The Bowls: Silly Extravagance or Worthwhile Tradition?

Related content: The story behind the story and a look at team expense reports.

When the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) announced matchups for its five games last December, the Fiesta Bowl was handed the biggest clunker of them all — Connecticut vs. Oklahoma.

But Fiesta officials never had to worry about monetary risk because they were handing off the financial burden to the Huskies and Sooners.

Each team, as part of the agreement to play in the Glendale, Ariz., game, had to purchase 17,500 tickets with a face value between $105 and $235.

Combined, Connecticut and Oklahoma sold only 8,338 of their allotted 35,000 tickets. That left the schools and their conferences on the hook for a jaw-dropping $5.14 million in "absorbed" tickets — or tickets that go unsold to the public or have to be purchased by the university for use by staff, families of players, coaches and even the band.

Last season marked a record 35 bowl games and nearly every game required teams to purchase a minimum number of tickets. Teams, in search of prestige, never hesitate to take on the financial burden.

It is a system that pays dividends not only for the bowls — seven of which are owned and operated by ESPN — but coaches and administrators who get bonuses because their teams played in the postseason. The losers are many, including athletic departments, students who help fund the program through fees, taxpayers, and fans who desire a Division I-A playoff.

The Wiz of Odds recently obtained expense reports for 56 of the 70 teams participating in bowl games last season. The data was obtained through public records requests. The 14 schools that did not provide information are either private or cited statutes allowing them to keep information off limits to the public.

Based on the average expense for 56 teams multiplied by 70, The Wiz of Odds is providing a profile for a bowl team:

• On average, a team spent $1.31 million on a bowl trip. Of that amount, $321,422 went to cover costs for absorbed tickets.
• The 70 teams combined to run up expenses of $92.09 million.
• Totaled, teams spent $22.49 million on absorbed tickets, nearly 25 percent of their overall expenses.
• The average number of people in an official travel party was 568. That encompasses the team, coaching staff, band, cheerleaders, faculty, and athletics department personnel.

This is the most comprehensive examination of bowl game expense reports to date. All of the data collected — expense reports for 56 teams and bowl surveys for 40 teams — will be posted on The Wiz of Odds in the coming days.

Supporters of the 35-game bowl system argue that the postseason turns a profit. Technically, this is correct, but only because of the BCS, which this season distributed a reported $174.07 million from its five games. Of that amount, 83.4 percent went to the automatic qualifier conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific 10 and Southeastern conferences.

The 30 non-BCS bowl games are, at best, a break-even venture. Without the ticket guarantee, it is likely that half the bowls would not exist.

"[Division I-A] needs a football playoff, just like all other NCAA sports," said Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Mass.

"The bowl games are all a silly extravagance, and, save the BCS cartel, all significant money drains on athletic programs already in the red. The fact that a participating school has to buy up over 300k in tickets to its own game is as clear an indication as you can get that these competitions have no market justification."

Athletic departments could certainly use the money. A NCAA study revealed that in the 2008-2009 academic year, all but 14 of the 120 I-A programs were operating at a deficit. Of the 106 in the red, the median shortfall was $11 million.

But nobody seems intent on challenging the bowl system, even if the system requires a subsidy from teams in the form of ticket guarantees.

To make matters worse, how much money does a team forfeit by playing a neutral site bowl game? Ohio State, which traveled to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, reported the biggest "profit" — $288,876 — of all bowl teams last season. That total included $222,410 in absorbed tickets.

Compare that to Oklahoma, which played a 2009 regular season game against Brigham Young in Arlington, Texas, the first ever college game in Cowboys Stadium. The Sooners were paid $2.25 million for their appearance.

More teams like Oklahoma are eager to cash in on neutral site games. Boise State and Virginia Tech played last September in Landover, Md. Louisiana State and North Carolina opened 2010 in Atlanta. In 2007, Missouri and Kansas moved their annual game to Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium, which has a larger capacity (79,451) than either the Jayhawks' Memorial Stadium (50,000) or the Tigers' Faurot Field (71,004). The game was a smashing success and, four years later, appears to have found a permanent home at Arrowhead.

"Until we fill Memorial Stadium," Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger said, "we can’t really afford to pull it back. Until then, we need the revenue."

While athletic directors cite financial issues as the reason to play regular season games at a neutral site, they look the other way when it comes to a bowl game. Instead, the narrative is spun to accentuate the benefits of playing in the postseason — visibility for the program, an increase in alumni contributions and, in some cases, a boost in enrollment. Yet, all of these factors are nearly impossible to quantify.

Some teams are so desperate to play in the postseason they are willing to wave the listed payout for a game. The book, Death to the BCS by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan chronicled how the Motor City Bowl bartered with several teams seeking an invitation to the 2008 game.

Florida Atlantic eventually was invited after agreeing to wave the Detroit bowl's listed payout of $750,000 in exchange for tickets it could never sell.

The bottom line is that everything is negotiable, including a bowl’s listed payout.

