Here are some numbers I’ve been meaning to tell you about – and that you may have missed:
$32.4 million
With its sanction penalties lifted, Penn State got a full share of the nearly half-billion dollars the Big Ten Conference doled out for 2014-15, according to a recent report by CBS Sports.
And Penn State’s share amounted to a cool $32.4 million.
That was the take of the conference’s 11 oldest members. Only the SEC, with a single-school share of $32.7 million, paid more. The Big Ten’s three newest members received smaller shares: Maryland ($24.1 million, plus an $11.6 million loan), Nebraska ($19.8 million) and Rutgers ($10.5 million). Overall, the Big Ten handed out $448.8 million.
The average per-school Big Ten share continues to grow, with money driven by football, but coming from a variety of sources: TV contracts, the Big Ten Network, NCAA basketball tournament revenue distribution, and Big Ten football and basketball championships ticket sales. A full share was $25.9 million in 2012-13 and $28 million in 2013-14, according to CBS and the Omaha World-Herald.
In the next few years, Penn State’s annual share could jump to as high as $50 million per year.
The Big Ten is nearing the end of its 10-year, $1 billion contract with ESPN – an average of $100 million a year. SportsBusiness Journal has reported that Fox (which owns 51% of the Big Ten Network) will soon pay the conference $250 million a year to broadcast around 25 football games and 50 basketball games. And that’s for just about half of the media rights the conference hopes to sell over the next half-dozen years.
With Penn State on the precipice of announcing a major, campus-wide plan to upgrade its athletics facilities, complete with renovations to Beaver Stadium (see the next item), that increased money will come in handy.
About that lost bowl revenue: Penn State gave up $6.55 million in bowl dollars from 2011-14. The school voluntary gave up $1.5 million in 2011-12, followed by Big Ten penalties of $2.3 million in 2012-13 and $2.75 million in 2013-14. Original Big Ten sanctions for 2014-16 would have cost Penn State upwards to an additional $10 to $11 million.
Final Four
Dr. Phil Esten is (still) in.
Esten is the No. 2 person behind Sandy Barbour in the Penn State athletic department, serving as the deputy director of athletics and chief operating officer. Just as (even more?) important, he is the day-to-day department conduit to football (and James Franklin CJF’s direct boss, as it were), as well as a primary figure in determining the future of Beaver Stadium. More on that here.
Esten came to Penn State in October 2014 from Cal Berkley, where he had worked for Barbour. Before that he was an associate AD and also CEO of the alumni association at the University of Minnesota, where he was the point person for the building of the first-rate TCF Bank Stadium.
According to reports, Esten came close to returning to Minnesota last month.
Esten was in the final four for the vacant Minnesota athletic director job that went to Syracuse AD Mark Coyle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The news outlet wrote that finalists to replace Norwood Teague, who was fired last year following sexual harassment charges, included Esten, interim Minnesota athletic director Beth Goetz and Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier.
$2,211,879
Penn State spent $2,211,879 on football recruiting in 2014 and 2015 – tops in the Big Ten Conference, according to Scott Dochterman of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Using state open-record laws, Dochterman put together a masterful four-year chart of football recruiting expenses of 13 Big Ten teams from 2012-15 (Northwestern, a private school, was not legally bound to provide numbers). The full chart is here.
The numbers, especially concerning Penn State, are eye popping:
— In Joe Paterno’s last year (2011), Penn State spent $258,800 on football recruiting. By James Franklin’s first year at Penn State (2014), it had jumped to $1,391,332 – the highest amount for any single Big Ten season surveyed. The numbers for Penn State were based on FY 2014, which would have included the end of Bill O’Brien’s tenure and the start of Franklin’s. Penn State’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. Paterno was head coach for most of the 2011 season; O’Brien for the 2012-13 seasons; and Franklin for 2014-15.
— By fiscal year, Penn State spent the following on football recruiting, according to Dochterman: 2011 — $258,000; 2012 — $443,022; 2013 — $736,739; 2014 — $1,391,332; 2015 — $870,547.
— For 2012-15, the core fiscal years of the study, only Nebraska ($3,467,277) spent more than Penn State ($3,441,640). Next were Illinois ($2.9 million), Michigan ($2.48), Minnesota ($2.35 million), Michigan State ($2.34 million) and Ohio State ($2 million). Wisconsin was lowest, at $1.02 million. Dochterman, quoting conference officials, cautioned that schools tally their recruiting expenses differently, which accounted for wide disparities.
His article, published in April, does offer this observation from James Franklin:
“Penn State has realized, as well as our football program, and studied other programs in the Big Ten as well as nationally, the things that you need to do to be successful,” Franklin was quoted as saying.
“I think the other thing that people realize is we’re a little isolated here at Penn State so travel expenses, being able to get in and out of here, is a little bit different than maybe if you were closer to a major city or closer to an international airport.”
6/3/2011
Friday marked the five-year anniversary of the hiring of Patrick Chambers as Penn State’s men’s basketball coach. Chambers is 72-91 overall and 23-67 in the Big Ten in five seasons at Penn State. His 50-50 record over the past three seasons signifies steady improvement, as does a pair of signature wins this past season, over No. 22 Indiana and No. 4 Iowa. (He was 42-28, with an appearance in the NCAA Tournament, in two seasons at Boston University.)
Reports at the time of his hiring listed other candidates as Rob Jeter, who was at Milwaukee at the time and was fired after the 2016 season, and Ron Everhart, fired from Duquesne just one year after Chambers was hired.
Chambers was one of the final hires by former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who said at the time, “Penn State basketball begins a new era today and Patrick Chambers ushers in that era with proven success, an appreciation of and commitment to Penn State ideals, and the energy and enthusiasm required to compete at the highest level.”
For his part, Chambers was prescient – and, as it turns out, resolute — in his game plan: “We need to go get good players,’ he told ESPN’s Dana O’Neil, a PSU alum, five Junes ago. “We need to compete with the Big Ten and the Big East for the best of the best, to get pros every few years but to also be able to find those Dante Cunninghams, those Dwayne Andersons, those guys that are under the radar, a little bit.
“Obviously, Philly is huge. There are so many great players there and we need to be a presence there. But I also think we shouldn’t limit ourselves. We have the entire East Coast — Virginia, (Washington) D.C., Maryland and now you can throw in Boston as the cherry on top.”
The Nittany Lions’ 2016-17 roster will include six Philly area players – upperclassmen Shep Garner, Julian Moore and Mike Watkins, and incoming freshmen Tony Carr, Lamar Stevens and Nazeer Bostick. All three frosh, plus Garner, are from Roman Catholic High School.
To read and watch a two-part interview I did in July 2011 with Chambers, click here and here. My favorite thing about the interview is that I sent an email to Chambers on the Fourth of July, asking him to do it, and he got back to me before midnight – never having met me – with a resounding yes. That accommodating and never-ending enthusiasm has proven to be genuine, through good times and bad.
