For the SEC homers

Crying that their teams need to schedule weak home games because they need the money, see this.

Basically, the SEC is a cash cow.  Either its just greedy or they're running from teams they should look forward to dominating.

1) Texas $47,556,281
2) Tennessee $46,704,719
3) Ohio State $46,242,355
4) Florida $42,710,967
5) Georgia $42,104,214
6) Alabama $39,848,836
7) Notre Dame $38,596,090
8) Michigan $38,547,937
9) LSU $38,381,625
10) Auburn $37,173,943

Comments

[Voluminous]

Yes, Tennessee sure ran from its Home/Home series with Miami (won in the Orange Bowl in 03) and they are headed to Notre Dame this year....granted ND is no UC Davis. They also have Home/Home with Cal in '06

[Dawgy1]

It's not the SEC's fault that pac 10 fans won't show up to see their teams play Portland State, Idaho, Nevada, Sacremento State, etc. USC has back to back NC's and can't even fill their stadium.

[LD]

I don't think it's greed. Competition is the reason why. If you make money you can build better facilities which gets better recruits which gets a better team which sells more tickets which makes more money which... If one program doesn't try to make more money, that program lags behind the other teams, who just so happen to be recruiting the same players (and coaches) and in some instances drawing new fans from the same pool of transplants. If Auburn schedules one fewer home game to go on the road against a decent opponent (which they've done plenty, but a different debate), they might lose $1.5M or more. That might not sound like much compared to the ideal of challenging Wazzoo in Pullman, but when it means $1.5M for renovating a weightroom that every single recruit will walk through, it might look a little more important. Especially when those recruits will also be walking through the newly refurbished weightroom at Bama, thanks to their home game against East BFE State. It's competition among the schools that's driven them all to do the same thing as well as they can.

Also, a large portion of that revenue is thanks to the ridiculous bowl contracts the SEC had the last time around. Outside the BCS, the SEC had contracts with something like 4 of the top 5 payouts (and I think only the Big 10 and 12 had even 2). I want to say the Peach was the SEC's 4th highest payout bowl after BCS, while it was the ACC's highest outside the BCS. Kramer did an amazing job of getting long term deals where (shocking, I know, but not everyone else really did this) the bowl that paid the most got the best team. Plus, the SEC had two BCS teams a few times, which adds a lot to the coffers.

So, yes, the SEC makes a lot of money. And if that's a bad thing, it's an entirely different argument (we might have similiar views on amateurism, but that's not the game as it is now). But the point is that to play on a level field with the other teams in the conference, you have to have a huge budget. The average SEC budget might be higher than the highest Pac-10 budget. It's the competition between SEC teams that drives this.