The ACC, in fiscal year 2021, reported $815.9 million in revenues, less than half the haul of the SEC ($1.7 billion), and a good bit behind the Big Ten ($1.2 billion), according to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database.
Is that all because of TV? According to the database, the ACC reported $295.3 million in revenues from NCAA/conference distributions, media rights, and post-season football, basically, TV.
The SEC, gulp, reported $1.1 billion there.
The Big Ten: $584.9 million.
That’s already bad news for the ACC, but then there’s the really bad news: that the 2021 numbers represent a high-water mark in the TV money category.
So, you’d think that ACC schools would be struggling to keep pace their peers in the Power 2, basically fighting an uphill battle that is only going to get more pronounced as the revenue gap is projected to double by the end of the decade.
Consider, then, that the ACC had two teams in the 2022 Final Four. The SEC and Big Ten have a combined three Final Four appearances in the last six years.
The ACC has won three national titles since the last time an SEC school won a natty, Kentucky in 2012, and eight since the last time a Big Ten school did, Michigan State in 2000.
And while the ACC, for the first time ever, didn’t have a College Football Playoff participant in 2021, it had two in 2020 (Clemson and Notre Dame), and has claimed eight of the 32 spots since the inception of the playoff in 2014.
The SEC leads with 10; the Big Ten trails the ACC with six. The Big 12 has had four; the Pac-12 two; the AAC one; and Notre Dame made one CFP as an independent.
In terms of natties: the SEC (Alabama, LSU, Georgia) has won five, including the last three, the ACC (Clemson) two, the Big Ten (Ohio State) one.
So, ACC schools are competing pretty well in the money sports.
Can that continue as the revenue gap gets even more pronounced?
Well, the current discrepancy, per school, works out to about $25 million a year less for ACC programs relative to their SEC and Big Ten peers, and the gap is projected to grow to between $50-$55 million per year by the end of the decade.
In the here and now, Ohio State spent $171.6 million on athletics in 2021; Alabama spent $170.2 million; Texas, which is headed to the SEC from the Big 12, spent $167.3 million.
In the ACC, Florida State was the biggest spender last year, at $121.9 million, with Clemson in second at $117.4 million.
Unless ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and the conference’s presidents and ADs pull a rabbit out of their hats, the spending gap that’s currently about $50 million per school when factoring in everything – TV, ticket sales and donor money being the primary revenue sources – will grow by another $25-$30 million.
That won’t make it any easier for ACC schools to keep up with the Power 2, certainly, but is this life and death? Hardly.
There’s a psychological advantage for SEC and Big Ten schools in terms of recruiting and fan excitement, maybe, but then you have to factor in the pressure that big money brings with it, sort of the mo’ money, mo’ problems aspect.
Just look at LSU, which in 2019 fielded what some people think might be the best single-season college football team of all time, then got rid of the coach who orchestrated that team, Ed Orgeron, after his 2020 and 2021 teams went a combined 11-11.
Auburn seems to have that problem, pushing out Tommy Tuberville, Gene Chizik and Gus Malzahn after periods of success followed by one-season falls from grace.
I could go on – all Mark Richt did at Georgia was win nine games a year for 15 years; Florida keeps trying to regain the magic of the Urban Meyer era, and as it turns out, so is Ohio State, which has gone 31-4 under Ryan Day, but hasn’t won the big one in his three seasons, and he’d be well-advised to avoid another loss to Jim Harbaugh.
And that’s just at the top of the food chain. Reality is, 13 schools have made CFP appearances in its seven-year history, and seven of those have been to exactly one playoff.
Thirteen schools; there are 65 schools in the Power 5 conferences.
Take out the wild-card that went to AAC champ Cincinnati last year, and less than 20 percent of the Power 5 has ever been to a CFP, and 25 of the 32 spots to this point have gone to six schools – Alabama (7), Clemson (6), Ohio State and Oklahoma (4), and Georgia and Notre Dame (2) – that are, in effect, the six schools that begin each season expecting to get a bid.
For the rest of the Power 5, the rest of the 130-team FBS, the playoffs are a pipe dream.
If nothing else changes, five of the six schools (throwing Notre Dame and its pending huge deal with NBC into the mix) that make the playoffs every year will get even more money to do what they do to make the playoffs every year.
For the other 125 schools, life goes on.
Maybe this is a much ado about nothing kind of situation.
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Chris Graham
