LSJ: Why money matters: Revenue, spending impact Big Ten football success

BleedGopher

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Interesting read:

Wisconsin athletic director and former football coach Barry Alvarez speaks fondly of how he built the Badgers’ program in the early 1990s with a good staff and a coat of paint.

“We (recruited) by just keeping things fresh and clean and neat and never complaining about our facilities or what we had or didn’t have,” said Alvarez, who coached Wisconsin from 1990-2005 and has served as the school’s AD since 2004. “We always told our kids the facilities were really good. And they believed it.”

But Alvarez admits, Wisconsin’s sustained winning two decades later and turnaround as an athletic department is almost entirely due to a football program that began putting butts in seats and filling the coffers.

The top four Big Ten football programs by conference winning percentage over the last 20 years are league’s biggest spenders and also rank exactly in order of the size of their 2011-12 revenues reported to the NCAA.

MSU is not among them.

Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin — these are the Big Ten schools that spent and brought in over $100 million in 2011-12. All four have won more than 60 percent of their games since 1993.

Iowa and MSU are next, batting about .500. And, yep, still in order of 2011-12 total revenue — almost $98 million for Iowa, just shy of $94 million for MSU.

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/...mpact-Big-Ten-football-success?nclick_check=1

Go Gophers!!
 

Not surprising. Money has always equaled wins over the long haul. Their are exceptions, but exceptions make the rule. We have to start growing revenue and spending it on football. Whether it be from ticket sales, fund raising, sponsorships or seat donations. That we have fallen so far behind is a shame...we just can't let our past failures be the future.
 

Not surprising. Money has always equaled wins over the long haul. Their are exceptions, but exceptions make the rule. We have to start growing revenue and spending it on football. Whether it be from ticket sales, fund raising, sponsorships or seat donations. That we have fallen so far behind is a shame...we just can't let our past failures be the future.

And that credit (or blame) lies at the feet of a lame duck employee of the Athletic Department by the name of Joel Maturi.
 




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