So we know that Texas has a lot of money and is worth a lot to Austin. Forbes decided to actually rank the most valuable college football programs and Texas came out number 1. Not only did they come in at #1 with a value of $139 million but by an insane $22 million more than the #2 finisher, Notre Dame. Here is their methodology:
To determine college football’s most valuable teams, we consider each team’s value to its athletic department, its university’s academic endeavors, its conference and its school’s local economy. Athletic value consists of football profit that is directed toward supporting non-revenue sports, like softball or gymnastics, while a team’s value to academics consists of money that supports football scholarships or other non-athletic programming, like faculty support, non-athletic scholarships or a library fund. Conference value consists of revenue generated for other conference teams by participating in a bowl game, and a team’s value to its local community consists of the direct spending injected by fans visiting the area on days of the team’s home games.
Our financial data is for the 2012-13 season, and we utilize team revenues and expenses as reported to the Department of Education. We also standardize those financial figures to account for differences in each school’s accounting practices.
The rest of the top ten rounds out as: (Notre Dame, $117 million) Alabama ($110 million), LSU ($105 million), Michigan ($104 million), Florida ($94 million), Oklahoma ($94 million), Georgia ($91 million), Ohio State ($83 million) and Nebraska ($80 million).
There are no real surprises here as all those schools basically print money with their football programs but I am surprised that Florida State isn’t in there. This is just another factor in while most people, myself included believe Texas is the number 1 job in America. Even though they haven’t won a title in a while, they continue to raise their value.