The Average Football Player At A Top School Is Worth Half A Million Dollars
11 years ago

The call for universities to pay their athletes has reached a fever pitch in the last few years. There are a lot of issues at hand, and the problem is much more complex than either side presents it to be. One thing is for sure, though: the top football schools are making a fuck-ton of money off of their players. Business Insider recently did some math that backs up that assertion.

The website found these schools to have the highest fair market value for their players:

Screen Shot 2014-11-24 at 2.30.19 PM

Business Insider took data on the 10 most profitable programs from BusinessOfCollegSports.com and then combined it loosely with the revenue sharing system implemented by the NFL. After accounting for a 47 percent revenue split going to the players, you end up with the average football player at the most profitable school, Texas, being worth about $605,000. For reference, that’s about four Lambos to get a DUI in, a full semester of a live-in prostitute, or about 18,000 orders of crab legs from Publix. Granted, that’s pretty rudimentary and it assumes all scholarship players would be paid equally, regardless of skill. That’s out of a total of $109.4 million in revenue, which pales in comparison to the $3.8 million they pay out in student aid.

Sure, we’re looking at this as if the huge blue chip recruits wouldn’t be offered essentially max deals versus a walk-on who worked his way up to a scholarship. Even then, just looking at the average really shows you how these programs are just cleaning up when it comes to revenue. But yeah, let’s keep suspending players for signing autographs. That seems like the way to go.

[via Business Insider]

  2. IFC

    You’re kidding yourself if you think the universities will take a pay cut. If they had to pay players, tuition would rise and costs would be cut to compensate for the expense. If you want to pay more for less that’s your prerogative.

    11 years ago at 12:29 am
  3. Mr Pledgemaster Sir

    I say let the players do what they want to earn money so that the NCAA doesn’t have to pay them. But have guidelines on what is an appropriate money making opportunity. Signing autographs? Sure, seems harmless enough. Parents paying a player to give their kid lessons or make an appearance? Great. Let’s monitor the players, have a rep at each school that the student goes to. They submit an application of some sort in order to be given permission to do the job that will pay them, and the university can either accept or deny based on guidelines. And if a player is found to have falsely submitted a document or didn’t submit one, then suspend them. I think it’s a good work around and solves a need for everyone involved.

    11 years ago at 3:32 am