Forbes Ranks Penn State Football No. 13 on Nation’s Most Valuable College Football Programs List

Forbes magazine released its list of college football’s most valuable programs Wednesday, putting Penn State at No. 13 on its latest tabulations, down from No. 3 in 2011.

The Penn State football program is now valued at $79 million, according to Forbes, a 21 percent decrease from the 2011 figure of roughly $100 million. The drop in value, the largest in the nation, was an expected fallout from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Team expenses of $30 million in 2011 rose by 55 percent year-over-year, due in large part to severance payments to former football staff members as well as contributions to child abuse organizations.

Forbes also reported that the program’s revenue fell $6.5 million to $66 million for reasons unrelated to the Sandusky scandal. Among other changing factors, Penn State is still in the early stages of a new seat licensing program, one that has helped contribute to lower attendance numbers. Penn State averaged 96,730 fans per game in 2012. It was the fifth straight year attendance has dropped at Beaver Stadium, and it was the lowest average attendance since the 2001 stadium expansion. Despite the drop, Penn State’s attendance average was fifth best in the NCAA, behind Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama and Texas.

The value of each program was calculated by Forbes using four factors: the value of the program to the university (football profit contributed to academic programming, including football scholarships), the value to the school’s athletic department (football profit that supports other athletic initiatives), the program’s value to its conference (distribution of bowl game revenue) and the value to the surrounding community (estimated spending by visitors on days of home games).

Penn State’s $79 million value falls just below Oklahoma’s $80 million value and above fellow Big Ten member Wisconsin, valued at $76 million.