College Sports' Biggest Money Makers

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BY: DAN SHEDD

College sports is a big business these days and Business Insider.com released a study done by the USA Today showcasing the top 20 college sports programs that make the most money based on ticket sales, donations, media rights and merchandising and athletics revenue from the 2013 athletic year. To go see the list in its entirety. please go to the link listed above, while there, check out the graphs that really show you the impact of college sports on a certain university.

It is no surprise that the University of Texas is college sports biggest cash maker. The athletic department generated $165.7 million dollars in revenue. UT is one of only 13 schools to make over $100 million dollars in revenue. Another big factor in why Texas is on top of the list is the ESPN powered Longhorn Network, which is worth $300 million dollars over a 20 year period. Texas leads the pack in ticket revenue and donations to the athletic department. The other top schools are the University of Wisconsin, University of Alabama, The University of Michigan and their rivals, Ohio State.

On Monday’s show of the Price of Business, the show host Kevin Price, Marsha Lambeth, and I discussed this article and even tried to guess what school was included in the list. One major surprise was the tradition rich program USC was not included but programs like Iowa, Cal- Berkeley were. For me, seeing SEC(Southeastern Conference) teams because they have the best teams, players and the best fans in the country in my opinion. College sports are one of the more popular sports in the country, and as this article shows, it can make some serious money too.