Reality check about college baseball: nobody makes money at college baseball. This fact is important in the context of the ongoing discussions about UVA Baseball and the future of long-time coach Brian O’Connor.
Literally one Power 5 school, Ole Miss, reported a legitimate operating surplus in the 2023-2024 year, and that was a modest $1 million surplus, per data from the Sportico.com database.
ICYMI
- I asked to speak with Brian O’Connor: He’s not being made available right now
- Is UVA Baseball coach Brian O’Connor going anywhere? I don’t think so
- UVA Baseball: Brian O’Connor addresses the elephant in the room
I use the qualifier legitimate here because I’m not sure what is going on with the accounting folks at Georgia, which reported $9.8 million in baseball revenues in 2023-2024, $1.3 million in 2022-2023, $945,000 in 2021-2022, and $389,000 in 2020-2021.
And just to close the loop on Ole Miss: they reported an even more modest $165,000 surplus in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, and a $1.4 million deficit in 2021-2022.
Getting back to the present day, the 2024 national champ, Tennessee, reported a $3.7 million loss in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
The runner-up, Texas A&M, lost $3.5 million.
The average operating loss among Power 5s last year was $2.5 million.
The average operating loss among Group of 5s was $900,000.
Virginia, which made it to the 2024 College World Series, its third CWS appearance in four years, reported a $3.4 million loss last fiscal year.
Mississippi State, which lost to UVA in the Regional round last June, and is now reported to be in full-court-press pursuit of O’Connor to be its next coach, lost $3.1 million.
From a strictly fiscal standpoint, college baseball makes no sense.
The money in college sports is TV money, and there’s no TV money for college baseball, which is only a TV sport for two weeks a year, during the College World Series, which draws numbers comparable to the Fenway Bowl on a Saturday afternoon between Christmas and New Year’s.
I wish I was exaggerating there.
Baseball is, emphatically, a non-revenue sport, like the rest, subsidized by football TV money.
With respect, then, to Brian O’Connor, I’m not the only person suspecting that the uncomfortable silence from UVA Athletics on O’Connor’s status is a factor of work being done behind the scenes to address funding issues for the baseball program going forward.
I’m pointing out the money issues facing college baseball as a whole to put a realistic context to what we’re talking about in terms of those funding issues going forward.
It’s not a salary grab – UVA is paying O’Connor more than what Mississippi State was paying the coach that it fired last month, Chris Lemonis.
I don’t suspect that we’re even talking about that much money for scholarships and NIL, in the grand scheme of things.
According to the Sportico.com database, Mississippi State spent $500,000 more on baseball in the 2023-2024 fiscal year than UVA did, with both ranking in the Top 15 nationally.
Whatever is going on with UVA Athletics and Brian O’Connor, it’s not money, not enough to have him pack up his family and move to Starkville, Miss., a city the size of Waynesboro, with a median household income that makes West Virginia look like Dubai.
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Chris Graham
