College Football's Most Valuable Teams

[Em_Jae20]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriss...e-footballs-most-valuable-teams/#2498929c6c64
Pretty cool article. And people wonder why Jimbo left fsu. $119 million just to the football program is just insane. This is what we're up against?

 

[bke1984]

The interesting thing to me is how it’s not exactly translating to wins. Texas has been in the top two on this for eight years, but look at their program. Another team in the top ten that jump out to me is Michigan. Hell, even A&M at #1 is WAY underperforming if this is supposed to correlate to wins.

My general thought is that we are under funded, but I do think it’s a bit of an excuse. CPJ loves to point at that as a problem, but let’s say he had 50 Million to deal with...how would he make us better? Are five star recruits magically going to start showing up every year? Is he going to fire his entire staff and bring in better coaches for higher salaries?

The best use I could see would be to have a massive staff of recruiting analysts where we could recruit nationally to find the best talent that we could get into school. Anyone else have ideas?

 

[Scubapro]

It would be a huge benefit to have a “consulting” firm for the purpose of recruiting like many of the schools on this list. Facilities and player support as well. Example: Clemson has a group that monitors the players sleep patterns to ensure they are practicing and playing at their best.
Having these budgets doesn’t guarantee championships but not having them guarantees you wont have them

 

[knoxjacket]

We just lost to South Florida. This concern seems to be misplaced.

 

[awbuzz]

The interesting thing to me is how it’s not exactly translating to wins. Texas has been in the top two on this for eight years, but look at their program. Another team in the top ten that jump out to me is Michigan. Hell, even A&M at #1 is WAY underperforming if this is supposed to correlate to wins.

My general thought is that we are under funded, but I do think it’s a bit of an excuse. CPJ loves to point at that as a problem, but let’s say he had 50 Million to deal with...how would he make us better? Are five star recruits magically going to start showing up every year? Is he going to fire his entire staff and bring in better coaches for higher salaries?

The best use I could see would be to have a massive staff of recruiting analysts where we could recruit nationally to find the best talent that we could get into school. Anyone else have ideas?

Easier to do $ drops. Not saying that that happens anywhere...

 

[GTRX7]

Money would definitely not make CPJ some kind of great recruiter. That is just not who he is. But larger staff, better facilities, and national recruiting budget would help.

(And as an FYI, USF’s coach makes the same money as CPJ, so let’s not pretend we are some kind of financial “big fish” compared to them.)

 

[stech81]

It's not how much money you have it's how you spend the money.

 

[vamosjackets]

The interesting thing to me is how it’s not exactly translating to wins. Texas has been in the top two on this for eight years, but look at their program. Another team in the top ten that jump out to me is Michigan. Hell, even A&M at #1 is WAY underperforming if this is supposed to correlate to wins.

My general thought is that we are under funded, but I do think it’s a bit of an excuse. CPJ loves to point at that as a problem, but let’s say he had 50 Million to deal with...how would he make us better? Are five star recruits magically going to start showing up every year? Is he going to fire his entire staff and bring in better coaches for higher salaries?

The best use I could see would be to have a massive staff of recruiting analysts where we could recruit nationally to find the best talent that we could get into school. Anyone else have ideas?

I think the biggest one is coaching/staff salaries followed by facilities. With unlimited resources, CPJ would've gotten the DC he wanted in the first place (Chavis, maybe, can't remember now exactly), and we might've already won an NC with him in '09. Then the whole recruiting landscape changes and the whole narrative changes ... it's a very complex system with minute changes over time causing huge differences in outcome. We get a DC like Venables or Foster or someone like that and we're immediately a different team. Otherwise, you have to try to find a needle in a haystack (which may be what Coach Woody is ... that's my present hope, but we'll have to wait and see after couple of years). You also land just 2 more elite recruits and your whole landscape changes. And, once that happens, it affects the odds of it happening again ... it's an exponential function, I think with an upward or downward spiral. One coach, one player, one play can change the whole future of a program. And, money obviously changes the odds of getting that one coach or that one player that changes that one play that changes that one game that changes that one season that changes that whole program which then helps the odds of the success of that whole process again.

 

[Boaty1]

Money would definitely not make CPJ some kind of great recruiter. That is just not who he is. But larger staff, better facilities, and national recruiting budget would help.

(And as an FYI, USF’s coach makes the same money as CPJ, so let’s not pretend we are some kind of financial “big fish” compared to them.)

2017 GT spent 84 mil for athletics compared to USF's 48 mil. That is larger gap than the gap between us and Clemson.

We are certainly a big fish compared to them. We are not only losing to teams with larger budgets than us. Let's not pretend like that is our biggest problem here.

