Philadelphia Sports Blog

by John Ryan

In American college sports, the only one that makes a university money is football. There are of course exceptions (ie: Duke, UNC) but they are few and further in between than the average person would think. As a quick example, last year Wake Forest, Cal, and Villanova all lost money from their basketball team. Those aforementioned teams all are considered good basketball programs and popular amongst their student body. Not convinced? How about UCLA, UCONN, and Arizona as well. All of those programs were in the red for the 2007 fiscal year in the basketball department. Football is where the money is, and that is why so many universities are attracted to building a new stadium, and having a good team to put in that stadium. With recruiting as fierce as ever now, it is harder and harder for power houses to stay dominant and easier for start-ups to get good in a short amount of time and stay good because of recruiting “hot bed” areas. The map to building a good college football program can be done a few ways, but some schools in the past 20 years have done a great job at becoming relevant and staying in the bowl mix. This brings in big time dollars to the university, and those universities don’t want to lose that money. Here is a map to build a successful program:

1.) Hire a good coach or “football guy” to get the program going. This can be hard, because unless you go the proven route, who is good and who isn’t? It’s an educated guess. A good example of both sides recently is University of Kansas and Florida Atlantic University. University of Kansas, hardly a football powerhouse before the last few years hired Mark Mangino and now he is so highly regarded that he is always in the conversation for national coach of the year. Urban Meyer put Utah on the map a few years ago with his bright, innovative playbook. FAU went the opposite route and hired the proven program builder Howard Schnellenberger. Schnellenberger single handedly saved the University of Miami program so he had the reputation and recruiting moxie to get a new program started. If your new to football, you may want to use the proven guy method.

2.) Have the full support of the university. This can be tricky as well. Such schools as University of Southern Florida and Florida International have the full support of the state of Florida and their administrations behind them. Such schools as Northwestern University is a big time academic school that cares little about its football program other than whatever dollars it generates it’s university.

3.) Hopefully you’re in a good recruiting area! No moving around the geographics of a school. You’re either in a good area, or your not. Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas and California are the hotbeds, with Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan in the mix as well. Hit these areas and hit them hard. USF, UCF, FIU, and FAU have benefited from this, as has Kansas from hitting the Midwest hard.

4.) Get a stadium. This is also a correlation of numbers 1 and 2 and to a lesser degree 3. You need a good football visionary to get the support of the university, the support of the community, and the support of either state legislators or wealthy alumni. Then you need to keep the team good with good recruiting. Afterwards, you get a hopefully half packed stadium for a few years, then a packed house when the team gets good. Just ask the head coach at Rutgers, Greg Schiano. He turned around a dormant program at Rutgers to a (semi) good team with new good recruits from Northern Jersey, and Pennsylvania (and to a lesser degree South Florida because he came from University of Miami) and a great stadium. He has the support of the state of New Jersey (look at his newest contract) and the support of the school. The student body cares about football again, and they are making money again in a major way for the university.

5.) Stay Good! This is the hardest. You have to keep up the success if you want to keep the student body interested and keep pumping in dollars from gates and support. It can be hard, because a team like Florida Atlantic will have to play teams like Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, etc. to stay afloat money wise until they become self-sustaining. Until then, major dollars are earned by playing these powerhouse teams that need a W in the column in between warriors. The traditional powerhouses, ie: WVU, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, USC don’t need to play other big boys for money, only for schedule strength. Little guys can get up to a million dollars from gate and game fees from those major programs. Your program also receives big time money for making Bowl Games. A Bowl game such as the Gator Bowl pays big money for teams left out of the BCS picture. If you make a BCS game it’s multi-millions of dollars for the university, as well as the national recognition. Some schools, such as Notre Dame and University of Miami, who have fallen on hard times lately can rely on their national name recognition and reputation. Others need to scratch and claw and make sure they at least make a crappy bowl game like the Las Vegas Bowl or Hawaii Bowl.

Still want to start your own football program or make one better? Good luck!