I am so sick of hearing from OU fans that ‘Boone Pickets bought a program’ for OSU. I have this feeling that OU has/had more money poured into their program and has outspent OSU by multiples since time began. Does anyone here have any coherent information on how money correlates to success. It makes sense that better facilities, better salaries for coaches, bigger budgets to recruit could translate into more success on the recruiting trail. Just curious.
You understand that many people here have argued that OU is in the state it’s in because of “resources”, correct? We are just as bad as OU fans in that respect.
We had Boone (still have him if you think about it). They have their big donors. The world continues to revolve, life goes on, etc.
College football has always been a money game.
It’s hard to narrow things down, but below is the athletic department revenue as a whole ranking vs final CFP ranking.
CFP (Budget)
- LSU (14)
- Ohio State (3)
- Clemson (27)
- OU (7)
- UGA (6)
- Oregon (26)
- Baylor (private)
- Wisconsin (11)
- Florida (10)
- PSU (9)
OSU is 48th in revenue.
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Freakin’ Baylor…and they don’t have to disclose anything.
Did a little bit of searching and couldn’t find many reputable looking sites. Looks like they’re probably closer to Clemson and Oregon than OSU.
There were fairly reliable reports that Rhule was making upwards of $7 million per year at Baylor.
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So, is the budget numbers ‘revenue,’ or budget. (just trying to get a comparison with the OSU ‘revenue’ number. I know our programs doesn’t make as much money as the blue bloods. Traditionally, OSU has been in the lower half of both the Big 8 and the Big 12 in AD spending (budget); until Boone gave a few bucks, we didn’t register on the gifts chart. It would be nice to see how much donors are vested in each of these programs as well.
That was a major part of my question. Boone gave $250M or there abouts, others have chipped in some $650M on top of that; I would venture a guess that OU has received many times that in the same period. Boone primed the pump and gave us a fighting chance to compete… but his direct impact pales in comparison to the OU donors overall. Am I right?
Thanks Brent. So we are next to last in the Big 12 (assuming Baylor and TCU are ahead of us) which is about where we were in the Big 8. Any way to see how we stack up in the donation collumn?
Donations are included in the revenue, but without doing some looking year over year, it’s tough to tell when big ones come in.
I don’t think the difference after WVU is all that meaningful. The gap between Texas and OU and everyone else is tough to make up though.
Sorry I’m so slow, but I just tumbled to the idea that the total revenue column contains ‘giving.’ If so (I can’t believe I’m so dense), we need to come up with $35M annually to catch up with our model (Clemson), and the better part of $100M to catch big brother.
Seems like you could do a lot with $35M to $100M per year.
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Looks like there is a strong correlation between success and money. The only outliers in the top 10 ranked teams is Oregon, Clemson, and LSU, two of which played in the title game. (Don’t know about Baylor)
There is a lot of discussion on this forum about poor recruiting, poor coaching, but we haven’t really broached the elephant in the room - philanthropy.
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Yup. And I’m pretty confident that if we came out and did the same thing that Clemson did, where “everybody gives $30,” It would not go very well. I have very little faith in the OSU fan base.
I can’t disagree with you Lee, as much as I wish that I could. You know, we had an AD by the name of Terry Don Phillips (have mercy if I got the name wrong) for a short time, and now he is as Clemson if I’m not mistaken. I know Mike Holder has done an admirable job at managing money that comes in and building facilities; I don’t know how good he is at kicking the bushes and harvesting the money tree for cash. Maybe we need to give him some help by hiring a crack fund-raiser.
To build a dynasty, we need to build the infrastructure to get us there and keep us there. We have champagne taste on a beer budget. I lived in Clemson for years and knew the Alumni director and some of the fund raising staff who has done a pretty good job of building a solid financial base. Clemson is a good comp for OSU. LIke Clemson, we don’t have the professional schools so we can’t rely on rich alumni (doctor/lawyer types) to float us. Somehow, we need to tap into a support base that is bigger than our alumni roles.
Ehh Holder is actually really good at going out and finding money. Look no further than Karsten Creek… And the baseball stadium… And the tennis facility… That was pretty much all him. Partnering with Neil Patterson very early into Cerner’s venture into sports medicine was also a good move.
TDP was the one that started the “everybody gives” campaign at Clemson. He’s a good one for sure.
But Holder is great as well. He’s done an amazing job with what he has to work with. But he called it out in the interview that Seth did with him about the wrestling facility… Most of our fans assume that somebody else is going to be the one that steps up.
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Is this different from the I Pay Ten a Year program that’s much older at Clemson than Terry Don?
This is actually a brilliant idea.
Wow yeah I got the details wrong. And I thought it was kinda new. Thanks for correcting.