Not all the information on expense reports is reliable. One category that stood out was expense allowance from the conference. Utah did not list an allowance from the Mountain West. Georgia ($90,400), Mississippi State ($111,000) and Alabama ($113,000) had figures far below the norm for teams from the Southeastern Conference under the league's bowl revenue distribution policy.

Allowances also don't include what teams are paid once the league divides shares of revenue from bowl payouts. The Wiz of Odds' study did not involve expense allowances because of these factors. Instead, the decision was made to keep a focus on tickets absorbed and total expenses — categories that were reported accurately.

Nonetheless, the data had to be combed through painstakingly because some teams engaged in blatant deceitful accounting practices in reporting tickets absorbed.

Oklahoma, for example, did not include the cost of tickets absorbed by the Big 12 in total expenses, even though the NCAA asks all schools to do so. The difference was substantial — $1.88 million.

That changed Oklahoma’s total expenses from $1.84 million to $3.73 million.

Iowa reported data one way to the NCAA and told the public another story. Its report to the NCAA listed $442,525 in costs for absorbed tickets, including $361,171 that was picked up by the Big Ten.

But when the school released a final report on May 5, it failed to include the $361,171. So the school, which fell 6,745 short of selling its allotment of tickets to the Insight Bowl, magically reported a surplus of $382,500. The creative accounting seemingly made Iowa the most profitable team of the postseason, besting Ohio State’s $288,876 return on the Sugar Bowl.

When asked about the change, Iowa sent a detailed response that included this:

"The NCAA requests the number of unsold tickets absorbed by the conference and depicts the entire amount as an expense in their respective report. Every conference treats unsold tickets differently, and the byproduct is misleading reports when the NCAA enforces a universal reporting template."

But in the end, all of the money for the Big Ten comes into and out of the same pot because the league divides not only its bowl revenue, but expenses in 11 equal shares.

There were other not so subtle tweaks. Alabama, for example, included $1.10 million in staff bonuses, one of the reasons the Crimson Tide ran up a staggering $2.91 million in total expenses for the Capital One Bowl.

Teams like Iowa did not include bonuses, even though the Hawkeye coaching staff collected $494,861.

But teams, in an attempt to make the bottom line look better, generally didn’t include bonuses. Thus, the summary for total expenses is, in reality, less than what teams actually spent.

As for the taxpayers' role, consider that seven bowls received more than $21.6 million in government aid between 2001-05, according to Mark Yost, author of Varsity Green. In 2009, many of the financial institutions that sponsor bowl games, like Citigroup Inc., which presented the Rose Bowl and BCS title game, Capital One Financial Corp., and GMAC LLS were recipients of federal bailout money.

Over 80 percent of the teams that played in bowls were from public universities. Either directly or indirectly, taxpayers helped foot the bill for football. At Connecticut, over $92 million in public funds were used to build Rentschler Field, which opened in 2003.

Connecticut now faces a $3.2 billion budget shortfall and lawmakers are scrambling to balance the books. A recent round of austerity measures included a cut of $25 million and likely loss of 285 jobs at the University of Connecticut. Including the $25 million cut, the university is facing a deficit of $45 million.

In response, Connecticut announced a plan to hike tuition in the fall by 2.5 percent.

It makes subsidizing a bowl game in a state having no benefit to the team's local economy — something Connecticut did in January — seem crazy.

Starting Wednesday: A look at team expense reports.

Comments

[UCFAA Fan]

UCF was only given 10k tickets to the Liberty Bowl and sold 5k. I don't know where you get those numbers from. Oh yeah...3rd parties???

[UCFAA Fan]

I can guarantee you that the Liberty Bowl did not allot UCF 21k tickets. They didn't even give Georgia that many. Both schools got 10k. You really need to check your research.

[RUKiddingMe?]

Validity of this website just went through the crapper. Not sure how UCF absorbed 16K of a 10K allotment. I see noboby put their name next to this BS... for good reasons.

[The Wiz]

All I can go by is the expense report UCF filed with the NCAA. If you have documentation that suggests otherwise, please send it to me.

UCF sold 2,228 tickets at $50 and 1,495 at $20. That totaled 3,723 tickets at a cost of $141,300.

C-USA purchased 20,000 tickets at $50. That totaled $1,000,000.

UCF's 3,723 tickets sold and $141,300 revenue were then subtracted. That left 16,277 tickets at an absorbed price of $858,700.

The NCAA requests the number of unsold tickets absorbed by the team and conference be reflected on the report. It's a universal reporting template.

I'll be posting the UCF report in the next couple of days.

[Larry]

Dee Hart and Hasean Clinton-Dix were from Dr. Phillips not Brent Calloway. No research at all just threw some numbers and names together.

[Steve]

You prove that some bloggers are real journalists. Thank you for your rigorous research. You're pissing off people and that's good! The truth hurts. "Larry" and the chagrined UCF zealots are likely just the beginning.

