A good lesson for other AAC schools
This is not a time for other programs in the American Athletic Conference to start casting stones outward at departing UConn and wondering how the financially decimated Huskies could possibly choose to leave the American for a league that doesn’t even have football.
No, this is a time for UCF, USF and the rest of the AAC to look inward and make sure that what has happened to UConn doesn’t happen to them. And don’t kid yourself, UCF fans. What happened to UConn could easily happen to UCF. Hell, it almost did four years ago when the Knights went 0-12.
Can you imagine what sort of financial abyss UCF’s athletics program would be in if the Knights had remained awful for an extended period of time after that winless debacle? Can you imagine how empty Spectrum Stadium would be if innovative athletics director Danny White hadn’t come aboard and had the insight to hire Scott Frost as the football coach and the acumen to start raising money and selling season tickets at a record pace?
Yes, the Knights are red-hot and riding high right now after back-to-back undefeated regular seasons, a self-proclaimed national championship and consecutive appearances in big-time bowl games. Obviously, selling luxury suites as well as field-side cabanas and asking boosters to open their wallets isn’t nearly as difficult when your program is a national power.
But is UCF’s business model of going unbeaten every season sustainable? Will UCF’s fan base remain as engaged if ESPN GameDay isn’t in town and the Knights aren’t a weekly topic on the Paul Finebaum Show? Will simply winning eight or nine games per season be enough to keep UCF football financially stable and nationally relevant?
UConn should be a cautionary tale for every school in a Group of 5 league. AAC commissioner Mike Aresco, in an interview with the Sentinel’s own Matt Murschel, painted a rosy picture of the American in the wake of UConn announcing last week it was leaving for the Big East. Even though the Huskies have stunk in football during the past few seasons, I don’t think it’s ever a good sign when a name-brand school like UConn shockingly bolts for a league that doesn’t even have football.
By my estimation, UConn going back to the Big East is the first step toward the Huskies de-emphasizing their football program because it has become such a financial drain. Last year alone, the Huskies athletic program spent $40 million more
than it earned. That’s right, UConn athletics spent $80 million, only made $40 million and had to be bailed out by the university’s general fund.
The biggest money-sucker was the football program, which operated at a $9 million deficit. I believe UConn’s administrators finally just threw up their hands and came to the conclusion that the financial commitment it takes to fund a big-time football program was simply sucking resources away from what their fan base really cares about — basketball.
Of course, this is where UCF and UConn differ. UConn is in the Northeast, where college football is about sixth in the pecking order behind the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college basketball. UCF is in the Southeast, where college football is still, in my estimation, No. 1 in the pecking order.
But I also believe this: If former UCF president John Hitt hadn’t been such a huge advocate for college football and dumped so much funding into a perennially money-losing program, who knows if UCF football would have ever made it?
Think about it: What if all those years ago, UCF had hired a budget-conscious bean-counting president who simply looked at the spread sheet and saw the football program had lost countless millions over the years? Fortunately, Hitt rightfully believed that a successful football program has many inherent benefits and brings a college campus and its alumni together like nothing else can. We’ve certainly seen that during the past two seasons during which students have rallied around the program, season-ticket sales are at an all-time high and donations have risen to a record rate.
The problem for UCF and other Group of 5 programs is that it’s costing more and more and getting harder and harder to compete in the arms race of college football. Troublingly, there are even many Power 5 programs (see the financial woes at Florida State) that have spent themselves into the poorhouse.
When SEC and Big Ten teams are earning $45 or $50 million annually per team in TV revenue and the American’s new deal is only worth $7 or $8 million per team, you begin to understand just how difficult it is to keep up.
It essentially comes down to this:
If you have a football program that’s not in the Power 5, you have one of two choices — survive or die.
UConn’s football program will be dead soon.
UCF’s football program is surviving and even thriving.
But for how long?
Email me at mbianchi@ orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on FM 96.9 and AM 740. Click on this link to support our journalism and purchase a digital subscription.