College football's 30 most impressive facilities in 2024, ranked
When it comes to upgraded facilities and state-of-the-art amenities, these programs spare no expense.
247sports.com
Glad to see PSU made the list....barely.
Top facilities around the nation
- Thread starter LaJollaCreek
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247sports.com
Glad to see PSU made the list....barely.
Rather than dump $700 million into new facilities, I think you would get better results on the field if you just took $70 million and did NIL deals with a bunch of 5 stars and top portal guys. I mean, what would it really cost, even if you overpaid? $2 million a player for the year? That's a starting 22 of top portal and 5 star guys for $44 million. PSU would make that back in 24 hours on merchandise sales alone. I said the same thing about basketball. 5 top guys for $3 million each? $15 million for a final four appearance is dirt cheap.
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You realize PSU cannot even make a 500k goal with NIL currently? Where do you think that money will come from since the school cannot currently pay for anyone directly via NIL. PSU fans want a MNC first and then they'll pay up....or once they fire this HC and hire a Joe guy it will all be fixed. The circular logic that is the PSU football community. I want a Ferrari, he is my 40k, where is my Ferrarri?
Sometimes I wonder if the dog is chasing the tail or if the tail is chasing the dog
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I took his argument to be that you use the $40+ million for this instead of the facility upgrade
Gotcha, maybe he did but unless I'm mistaken the school cannot yet cut NIL money directly?
It was a post about the current state of college athletics, not about what actually can happen with PSU and the NIL fringe. It was to illustrate how cheap it really is to buy a winning team and that the money, like most things spent at most college campuses, is being spent unwisely on buildings rather than on the people who occupy them. $700 million for a new facility that won't attract a super team vs. spending less than $50 million for an actual super team. It's to illustrate an absurdity/contradiction with the entire collegiate "student-athlete" system that no longer works with the times we are living in.
PSU, if one wishes to be honest, is likely over achieving in the current environment. I don't know how they kept Allen, Singleton, and Carter etc. Many people here are still living in "deal old State." It's long dead. It died when everyone accepted the way they fired Joe. It didn't get buried properly until pay for play.
Unintentionally, that should be the new motto.
Guess spending $105mm wasn't enough, though some schools on the list apparently spent less.College football's 30 most impressive facilities in 2024, ranked
When it comes to upgraded facilities and state-of-the-art amenities, these programs spare no expense.
Glad to see PSU made the list....barely.
Guess not. Some schools on the list also spent throughout the years and tried to keep up. Some didn't because they were too good for it. Just like PSU won't keep up with NIL as other schools will.
Sure. And you think the writer knows what he's talking about? The $48.3mm upgrade "coming soon" was completed in 2022.
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facilities shouldn't matter(i know they do trying to attract top talent), kids today are spoiled...
Washington just made a $2,100,000 dollar NIL payment to secure the services of Utah's best basketball player for his senior year. One of my apprehensions regarding the "Brave New World" of college athletics is what I envision will be a spiraling upsurge in the cost to do business. How much is, or perhaps more important, will be, enough?
And people complain about inflation ... the cost of food, clothes, gas ... All this corporation "advertising" ... naming rights to sports venues, NIL deals, etc (in addition to CEO pay) ... the $$ has to come from somewhere ... it is just passed down to us consumers.
Where is all that money PSU didn't spend? I would love to know where that is stashed away - must be a very, very big shoebox.
So in the late 90’s and early on in the 2000’s they were keeping up with the SEC and tOSU. Must be nice to rewrite history.
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If I recall, Lasch and the indoor facility were considered state of the art when they opened in the 90s.
Lasch opened in 1999. The Woody Hayes Athletic Center (guess where) was built in 1987 and didn't undergo any significant renovation for about 20 years.
UGa didn't have an indoor practice building until 2018, the same year it opened the Butts-Mehre training facility at a cost of $80mm.
Bama started renovating the "Football Building" (yes, that's what it was called) in 2006-07 and just keeps on going. Hard to get a cost number because published number seem to include upgrades to Bryant-Denny, etc. Most of the financing is through debt. Same seems to be the case for UGa. Not sure that PSU is in a position to go deeper in hock. You'd have to consult with Brandon Short on that one.
If "history" is facts, lets look at the facts:
1) Ever since college athletics started to generate big revenues, PSU has been one of the largest revenue generators in the country (well within the top 10)
2) In addition, PSU (the university) takes on debt, and sends the money to the athletic department
3) PSU Athletics is about to become the largest "debtor" athletic program - not the largest in debt program in the B10, not the largest in debt program in the nation (twice as much debt as the runner up - Cal.... and we know Cal's story, where the university now is saddled with 90 more years of debt... being paid for out of the general budget (tuition) not athletics), but the largest in debt athletic program in the national history of college athletics. Ever. By a wide margin.
4) The PSU athletic department has, for all intents and purposes, no money in their bank account.
All facts. You can look it up.
So, given that history of facts - where is all the money?
1) Ever since college athletics started to generate big revenues, PSU has been one of the largest revenue generators in the country (well within the top 10)
2) In addition, PSU (the university) takes on debt, and sends the money to the athletic department
3) PSU Athletics is about to become the largest "debtor" athletic program - not the largest in debt program in the B10, not the largest in debt program in the nation (twice as much debt as the runner up - Cal.... and we know Cal's story, where the university now is saddled with 90 more years of debt... being paid for out of the general budget (tuition) not athletics), but the largest in debt athletic program in the national history of college athletics. Ever. By a wide margin.
4) The PSU athletic department has, for all intents and purposes, no money in their bank account.
