On the Cheap: NC State’s Athletic Budget vs. the ACC

02/10/2009Alpha WolfAD & Department Fans General NC State Administration Non-Revenue53

Sometimes it helps to see things in black and white, spreadsheet style.Â From Forbes.com, here’s a listing of ACC school athletic department budgets and the salaries of each Athletic Director:

=================  ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE  =================
---------------------------------------------------------------
              Athletic         Yrs at  No. of  Dept. Guaranteed
School        Director         School  Teams   Budget  Base
---------------------------------------------------------------
Georgia Tech  Dan Radakovich      3      17    $56.0M  $560,000
Clemson       Terry Don Phillips  6      19    $53.2M  $418,000
Maryland      Deborah Yow        15      27    $61.0M  $382,575
Florida State Randy Spetman       1      17    $51.0M  $350,000
Virginia Tech Jim Weaver         12      21    $53.5M  $345,211
Virginia      Craig Littlepage    8      25    $56.2M  $320,000
N. Carolina   Dick Baddour       12      28    $61.4M  $295,000
NC State      Lee Fowler          9      23    $39.0M  $280,000
---------------------------------------------------------------
ACC Average                       8      22    $53.9M  $368,848
---------------------------------------------------------------
(apparently private schools Miami, Duke and BC do not report their numbers)

Excluding NC State, each ACC team budgets about $56.04 Million on the average.Â NC State, at $39 Million, runs its athletics at a rate of roughly 70% of the rest of the conference.Â An easy counter-argument would be that NC State fields fewer teams, but as you can see, there are four schools (GT, Clemson, FSU, VT) that have higher athletic budgets with fewer teams than NC State.

We posted these numbers before, but let’s once again look at the Director’s Cup Standings:

ACC:

4. UNC
5. Wake Forest
9. Maryland
11. UVA
15. FSU
18. Duke
27. BC
63. VT
68. Clemson
91. NC State
93. GT (has a new AD)
94. Miami (has a new AD)

Interesting, and it seems that there is a correllation at least in our case: we’re getting what we pay for.Â While it is true that NC State raises far fewer dollars than UNC, it outraises Duke:

With 28 varsity sports, [UNC] is one of the country’s largest athletic programs. It raised $51 million in pledges or donations for athletics last year, alone.Among other ACC schools, North Carolina State University placed 14th on the list, with more than $27 million in donations received last year. Duke placed 17th, with nearly $25.5 million.

Among other ACC schools, North Carolina State University placed 14th on the list, with more than $27 million in donations received last year. Duke placed 17th, with nearly $25.5 million.

Here’s an older table that shows a good picture of ACC booster clubs’ fundraising:

Atlantic Coast Conference
	Athletics donations in 2006	Overall rank in athletics donations	Amount raised in capital campaigns for athletics in past 5 years	Goal of current capital campaign for athletics	Full-time athletics fund raisers
UNC	$51,000,000	1	$230,000,000	--	20
UVA	$45,240,112	2	$188,100,000	--	19
FSU	$29,100,000	11	$155,300,000	$110,000,000	6
NCSU	$27,254,723	14	$125,625,000	--	16
Duke	$25,495,000	17	$150,000,000	--	15
GT	$25,000,000	18	--	$125,000,000	8
VT	$23,680,688	19	$22,300,000	--	6
Clemson	$23,160,000	22	$27,000,000	--	6
Miami	$19,200,000	29	$63,000,000	$70,000,000	9
BC	$19,000,000	31	$64,000,000	--	8
Wake Forest	$12,692,782	46	$63,000,000	$87,000,000	9
Maryland	--	--	--	--

the numbers seem to speak for themselves.

UPDATE 1: Daily Update adds some more numbers

Here are some more numbers.

-NC State supporters ranked 9th among BCS programs in annual donations in 2006.
-NC State supporters ranked 14th among BCS programs in capital donations the five years prior to 2006.
-NC State fans have sold out Carter Finley for 8 consecutive seasons despite the program hitting an almost half century low point in 2006 with a 3-9 record. You have to go all the way back to 1959 (1-9, .100) to find an NC State football team with a worse overall winning percentage.
-Actual attendance (not visual estimates like in Chapel Hill) has essentially been at 100% capacity since the 2000 football season. Here are the numbers for 2008.
-NC State fans have ranked #7, #17, #20, #19, #16, #13, #17, #18, #16 in basketball attendance since the 2000 season. In 2008, NC State fans averaged 15,043 which was the 2nd highest total in the history of the program despite the team not making the post-season.
How happy would NC State fans be if the basketball program had half that number of top 20 finishes?
-NC State fans made the Wolfpack Club one of five booster organizations in the country to exceed 20,000 members this year.
-In the 2007/2008 athletic year, NC State fans set school records in football tickets sold (37,500), revenue from football tickets sold ($10.75 million), and revenue from basketball tickets sold ($5.6 million).
-Additionally, NC State fans donated the second highest total in our history ($25.4 million). This was a combination of an all-time high in annual donations ($10.0 million), the 2nd highest total in capital giving ($13.7 million), and what appears to be an all-time high in endowment giving ($1.8 million).\

UPDATE 2: NC State Basketball Ranked 13th Most Valuable Program

Undoubtedly, the sweetheart deal NC State has with the RBC Center has a lot to do with this ranking, but one can see the disparity between the results on the court (RPI ranking in the 90s) versus the rankings on the ledger sheet for NC State hoops:

Forbes.com

NC State’s basketball program, ranked 13th, is worth $13.6 million. With expenses of only $3.1 million, the lowest of any team on our list, the NC State Wolfpack earned a profit of $7.9 million last season. In his first year with the Wolfpack, former NBA head coach Sidney Lowe led his alma mater to victories over Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest University, marking the first time in four years that NC State beat all three in-state opponents during the same season.