Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gators and fat-cat SEC could spend FSU, rest of ACC into oblivion
Another day, another national championship for the Florida Gators. Yawn. This time, it was the baseball team. A couple of weeks ago, it was the dynastic track-and-field team. A couple of weeks before that, it was the women’s tennis team. Since 2010, the Gators have won 17 national championships in a multitude of sports.
Beware, Florida State. It’s only a matter of time before UF’s football team is paying, er, playing for national championships, too. Ditto, the basketball team.
You see, nobody in this part of the country buys, er, wins national championships like UF does.
This column is not meant so much to prop up the Gators for being an all-sports giant, although they certainly are. After coach Kevin O’Sullivan’s baseball team beat LSU 6-1 to win UF’s first College World Series championship Tuesday night, UF became the only program since integration that has baseball, football and basketball national championships in its trophy case.
This column is meant more as a warning for Florida State and its fellow ACC members. Beware of the Gators and their filthy rich Southeastern Conference brethren, who — with all of their SEC Network money — could be on the verge of spending you into irrelevance.
Granted, at this point, the ACC has never looked better with national championships in both football (Clemson beat SEC goliath Alabama) and basketball (North Carolina beat Gonzaga), but don’t kid yourself: The SEC is earning money and spending it at an alarming rate.
All you have to do is look at UF as an example. The Gators likely will announce soon they are getting ready to build a new baseball stadium and a new softball complex. This comes on the heels of totally refurbishing their basketball arena to the tune of $64.5 million and building a new football indoor-practice facility for close to $20 million.
And coming soon: Another $60 million for a stand-alone football Taj Mahal that surely will be filled with smoothie bars, waterfalls, laser-tag studios and all sorts of amenities to entice the recruits who don’t go to Alabama.
“I think the SEC Network and the money and exposure it has provided has been a huge factor,” says UF basketball coach Mike White, who took his team to within one victory of the Final Four in his second season. “The network is providing an incredible amount of money for our institutions to spend on facilities. When you look around the league, there are renovations everywhere.”
According to the most recent numbers, ACC revenues dropped during the 2015-16 fiscal year and the conference offered the lowest annual payout per school ($23.8 million) of any of the Power 5 conferences. Compare that with the SEC’s bowl and TV payout of $40.42 million and then do the math. If this massive discrepancy were to continue over a 10-year period, the Gators would make $160 million more than the Seminoles. That’s a lot of plush facilities to entice wideeyed recruits.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the ACC is hurting for cash; it’s just that the SEC has it to burn.
The bottom line is the bottom line.
In sports as in politics, those contestants and candidates with the most money usually win.