Top 10 College Revenue-Producing Football Programs

As found on every team's who was included blog today, Street and Smith SportsBusiness Journal came out with their lists of the top revenue producing athletic programs in the country and the top football-only revenue producing programs. Since S&S SBJ is a subsriber site, the link above goes to the story on Mr. SEC.com. No surprise that SEC teams once again came up strong, but the Big 10(11) made a vast improvement in their collective fortunes.

The Top 10 revenue-producing ATHLETIC DEPARTMENTS:

1.  Texas - $120.3 million
2.  Ohio State - $118 million
3.  Florida - $106 million
4.  Michigan - $99 million
5.  Wisconsin - $93.5 million
6.  Penn State - $91.6 million
7.  Auburn - $89.3 million
8.  Alabama - $88.9 million
9.  Tennessee - $88.7 million
10.  Oklahoma State - $88.6 million

And for FOOTBALL ONLY  revenue producers:

1.  Texas - $72.95 million
2.  Georgia - $67.05 million
3.  Florida - $66.1 million
4.  Ohio State - $65.16 million
5.  Notre Dame - $59.77 million
6.  Auburn - $59.67 million
7.  Michigan - $57.46 million
8.  Alabama - $57.37 million
9.  Penn State - $53.76 million
10.  LSU - $52.68 million

I must say that I am surprised that Auburn outranks Alabama in both polls. But if they start charging admission for the spring game, I think they have us. And as any business major worth his salt knows, revenue itself doesn't mean squat, but unfortunately, no net profit figures were given with their findings. The last numbers I saw on that were from Forbes.com almost two years ago. 

You can't help but wonder though how each of our bottom lines would look, considering that they pay twice the going rate for head coaches and we like to keep paying ours waaay after the fact. Perhaps a spike in textbook costs might have hurt their profitability the last few years, too.