Post by aggiejazz on Feb 5, 2009 14:04:04 GMT -5
COLLEGE FOOTBALL, UGA, Ga. Tech spending $500K+ on recruiting High school stars treated to 5-star hotels, fancy restaurants
By TODD HOLCOMB, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tuesday, February 03, 2009
For three months, Washington High School football player Branden Smith was lavished by the South’s top college football programs — Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Florida State and Tennessee.
“All the hotels I stayed in were five-star,” Smith said. “It’s high-priced food, shrimp, steak. You can order whatever you want.”
The scene was repeated throughout the nation. For months now, top college football programs have been entertaining thousands of 17- and 18-year-old players in hopes that the athletes will choose to play at their schools.
Today, on National Signing Day, those colleges will find out if the brief, yet expensive, courtships worked.
It has become big business for big-time athletics programs. Each year, they spend more than $500,000 on recruiting, but they make more than $50 million in annual athletic revenue, mostly from football.
And the cost of luring the top talent has doubled for many schools from a decade ago.
For the 2008 fiscal year, Georgia’s football recruiting expenses were $523,056, according to financial documents obtained from six colleges by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under open records laws. Georgia Tech’s football recruiting budget was $805,342.
Florida, which won the BCS national championship game last month, spent $506,673.
Paul Griffin, Tech’s senior associate athletics director, stressed that comparing recruiting budgets is an “irrelevant exercise” because schools aren’t required to use the same bookkeeping methods.
But he acknowledged that money spent on recruiting is increasing and that it is one of the last places an athletics department will cut back.
“If you’re going to restrict resources, you wouldn’t choose to restrict the areas that are going to directly impact your ability to create revenue,” Griffin said. “At a place like Tech, there’s no geographic kinds of boundaries. We are going wherever it takes to get the best athletes. Traveling far and wide is very expensive.”
For smaller schools, recruiting is a different game.
At Georgia Southern, the football recruiting expenditures were $33,000 for 2008. Georgia State, which will field a team for the first time in 2010, spent 39,564.
Those schools play in Division I-AA, which allows fewer scholarships. Georgia and Tech are Division I-A.
At Valdosta State, a nationally ranked Division II program, the recruiting budget is only $12,566.
By comparison, Georgia Tech spends $55,000 alone on football recruiting envelopes and stationery; Georgia spends about $150,000 on chartered planes, according to financial records.
“We don’t take private planes, and we have to justify every trip,” Georgia State head coach Bill Curry said. “We don’t go out of Georgia except for selected spots in Florida and South Carolina and a few places in the country where we have a connection.”
Like Smith, who is expected to sign with Georgia today, players are allowed one visit each to five campuses. The host schools pay all expenses.
About half of Division I athletic programs doubled their reported recruiting budgets for all sports from 1997 to 2007, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Education data by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tech reports its recruiting budget for all sports in 2009 as $1.7 million — nearly three times the $620,000 that Tech spent recruiting in all sports in 1997, according to the Chronicle.
Georgia’s budget for 2009 is $1.4 million.
The schools that spent the most on recruiting in 2007, the last year the data was compiled nationwide, were Tennessee ($2 million) and Notre Dame ($1.8 million).
Some would say the increase in spending is simply about having more money to spend.
Georgia’s athletic budget 10 years ago was $28.6 million. Now it’s $76.3 million. Tech’s is $56.6 million.
But Frank Crumley, Georgia’s executive associate athletics director and chief officer for finances, says that’s not what’s driving up spending on recruiting.
“If we did the identical things this year vs. 10 years ago, it’s going to cost more,” Crumley said. “And we’re recruiting nationally more and more. Almost all of our games are on TV. With the increased attention [recruiting gets] in the media, you know about kids sooner and they know about you.”
By TODD HOLCOMB, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tuesday, February 03, 2009
For three months, Washington High School football player Branden Smith was lavished by the South’s top college football programs — Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Florida State and Tennessee.
“All the hotels I stayed in were five-star,” Smith said. “It’s high-priced food, shrimp, steak. You can order whatever you want.”
The scene was repeated throughout the nation. For months now, top college football programs have been entertaining thousands of 17- and 18-year-old players in hopes that the athletes will choose to play at their schools.
Today, on National Signing Day, those colleges will find out if the brief, yet expensive, courtships worked.
It has become big business for big-time athletics programs. Each year, they spend more than $500,000 on recruiting, but they make more than $50 million in annual athletic revenue, mostly from football.
And the cost of luring the top talent has doubled for many schools from a decade ago.
For the 2008 fiscal year, Georgia’s football recruiting expenses were $523,056, according to financial documents obtained from six colleges by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under open records laws. Georgia Tech’s football recruiting budget was $805,342.
Florida, which won the BCS national championship game last month, spent $506,673.
Paul Griffin, Tech’s senior associate athletics director, stressed that comparing recruiting budgets is an “irrelevant exercise” because schools aren’t required to use the same bookkeeping methods.
But he acknowledged that money spent on recruiting is increasing and that it is one of the last places an athletics department will cut back.
“If you’re going to restrict resources, you wouldn’t choose to restrict the areas that are going to directly impact your ability to create revenue,” Griffin said. “At a place like Tech, there’s no geographic kinds of boundaries. We are going wherever it takes to get the best athletes. Traveling far and wide is very expensive.”
For smaller schools, recruiting is a different game.
At Georgia Southern, the football recruiting expenditures were $33,000 for 2008. Georgia State, which will field a team for the first time in 2010, spent 39,564.
Those schools play in Division I-AA, which allows fewer scholarships. Georgia and Tech are Division I-A.
At Valdosta State, a nationally ranked Division II program, the recruiting budget is only $12,566.
By comparison, Georgia Tech spends $55,000 alone on football recruiting envelopes and stationery; Georgia spends about $150,000 on chartered planes, according to financial records.
“We don’t take private planes, and we have to justify every trip,” Georgia State head coach Bill Curry said. “We don’t go out of Georgia except for selected spots in Florida and South Carolina and a few places in the country where we have a connection.”
Like Smith, who is expected to sign with Georgia today, players are allowed one visit each to five campuses. The host schools pay all expenses.
About half of Division I athletic programs doubled their reported recruiting budgets for all sports from 1997 to 2007, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Education data by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tech reports its recruiting budget for all sports in 2009 as $1.7 million — nearly three times the $620,000 that Tech spent recruiting in all sports in 1997, according to the Chronicle.
Georgia’s budget for 2009 is $1.4 million.
The schools that spent the most on recruiting in 2007, the last year the data was compiled nationwide, were Tennessee ($2 million) and Notre Dame ($1.8 million).
Some would say the increase in spending is simply about having more money to spend.
Georgia’s athletic budget 10 years ago was $28.6 million. Now it’s $76.3 million. Tech’s is $56.6 million.
But Frank Crumley, Georgia’s executive associate athletics director and chief officer for finances, says that’s not what’s driving up spending on recruiting.
“If we did the identical things this year vs. 10 years ago, it’s going to cost more,” Crumley said. “And we’re recruiting nationally more and more. Almost all of our games are on TV. With the increased attention [recruiting gets] in the media, you know about kids sooner and they know about you.”