I love going to and watching bowl games like everyone else. But the cost is extremely high and you're the first journalist with the cajones to challenge "The Greatest College Football Tradition."

[The Wiz]

Thanks Larry. I updated to reflect that Dee Hart and Ha'Sean Clinton-Dix were the players from renovated Dr. Phillips High who signed with Alabama.

[The Wiz]

Thanks for the kind words, Steve. Much appreciated.

[Talmadge East]

While there are definite financial pitfalls to the overall bowl agreement there is something that all the people who look at these numbers fail to mention: a lot of the universities choose not to sell all their tickets. Take Auburn for instance, which if you use the formula above, incurred a loss from their allotment of tickets, but certainly could have sold them. When calculating these numbers they need to be done on a school-by-school basis as it is not really fair to say across the board team "y" didn't sell all their tickets so they lost "x" amount of money. If a school intentionally didn't sell all their tickets because they wanted to give some away then it shouldn't count against the bowls. On the other hand some teams, like UCONN, just can't sell the tickets, but there needs to be a distinction.

[RUKiddingMe?]

"CUSA purchased 20,000 tickets" doesn't mean UCF purchased them. This is Memphis' stadium. I'm sure the conference and season ticket holders pulled many tickets for its execs/contributors/etc.

UCF's mandatory ticket allotment was 10K. Same as Georgia. Look it up Mr Researcher. Way to put 1 and 2 together to make 4.

Plus did you take into account the evenly distributed money paid by CUSA to all of the schools from all of the bowls including a cut from the BCS bowls? The $500K+ you mention is just the general travel expense coverages the specific bowl team gets over and above the distributed money. Each CUSA team's distributed cut was right around $1 million.

[The Wiz]

You are correct, Talmadge East. That's why the tickets are called "absorbed" instead of unsold. I made note of that in the fourth paragraph.

That said, nearly all the bowls charge bands for tickets, even though the band is performing and saving the bowl from having to hire an act to entertain at halftime. A large percentage of absorbed tickets are for band members.

[The Wiz]

RUKiddingMe: My numbers are from the documentation Central Florida filed with NCAA. If you have something that suggests UCF filed incorrect data, please send it my way.

The NCAA has a universal reporting template on "absorbed" tickets. I've applied this standard across the board and did not make an exception for UCF. Every school is treated the same, including UCF.

C-USA not only shares revenue, but expenses. The tickets were an expense. All the money comes out of the same pot.

[RUKiddingMe?]

I see what you are saying, but it still seems a little misleading to show a school responsible for "absorbing" tickets when they may be compensated by other means. Were there additional funds reported elsewhere that counted towards these absorbtions? You have me curious to see this "report".

[The Wiz]

The $858,700 is only for absorbed tickets.

Iowa had a similar issue with the NCAA's universal reporting template. Oklahoma left tickets absorbed by the Big 12 off its total expenses, but that was corrected in order to make comparisons equal.

All of the documents will be posted to the site in the coming days.

As the story states, the bowls overall make money, but only because of the five BCS games, which this year paid out a reported $174.07 million. The other games are break-even at best. And, of course, the BCS conferences get the biggest slice (83.4 percent) of the $174.07 million.

[2LEAGUE]

Great post Jay. Exposing the truth about the finances in College Football Bowls is a key part in finally getting a true playoff system. Keep up the great work!

[Jeremy]

Excellent work Jay! I see why the site was silent for a while, you were working on this great project.

These posts will make up for that.

[travtemp]

Great article. Thanks for breaking down the numbers. You won't see this kind of reporting on ESPN.COM. By the way, which bowls are owned by ESPN?

[The Wiz]

Thanks Travtemp!

ESPN owns and operates seven bowl games: New Mexico, St. Petersburg, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Texas, Armed Forces and BBVA Compass.

More is available at this link: http://bit.ly/aYG0YA

[RUKiddingMe?]

So, it looks like the hole in your calculations is that each conference handles ticket absorbtion differently. I think you need to contact CUSA to find out how it handled the Liberty Bowl absorbtion as UCF's "Actual" budget shows $107,597 surplus. As per the reporting sheet, it appears UCF itself wasn't responsible for ANY tickets, yet had to be reported in this fasion as to account the conference (Note the 20,000 "conference" absorbtion).

Also, from what I understand, the way it is worked out with the conference, only half on the ticket sales are accredited to the university. 7,446 tickets were sold by UCF. But since the conference technically "absorbs" the 20K tickets (releasing the university of any liability), the agreement splits the ticket sales between university and conference and is reported in this fashion.

To be accurate, you should find out how ticket sales were handled by the conference. How many were payed for by the conference? How many were given free? How much revenue from walk-up sales are given to each conference? TV advertising dollars to each conference? Etc, etc. As far as UCF is concerned, the final Liberty Bowl budget reports they came out $107K ahead.

[Will Smithrock]

This study should be conducted by an impartial party, Jay. You are well known to be outspoken against the bowls and highly in favor of a playoff.