I find this kind of startling. Tom have you heard of this before? Tennessee In Deep Financial Trouble
I've read this before. I write it off to bad management and unrealistic expectations. Good management will turn this around. When this era of dominance runs dry for the SEC, and it will, I wonder if the situation at UT will become more the norm.
I agree the era of dominance will come to an end Corey but I don't think that equates to the SEC programs becoming broke. You don't have to win the Championship every year to make money. The Big 10 is doing just fine financially as are several other conferences because they will be structured to do so with TV money etc. The way I see things, the SEC, Big 10 and Pac 12 and most likely the Big 12 are all going to be successful financially. The Big 12 is a bit more of a question to me as they have lost members and replaced them with programs that are not, at this time at least, as good as the ones that left. But I guess in time we will see.
Hard to imagine Bill, Tenn has one of the largest stadiums and it's always sold out and they also get the SEC money.
Terry, in either the article I posted or the one linked within the article it says that Tennessee's average attendance last year was 90,000, down from over 100,000. But I agree it's hard to imagine that they are not making money. The good news is that the SEC is about to sign some new contracts that will bring in more money. Also we don't know what part of this is normal financing for improvements. The declining attendance seems to be happening to a lot of schools. I know that the Gators had a long waiting list for season tickets a few years ago, however last year our long streak of sellouts ended and we had empty seats for a number of games. Empty seats don't always mean they weren't sold, but we also had seats that weren't sold. Then our bowl game and we didn't sell half of our allotment. A combination of economy and being able to watch on a large screen TV at home I guess.
At Texas we had empty seats, although offically the games were sold out. I wonder if they will sell out this year after several down years and many fans feeling like Mack has stayed too long and needs to retire. We had probably 20K+ in no shows for the Thanksgiving game with TCU. The thing that amazes me is that at ND we are on a long string of officall sellouts and we rarely have many no shows and that's after years of being pretty darn average. I'm sure right now the Aggies could probably sell 100K+ tickets with Johnny Football coming back next year. But it wasn't that long ago that Scott was complaining about games not even being on PPV because the AD wouldn't let them if they weren't sold out. Also their Ath. Dept was in debt to the University.
Tennessee stadium hasn't ben sold out since the last three years of Fulmer's tenure. Close for certain games but looked more like the orange bowl in most games. With the Kiffen and Pearl incidents, season ticket sales are way down... down to the point they are offering them without donation to the VASF.
Interesting article regarding declining attendence in college football: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2012/12/college_football_regular-seaso.html#incart_flyout_sports
Bill, Right now, you have several entities making savvy business decisions while the getting is good. What I am referring to is when the cookie crumbles, and people start making bad decisions (see Tennessee) in an effort to do whatever you can legally to stay in the game as a front runner. In poker, some times the smartest play is to fold. Tennessee kept chasing that boat down the river and sank. They'll be back. There's too much there to keep them down. This should serve as a warning though to schools to be mindful of the bigger picture.
Start paying the players as some want and watch the ticket prices soar as attendance continues to decline.
Re: Gator regular game attendance & Sugar Bowls We live in Gainesville and haven't been to a game in 2 or 3 seasons. Our main reason? Ticket prices went from $40-ish to $50-ish. Not a huge difference that would make a dent in the budget (for a one-game outing), but there's some sort of mental line there. Somehow it was fine for the two of us to spend $80 to go to a game, but crossing that $100 mark was hard to justify. And add to that the available games were usually the High School teams and it didn't seem worth it to spend over $100 to see us beat up on SW Central Houston Tech. Though I'm sure they'd have given us a run for our money this year. So anyway, I get a taste of game-day enthusiasm when I leave work on Fridays and see all the RV's rolling in and hearing the band practice, but it's TV games for us. On the Sugar Bowl ... my husband, Mother, and I went to the 2010 Sugar Bowl which was Tebow's last game. It was a 'why not' sort of adventure to get to spend New Year's Eve in N'awlins. But in 2010, the game was on New Year's Day and that day was a Friday. So we could travel during the holiday break, see the game, take our time coming back, and still not miss any work by the time it started again on Monday. This year the game was on the 2nd which was on a Wednesday. We go back to work on the 2nd, so we would have had to at least miss two days of work. With all the events that happen here right after the new year, that's not really an option. Plus, to do New Year's Eve there, we would have had to go an extra day early, which is another couple hundred in rooms & meals. So logistically, just not worth it. So yah, higher regular game prices and scheduling bowls to fill a TV week instead of considering travelers' needs, and there ya go ... lower & lower attendance.
All good points, I am holding on to our tickets right now to see if any of my grandchildren end up at Florida. If not I will likely let them go in a couple of years.