Given some recent discussion of support for the football program, I decided to illustrate how support has been allocated over time. I've prepared a graphic below that gives the expenses allocated to support football as a percentage of the total athletic department budget for each fiscal year. These values were obtained from the US Dept. of Education site on collegiate athletic finances.
Expenses include game costs, travel, staff salaries, program supplies and services, etc., but not facility construction or construction debt costs. OSU’s fiscal year begins on July 1st and ends on June 30th, thus FY 2001 started on July 1st 2000 and ended on June 30th 2001. Consequently, the football seasons associated with the fiscal years on the graphic begin in the 2000 season (Fiesta Bowl) and ends with the 2014 season.
Football generates more than half of the overall revenues for the athletic department but is garnering an increasingly smaller share of the expenses to run the program. A sport has been added in this time frame and more has been spent on existing sports thereby causing the reduction in allocation to football.
On a nominal basis, football expenses are increasing but only at a fraction of the increases observed for other sport programs at OSU. Our Pac-12 competitors have increased spending on football at a greater rate than OSU. This is a possible contributing factor to the downward trend in OSU's football fortunes. We can hope that this trend in spending has reversed with the hiring of Coach Andersen.
If football is the economic engine that drives the athletic department’s finances, then strategic investment in this critical program is warranted to ensure its continued viability and by extension, the financial health of the entire athletic department.
Expenses include game costs, travel, staff salaries, program supplies and services, etc., but not facility construction or construction debt costs. OSU’s fiscal year begins on July 1st and ends on June 30th, thus FY 2001 started on July 1st 2000 and ended on June 30th 2001. Consequently, the football seasons associated with the fiscal years on the graphic begin in the 2000 season (Fiesta Bowl) and ends with the 2014 season.
Football generates more than half of the overall revenues for the athletic department but is garnering an increasingly smaller share of the expenses to run the program. A sport has been added in this time frame and more has been spent on existing sports thereby causing the reduction in allocation to football.
On a nominal basis, football expenses are increasing but only at a fraction of the increases observed for other sport programs at OSU. Our Pac-12 competitors have increased spending on football at a greater rate than OSU. This is a possible contributing factor to the downward trend in OSU's football fortunes. We can hope that this trend in spending has reversed with the hiring of Coach Andersen.
If football is the economic engine that drives the athletic department’s finances, then strategic investment in this critical program is warranted to ensure its continued viability and by extension, the financial health of the entire athletic department.
