<p>20 very proftitable teams.</p>
<p>In</a> Pictures: Ranking The 20 Most Valuable College Football Teams - Forbes.com</p>
<p>I know which one is most valuable at our house ;).</p>
<p>Interesting that USC is so far down the list. Number one was no surprise, neither was number two after I thought about it. The appearance of most of the competitive SEC teams was no surprise, but what's with USC?? They need to charge more for those seats!</p>
<p>Playing in an old non-owned stadium hurts.</p>
<p>couple reasons</p>
<p>USC doesn't own their stadium and the coliseum is pretty old.</p>
<p>USC is a dry stadium, so no beer sales. them not owning the stadium cuts other concession profits too.</p>
<p>TV contracts. The SEC and Notre Dame have contracts with the likes of CBS and NBC which are worth a lot of money. USC's pac-10 games (with perhaps some exceptions like UCLA, Oregon, ASU) are all on Fox Sports Net, which is not nearly as lucrative.</p>
<p>Not sure beer sales are a big part of this. Texas is # 2 on the list, and they don't sell beer in the stadium. Do many colleges do this?</p>
<p>I have no clue what percentage of profits are beer and/or other concessions. But I'd wager TV contracts and "luxury box" type seating pays the vast majority of per-game profits.</p>
<p>That explains it, I see. I don't think it is the concessions - I don't think beer is sold at SEC games either - consumed, yes, sold officially, no. It is the TV and the lack of skyboxes in the stadium. The coliseum is owned by the county, right?? I guess they are hanging on to that money with both fists, and no money for renovations or improvements.
Home grown revenues is why Alabama stopped using Legion Field, I didn't realize USC was getting little to no stadium revenue money.</p>
<p>I'm not surprised that UT is up there. A large amount of money is generated by sales of school-related apparel through licensing agreements, and UT has been no. 1 or close to it for a few years in apparel sales.</p>
<p>A lot of stadiums also sell naming rights (Louisville, anyone?) which pay for stadium upkeep and such.</p>
<p>I think the coliseum is owned by the state of california and long-term leased by the local coliseum commission (basically the city) who further leases it to USC. There's been a pretty big flap recently with USC offering to pay for upgrades in exchange for taking on more operating responsibility/long term exclusive lease and the city being resistant (in hopes of bringing an NFL team to LA), but apparently that's been resolved for now.</p>
<p>At Texas, the football stadium is named after one person, and the field inside the stadium is named after someone else (a fatcat donor).</p>
<p>^^^ Michigan has no skyboxes or other luxury seating, they don't sell beer, yet they came in #4. I think it's primarily TV and paraphernalia, though all those consecutive sellouts of 100,000+ seats don't hurt, either. But they're adding luxury suites and "club seats" in a major $226 million expansion/renovation project going on right now, which will only enhance their revenue stream--enough to pay for the expansion and, according to the AD, "provide resources to assist with the capital needs of all sports over time."</p>
<p>The other question is, "Most valuable to whom?" I believe over half of the 22 or so scholarship athletes who left the team over the last year ended up on NFL rosters, either through the draft or as free agents. That's a very high percentage. They won't all stick long-term, and they won't all be stars. But it says to me if you get a football scholarship at Michigan there's a pretty good chance you'll get your shot at the NFL---contrary to the usual statistics about the infinitesimally small percentage of athletes who make it to the pros.</p>
<p>With that many good players UM underperformed considerably. They had a few too many head cases.</p>
<p>^ They underperformed alright, but their top RB had a bad wheel half the season, their QB had a sprained knee the first half of the season and a dislocated (and ultimately paralyzed) shoulder the second half, and half the O-line was out of action at any given time with assorted injuries. The only times the offense was fully healthy was the first quarter of the Appalachian State game (ACK!), and the bowl game against Florida when they were awesome.</p>
<p>That, and really bad coaching--poor play selection and an uncreative, predictable playbook---on the offensive side of the ball. Despite all that, 9-4. Should have been 13-0.</p>
<p>All those SEC teams does not suprise me at all, as football is an OBSESSION here in the South. Merchandising can be a big part of it. I had a lot of difficulty finding something Georgia Tech for a friend of my S's who started school there this week, but everywhere I went there was tons of UGA merchandise! Anything from hoodies to chip/dip plates. UGA must make a nice profit from all those sales.</p>
<p>People unfairly dumped on Michigan way too much last year. In retrospect they lost to a D-IAA powerhouse national champion and an extremely strong Oregon team that, had Dixon stay healthy, would probably have won a BCS national championship and heisman trophy.</p>
<p>But they started 0-2 and had to deal with the big 10 getting trashed because of OSU's loss to florida, so they didn't get any sympathy from anyone.</p>
<p>^ Least of all their own fans. But expectations perennially run high in Ann Arbor. Lloyd Carr was reviled by a large faction of Michigan fans, and he ended up with the third-highest winning percentage in Michigan history after Fiedling Yost and Bo Schembechler. But then I remember when Schembechler was reviled by a large fraction of Michigan fans, because he always lost at least one or two every year---usually either to Ohio State or in the Rose Bowl. Either way, enough to kill the season. Still, they keep coming back.</p>