 

[DaltonJacket]

2017 GT spent 84 mil for athletics compared to USF's 48 mil. That is larger gap than the gap between us and Clemson.

We are certainly a big fish compared to them. We are not only losing to teams with larger budgets than us. Let's not pretend like that is our biggest problem here.

hmm.....that is interesting (and disturbing)

 

[jgtengineer]

2017 GT spent 84 mil for athletics compared to USF's 48 mil. That is larger gap than the gap between us and Clemson.

We are certainly a big fish compared to them. We are not only losing to teams with larger budgets than us. Let's not pretend like that is our biggest problem here.

USF also had a lot more juco transfers than us, much easier majors. and on a recruiting level isn't that far off of us. I'd argue that it takes more budget not less to recruit talent on par with higher budget places

For instance, their 2016 recruiting class was ranked 66, ours was 60th and the only class we are more than 10 places better than them is their 2017, but they added some juco depth to account for that.

You are also not seeing the bigger picture with regards to budgets. USF still out staffs us in support staff, hell even Ga state out staffs us in support staff. We might pay our people more but we have less of them and any industrial engineer would tell you about the loss of man hours effecting performance. The more eyes you have on recruiting the more likely you are to find people who slip through the cracks.

USF also supports only 15 total sports, with many of their other programs outside of Football completely underfunded and not cared about at all. They also don't support swimming, which means that they don't budget in the overhead cost of maintaining their RAC into their athletics cost ( pretty sure tech does at least partially due to the swim teams).

Raw numbers aren't everything.

also while our overall budget is nearly double our football budget is 17 mill and usf is 10.6 million there isn't that big of a difference. theirs would be higher too but they can afford a coach like strong because he's being paid by texas.

 

[g0lftime]

Just one player away from winning that game--a kicker that puts KO well into the endzone. Just like golf some guys can hit it 300+ yrds and most can't hit it 280. I am not knocking who we have now but to me that kind of kicker makes a huge difference on ST. The 300+ drives in golf are at an advantage. Same with KO's.

 

[GTRX7]

2017 GT spent 84 mil for athletics compared to USF's 48 mil. That is larger gap than the gap between us and Clemson.

We are certainly a big fish compared to them. We are not only losing to teams with larger budgets than us. Let's not pretend like that is our biggest problem here.

Interesting. I am a bit surprised at these numbers given how large a school USF is. I agree with your larger point, however, that we have a budget advantage over USF and that we should have won that game. That said, you have to admit that our budget is still a big problem compared to where we want to be.

As jgtengineer pointed out, it is important to compare football budgets, not overall athletic budgets. In overall athletic budget, we rank in the bottom 3rd in the ACC. In just football budget, it has been reported that we spend second to last at $17.3 mil (ahead of only Wake Forest at $16.6 mil). UGA and Clemson have been reported as each spending over double Tech at $38.8 mil and $34.6 mil respectively. So, while Tech may spend a bit more than USF on football, teams like UGA and Clemson are in a whole different world.
https://www.syracuse.com/orangefoot...ollege_football_where_does_syracuse_rank.html

 

[TooTall]

Just one player away from winning that game--a kicker that puts KO well into the endzone. Just like golf some guys can hit it 300+ yrds and most can't hit it 280. I am not knocking who we have now but to me that kind of kicker makes a huge difference on ST. The 300+ drives in golf are at an advantage. Same with KO's.

Or a guy that can stay in his lane an make a tackle when the kicker kicks it to the corner inside the five...

 

[Cam]

I think the biggest one is coaching/staff salaries followed by facilities. With unlimited resources, CPJ would've gotten the DC he wanted in the first place (Chavis, maybe, can't remember now exactly), and we might've already won an NC with him in '09. Then the whole recruiting landscape changes and the whole narrative changes ... it's a very complex system with minute changes over time causing huge differences in outcome. We get a DC like Venables or Foster or someone like that and we're immediately a different team. Otherwise, you have to try to find a needle in a haystack (which may be what Coach Woody is ... that's my present hope, but we'll have to wait and see after couple of years). You also land just 2 more elite recruits and your whole landscape changes. And, once that happens, it affects the odds of it happening again ... it's an exponential function, I think with an upward or downward spiral. One coach, one player, one play can change the whole future of a program. And, money obviously changes the odds of getting that one coach or that one player that changes that one play that changes that one game that changes that one season that changes that whole program which then helps the odds of the success of that whole process again.

I believe Paul Johnson said he wanted to hire Ellis Johnson when he got here in 2008, but he was told we couldn't afford him. Ellis Johnson had some really great defenses at South Carolina from 2008-2011. It's crazy to think that if we had just mustered up the cash then, we might have been able to win a couple more ACC Championships and possibly a NC in 2009. We'd be in a completely different place as a program than we are now.

 

[vamosjackets]

I believe Paul Johnson said he wanted to hire Ellis Johnson when he got here in 2008, but he was told we couldn't afford him. Ellis Johnson had some really great defenses at South Carolina from 2008-2011. It's crazy to think that if we had just mustered up the cash then, we might have been able to win a couple more ACC Championships and possibly a NC in 2009. We'd be in a completely different place as a program than we are now.

Thanks for the help on that name. Completely agree.