Gap grows between Power Five, other leagues

Pete Lembo has seen both sides of major college football as the head coach at Ball State and now as an assistant at Maryland.

At Ball State in the Mid-American Conference, a simple decision like buying black helmets for the team came with concessions. There was give and take on every decision.

“And I would share that openly with our team,” Lembo said. “I would say, ‘Look, guys, this is life. You’re going to have to make these same kind of decisions when you’re a husband and when you’re a father, and you’re going to have to work with your wife on these kind of things.’”

At Maryland in the Big Ten, life is easier, relatively speaking. Boosted by a share of the Big Ten’s billion-dollar television deals, Maryland brought in $94 million in athletic revenue in 2015-16, according to the figures compiled by USA Today — $70 million more than Ball State.

Media rights deals and the College Football Playoff have increased revenue at all levels of the Football Bowl Subdivision, but the gap has grown between the Group of Five leagues and the Power Five conferences — the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12. Over the next month, Group of Five teams will mostly play in third-tier bowl games in front of sparse crowds, earning payouts that mostly cover travel expenses. The Power Five teams get the glamor bowls with the multimillion-dollar payouts.

It is not quite haves and have-nots, but the differences show in the most practical ways.

Bigger staffs allow coaches more time to actually coach. Players not only have access to better facilities for training, but their health and performance are more thoroughly monitored from practice to training table. They also get more academic supervision and support.

“There’s a big difference between a need and a want,” said Joe Parker, the athletic director at Colorado State, which recently opened a new $220 million on-campus football stadium. “I think we fulfill every need that I’ve seen on our campus as it relates to intercollegiate athletes. The list of wants is extensive and there’s probably not a budget to address every one of them. That’s the space we live in, making those tough decisions and prioritizing them, not convincing ourselves that this thing that might look and seem nice is a necessity when it really isn’t it.”

Colorado State’s athletic revenue was just under $40 million, which ranks in the top half of the Mountain West but is still $18 million less than Washington State, which ranked last among the Power Five’s public schools.