Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Excuse: It's the Budget
Old news, somewhat, but there is a claim floating around various UCLA message boards that UCLA cannot afford to pay for a big-time head football coach because (and this argument takes various forms): UCLA as a state school can't pay a big salary; the UC system is in a budget crunch and UCLA can't pay a big salary, etc.
For one thing, the UCLA Athletic Department is self-sufficient: public moneys don't pay for the athletic program. The state school argument is just silly, especially when one considers salaries at other state schools (e.g., Bob Stoops at Oklahoma).
So anyway, how much did UCLA spend on football last season? Only about $16m, which was, incidentally, more than any other school in the Pac 10.
Only USC and Washington spent more than UCLA in the total athletic budgets [Ed: isn't Washington a state school too?]. Bad news is that UCLA lost over $6 million on the year.
On this mostly Dodgers blog (it's a good one, we'll blogroll it later), some implications and explanations are examined:
Good questions and stats. The revenues from football are particularly important. If attendance continues to decline, it bodes poorly for the entire athletic department and all the other programs that don't make money.
So how do you get more football revenues? Getting more people to attend football games would be good. The best way to do that is have a good program. It should be clear that money isn't a problem -- we're throwing a lot of money around (although what it's going to, we're not exactly sure). But if UCLA wanted to pay a coach more, it could do so.
Take a look at these attendence figures (2004 figures from official UCLA site):
average (rank) record
1998: 73,709 (16) 10-2
1999: 49,825 (32) 4-7
2000: 67,280 (21) 6-6
2001: 64,613 (22) 7-4
2002: 65,396 (23) 8-5
2003: 56,636 (32) 6-7
2004: (inc.) 54,930 6-4
You'll notice that the worst two rankings in attendance came in the two seasons with losing records. The best attendance ranking came in a season with the best record. There also seems to be an overall decline (although the SUC game will probably enlarge this season's average). I'm not going to do any statistical analysis to see if there's a true correllation, but this fits the conventional wisdom that "LA fans support a winner." Draw your own conclusions.
For one thing, the UCLA Athletic Department is self-sufficient: public moneys don't pay for the athletic program. The state school argument is just silly, especially when one considers salaries at other state schools (e.g., Bob Stoops at Oklahoma).
So anyway, how much did UCLA spend on football last season? Only about $16m, which was, incidentally, more than any other school in the Pac 10.
Only USC and Washington spent more than UCLA in the total athletic budgets [Ed: isn't Washington a state school too?]. Bad news is that UCLA lost over $6 million on the year.
On this mostly Dodgers blog (it's a good one, we'll blogroll it later), some implications and explanations are examined:
A couple of things jump out from the graph published in Seattle. First is UCLA is fourth in the Pac-10 in football revenue generated ($19.89 million), second in men's basketball revenue generated ($7.75 million) -- and still lost more money than any other university in the conference. While a number of things likely contributed to that, I bet at the top of the list is lack of donations to the athletic department that year. Remember, that is a year with Bob Toledo and Steve Lavin in their last seasons as coaches, and both of them were run out of town by frustrated alumni (particularly alumni Dan Guerrero).
Also notice how dependant both Southern California schools are on football, and how little profit UCLA made on it. It should be pointed out that both schools made nearly $500,000 less than hoped in football that year because only one Pac-10 team was invited to a BCS bowl.
USC made a profit of $12.38 million on football, and football revenues accounted for 57% of the money that the athletic department took in. Football, $1.06 million from men’s basketball plus donations from alumni, kept the program at break-even point for the year.
UCLA, on the other hand, made just $3.88 million on football, in part because it spent $1.6 million more than the next highest football program (USC). Football revenues accounted for 68% of all the athletic department revenues
The Seattle Times notes, in painfully small print on its graphic, that experts warned them that these numbers are not completely reliable because, well, lets face it, these schools probably have Enron-caliber accountants on board who divert and hide some of the money that flows through a program that big. More detailed numbers should be looked at and would provide more anwers, like where is all that UCLA football money going? That said, while not perfect, these figures do provide some insight.
Good questions and stats. The revenues from football are particularly important. If attendance continues to decline, it bodes poorly for the entire athletic department and all the other programs that don't make money.
So how do you get more football revenues? Getting more people to attend football games would be good. The best way to do that is have a good program. It should be clear that money isn't a problem -- we're throwing a lot of money around (although what it's going to, we're not exactly sure). But if UCLA wanted to pay a coach more, it could do so.
Take a look at these attendence figures (2004 figures from official UCLA site):
average (rank) record
1998: 73,709 (16) 10-2
1999: 49,825 (32) 4-7
2000: 67,280 (21) 6-6
2001: 64,613 (22) 7-4
2002: 65,396 (23) 8-5
2003: 56,636 (32) 6-7
2004: (inc.) 54,930 6-4
You'll notice that the worst two rankings in attendance came in the two seasons with losing records. The best attendance ranking came in a season with the best record. There also seems to be an overall decline (although the SUC game will probably enlarge this season's average). I'm not going to do any statistical analysis to see if there's a true correllation, but this fits the conventional wisdom that "LA fans support a winner." Draw your own conclusions.
