew Blaszka, Assistant Professor, Health, Recreation, and Sport Management Department, York College of Pennsylvania 

From the Publisher