March 11 Notebook
March 11, 2006 04:21 PM | General
March 11, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – With the NCAA’s recent adoption of a 12th regular season football game, the price of buy-ins is going up dramatically and schools in the SEC and Big Ten are the ones driving up the prices.
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| Michigan Stadium has a seating capacity of 107,501.
Michigan photo |
As all of you are aware, West Virginia’s contracted game with Buffalo is in limbo because Auburn has offered the Bulls a substantially higher guarantee than what Buffalo agreed to by playing at West Virginia. The Bulls are also looking to get out of a scheduled road game at Rutgers to cash in on a much bigger guarantee at Wisconsin on Nov. 18.
The reason schools in the SEC and the Big Ten can pay so much is simple: most of them have very large football stadiums. Three schools in the SEC have stadium capacities larger than 90,000 and seven can seat more than 80,000. The Big Ten has three institutions with seating capacities of more than 100,000 and six with capacities of more than 70,000.
There are currently 38 Division I football playing schools with stadium capacities greater than 65,000 including eight seating 90,000 or more. Those eight: Michigan, Tennessee, Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, USC, LSU and UCLA are either in the Big Ten, SEC or Pac 10.
By schools from these conferences offering a $750,000 or even a $1 million guarantee to play a non-conference buy-in game, that still gives them plenty of room to make a substantial profit.
This is a major scheduling issue for Big East schools that is not going to go away, especially since each league school now has to find a fifth non-conference opponent. And of the eight Big East football playing schools, only Pitt and West Virginia have seating capacities above 60,000.
Syracuse (49,500), Louisville (42,000), South Florida (41,441), Rutgers (41,000), and Connecticut (40,000) don’t reach 50,000 for capacity. Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium seats 35,000. Consequently, Big East schools generally pay about $200-300,000 for their buy-in games.
Therefore, in order for conferences such as the Big East, ACC, Mountain West and WAC to be able to play six or seven home football games, they are either going to have to play more games against each other or be forced to schedule more two-for-one deals with conferences like the MAC, Sunbelt and Conference USA to drive down the buy-in price.
Briefly:
There were 19 schools that reached 100 percent capacity in 2005 and of those 19, 12 had seating capacities greater than 70,000. The No. 1 school in accumulated capacity was Oregon, which managed to reach 108 percent attendance for its six home games at 54,000-seat Autzen Stadium.
Right below the Ducks were Nebraska, Texas, Ohio State, Tennessee and Michigan -- which each have stadium seating capacities greater than 70,000. Michigan, for instance, was able to attract 776,405 spectators for its seven-game home schedule in 2005. Considering the average ticket price for a Michigan home game is about $50 ($55 for the premium games against Notre Dame and Ohio State), that comes out to about $38 million in ticket revenue alone before factoring in such things as seat licensing and donations. A single home football game for Michigan nets the school roughly $5.3 million in ticket revenue.
By comparison, a sold-out West Virginia home football game nets the athletic department about $1.8 million per game in ticket revenue on an average $30 ticket.
Now you can see why schools like Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio State and Penn State were in favor of having a 12th regular season game and why they can pay so much to have a school like Buffalo come to their place. And you can also see why football scheduling has become much more complicated.
Heading into conference tournament play, West Virginia and Michigan State faced the most RPI Top 50 teams with 16. The Mountaineers were 8-8 in games against the RPI Top 50.
Even though Villanova and Connecticut lost in the Big East tournament, both could still wind up with No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. If Pitt (24-6) wins against Syracuse tonight in the Big East championship game, the Panthers could become a No. 3 seed.
To give you an idea of how good the Big East is, consider that Pitt’s seeding in the NCAA tournament is going to be considerably higher than its seeding in the Big East tournament (sixth).
As much as it pains me to write this, Pitt looks like it could have a deep run in the NCAA tournament, especially if the Panthers are allowed to play their physical style. Pitt always plays good defense but what separates this Panther team from others is their ability to get scoring from the outside. Pitt also has an outstanding bench going 10 deep.
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| Mike Logan |
Meanwhile, Scott Seabol is trying to earn a spot on the Florida Marlins roster after getting his first extended taste of major league action last year at St. Louis. Seabol is batting .300 in seven spring training games so far with the Marlins.
Based on this report, Morgantown was the 78th most expensive place to live of the 298 metropolitan areas that participated in the survey with an overall cost of living index of 101.1.
The cost of living index factors in things like housing, transportation, grocery items, utilities, health care and miscellaneous goods and services. The average score for all areas in the cost of living survey is 100 and each city’s index is interpreted compared to the average of all places. An index below 100 means that an area’s cost of living is less than average and an index above 100 means that it is above average.
And while Morgantown’s cost of living index was slightly above average, what is surprising is how many major cities were actually below Morgantown in overall cost of living. Regionally, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Knoxville, Tenn., Lexington, Ky., and Syracuse, N.Y., each had cost of living indexes lower than Morgantown; Morgantown was about on par with Columbus, Ohio.
It was also more expensive living in Morgantown than such major U.S. cities as Atlanta, Denver and Houston. Locally, Morgantown had an 8.5 percent higher cost of living index than Charleston and an 11.3 percent higher cost of living index than progressive Martinsburg in the Eastern Panhandle.
The biggest variance in cost was housing in Morgantown, which was 17.2 percent higher than in Charleston and 10.1 percent higher than in Martinsburg.
For years Morgantown’s cheap cost of living was one of its most appealing benefits. Now it must be added to the list of West Virginia University’s challenges in hiring and maintaining quality employees in all departments, including athletics.
West Virginia then travels to Piscataway, N.J., for the EAGL championships on March 25.
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| Sergio Lopez |
He is survived by a wife, two sons and four step children.