All facts. You can look it up.
So, given that history of facts - where is all the money?
#3... all with JayPa, Lubrano, (oh, and you) being gigantic, K2 size road blocks to the overall spending, and therefore success, of PSU football.
Hmm.
Which sport generates the most revenue from that entire department and has for years? PSU has a FOOTBALL community that thinks they are a top 5 program or aspires to be, but they clearly are not. I have very little doubt that the school mismanages money while sharing the wealth with other sports and projects, but this is specific to football and how or why PSU did fall behind at the turn of the century. If you want to make the discussion about womens field hockey or which sports are in the red....by all means you can talk about that until your hearts content and I'm sure you will.
The last time I even looked PSU football was making close to or at 100 million a year buy maybe that has changed. PSU had a coach who admitted to not recruiting as "they got lazy" 20 years ago, but let me guess they were outspending the other Universities on fooball related investments 20 years ago too. You want a separate pulpit for your AD budgetary grandstanding.....click on start a new thread as many will welcome it. I have no doubt everything you stated is true, but I'm kind of over hearing about how great PSU should be when they stopped trying to be a long time ago and in the last decade started playing catch up. You want to be the guy that pulls it all back in....have at it.
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Gentlemen,
We might want to table this discussion until the stadium renovation proposal is put before the Board (of Trustees) later this month.
PSU athletic department was #8 in revenue per an article in 2023 (I don't know if they cook the books, but according to the article UVA only makes $20mm less per year than PSU, which I find stunning). It also shows PSU with a net of about $10mm after expenses (snicker).
www.on3.com
USA Today releases Top 25 revenue earning college athletic programs for 2022
USA Today has released a database of the total revenue produced by college programs during the 2022-23 athletics year.
they were and then we just kind of put it neutral and coasted for the next 20+ years.
As did Ohio State.
The "arms race" in football facilities didn't begin in earnest until 2010ish when Oregon kicked off the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex.
PSU has a window open to fix their NIL and other funding issues. They have about two years to do so and to decide what kind of program they want to be. That window will close soon and if they don't achieve better coordination, a shared vision amongst the current factions, and commitments from big money, they will be stuck in the second tier of football teams that qualify for the football playoffs approximately 50% of the time.
Revenue, gentlemen, that's the gross. You want to look at the net. After all, Big Game James can't be expected to work for free.PSU athletic department was #8 in revenue per an article in 2023 (I don't know if they cook the books, but according to the article UVA only makes $20mm less per year than PSU, which I find stunning). It also shows PSU with a net of about $10mm after expenses (snicker).
USA Today releases Top 25 revenue earning college athletic programs for 2022
USA Today has released a database of the total revenue produced by college programs during the 2022-23 athletics year.
Football, as reported by PSU, nets in the high $40mm range.. Then there is the 900 lb. gorilla of "unallocated (to any sport) expense" Runs in the low $20mm range. Guessing that half of that would be incurred by the football program as a standalone, so it's throwing off about $40mm of cash.
Now, you want to operate football in it's own silo and forget about funding the rest of the Athletic Department? I kinda' like that idea, but then you have (at least two issues):
1. what to do about the rest of the sports? Either shut them down or fund them out of the General Fund i.e. tuition. Not sure how palatable either option is.
2. then there is another 900lb gorilla lurking, a $700mm stadium renovation. So why don't we incorporate the football program as its own legal entity so that it can float bonds to fund it (on top of the $100mm or so of debt that it already has on its books). Can't even begin to gauge how the various actors would respond to that.
Better than even chance that "NIL" isn't even a thing in 5 years.
That would be my guess. NIL would still exist, but it would evolve into endorsement deals like pro athletes have. The money-laundering aspects would vanish.
It's not like the sport is governed now but I'm sure it will be in 5 years after the last 3 decades of pay for play. There will still be no incentive to not cheat or pay extra...or I'll believe it when I see it.
All IMO:
Even the powers-that-be running college sports - not a group with a reputation for insight and strategic planning - realize that NIL (which really isn't NIL) as currently constituted cannot survive much longer without collapsing under its own weight.
First brush, I would expect, would be some sort of revenue sharing (not like some of the pro leagues do it, per se, but in effect a similar system). May not be "players get X% of revenue", probably more like every program in the club pays $X million per year to their players (which gets adjusted every so often). I have some thoughts on how that will look - in its first iteration anyway, but that is a much longer story.
That will, by default, sort the entrants into classes - ie Power 5 vs Not, Group A vs Group B, or however one wants to phrase it - because you simply can't sustain a system with different entities working under different guidelines and expect there to remain any level of similar competition. (eg: SEC pays every player $150 K, but B12 pays $80K per player.... how long would that work before the two levels would simply have to separate from a competitive standpoint?).
The power resides where the $$$ resides - with the conferences - and, increasingly, with the labor force. Some number of them will need to find a way to work on common ground - without creating an unsustainable situation. Some will be "in", some will be "out",
May take an iteration or two to get there - but I think the final destination is pretty clear.... and it ain't this current thing that calls itself "NIL". That is simply not sustainable, IMO (so folks can, for the most part, do their dentists a favor and stop gnashing their teeth about it)
You mean like the NFL where teams cheat against the salary cap on a regular basis.It's not like the sport is governed now but I'm sure it will be in 5 years after the last 3 decades of pay for play. There will still be no incentive to not cheat or pay extra...or I'll believe it when I see it.
If there is no cap, then teams can pay players whatever they like and there is no cheating. Life expectancy of that sort of regime isn't very long.
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