Fourth behind A&M, Baylor and Tech, out of Top 25.
Yeah, I know, but ranking not withstanding, I’m not sure Tech would beat the Longhorns. The Aggies and the Bears would though. Hell, I’m not sure Rice couldn’t take them these days.
Fifth, behind TCU. Sagarin/USA Today has Baylor 3rd, TexasA&M 8th, Texas Tech 19th, TCU 30th & Texas at 44th.
I heard Jack Del Rio’s name in connection with USC. A first time college coach does not seem like a good idea at USC.
Good for Haden to having the balls to do this now. They got the jump on Texas, who is probably waiting until the season is over to can Brown (if they do so).
Nothing against Alabama but Texas is far and away the best coaching gig in the nation, bar none. It leads the nation in just about every single metric of football programs.
Coach’s salary:
Nick Saban may have outearned Mack Brown but that’s because of Saban hitting every single incentive on his contract. Saban’s base contract is $225k and Mack Brown’s base salary is $770k. The final salaries for Saban and Brown are 5.6 and 5.4 million respectively.
Texas has the biggest endowment of any BCS powerhouse at 17 billion. Stanford is close with 16 billion. Michigan is 3rd at 7.7 billion. USC sits at 3.5 billion.
Texas topped the charts at 163 million in revenue last season, leading #2 Ohio State by 21 million, #4 Alabama by 39 million and that’s with Alabama receiving 5 million a year in “subsidies” - funds that don’t come directly out of football-related revenue streams.
Looking at net worth, Texas is at 761 million, which is comparable to the net worth of 3 NFL franchises (Jags, Rams, Raiders). Michigan’s brand is worth 731 million, and Alabama’s is worth 476 million. USC sits at 197.8 million.
I think Saban has a lot to gain in going to Texas. He stands to make at least 500k more a year, be in a much more secure job situation, and have an easier path to the national championship than staying put in the cannibalistic SEC. USC? Not so much.
Why the hell would anyone want to go to Texas?
No, it’s really not although Texas fans want to think so.
So Saban’s contract is backloaded. He still got paid more (and may get more yet with all the speculation flying around).
Typically, endowments can’t be used for athletics.
Okay. So? Saban has gotten everything from Alabama he’s ever asked for. Their facilities are top-notch. If he goes to Texas he has to start that all over again.
You haven’t proven the 500K a year more. More secure than Saban at Alabama? Seriously? Easier path my ass. He’s already at a school that can lose one game in the regular season and play in the Champ Game, how much easier does it get? Plus, starting next year, they just have to be Top 4, hell they can do that and not even win their Division!*
Assume LSU beat Alabama and ends up #1. Georgia wins the East and then loses to LSU. Alabama wins out. Assume OSU, Oregon, and FSU* don’t lose, the Top 5 is LSU, Oregon, OSU, Alabama, and FSU.
**Obviously if Clemson wins out as well as Oregon and OSU, that puts 'Bama in a tough spot, but stranger things have happened.
Then why were they only able to get Mack Brown?
Well, I got my wish!
No, but it’s about as accurate of a measure of a school’s donor base as you’re ever going to get.
No, not really. Look at the Top 10 endowments (all numbers in billions and as of 2011):
Harvard University $31.728
Yale University $19.374
University of Texas System $17.149
Princeton University $17.110
Stanford University $16.503
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $9.713
University of Michigan $7.835
Columbia University $7.790
Northwestern University $7.183
Texas A&M University System $7.000
Note a couple of things:
- In terms of football, Michigan is the only single-school long-time football power up there. Stanford has been good lately (and NW is much improved), but wasn’t for a long time.
- The Texas (and Texas A&M) numbers are for the whole system. The UT system is 9 universities and 6 medical institutions, so not all that money is going to UT-Austin (i.e., the Longhorns).
Academics and athletics can overlap in terms of donor enthusiasm, but there’s no direct correlation.
Sorry if this is all a hijack guys. I figured the Kiffin thing was pretty much done. Although there is this now:
USC could foreclose on Kiffin’s house. Granted, it’s only if they want to and if he can’t pay back the loan, but talk about insult to injury!
No, not really what? You’re saying that a large endowment is NOT indicative of a school’s donor base? Whaaaa…? Sorry, no - it’s indicative of three things which can, in some cases, be exclusive of each other: 1) size of a school’s (or school system’s) donor base, 2) the giving capacity of a school’s (or school system’s) donor base and/or 3) age of the school/endowment. In MIT’s case, with an undergraduate enrollment of 4,500 students, it’s all about capacity. In older institutions like Harvard which have been around since the 1600s, endowments have been able to grow substantially - but it also has a considerably high capacity donor base. In large state schools like Texas and Michigan which have pumped out hundreds of thousands of alum, it’s a mixture of all three.
UT-Austin enrolls over 50,000 students every year. Their donor base, and thus their football booster base, is enormous. It’s likely the largest booster base in the country. Alabama’s enrollment is 30,000 - not bad. But UT’s media exposure is MUCH larger.
There’s always correlation. For example, I went to Notre Dame, I have family that has worked in administration, and I have friends in admin as well. When the Irish do well on the field, their endowment donations, applications for admissions, and any other metric you can think of, increase - across the board. The opposite holds true as well. Maybe Notre Dame’s different in that regard, but I doubt it. I guarantee that Texas A&M saw a spike in applications last year, and will do so again this year.
I agree with all of this. What I’m saying (and I think the list I linked proves it) is that the size of the endowment is NOT correlated with athletic success in college football.
Liberty University 64,096
Ohio State University-Main Campus 52,568
University of Florida 51,725
Arizona State University 51,481
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 50,883
The University of Texas at Austin 50,170
University of Central Florida 48,398
Texas A & M University 46,542
City College of San Francisco 46,411
Michigan State University 46,045
University of South Florida 44,870
And yet, Alabama has 13 National Championships while no other school on this list tops 7 (since 1869 and counting all “national champions” - list is here)
I can’t find any statistics on Booster Club sizes, my google-fu is letting me down.
I completely agree with this, but I would argue that it’s MUCH more one way than the other. If athletics does well, the rest get a boost. Does a Nobel Prize convince a 4-star OLB to sign?
Apologies to everyone else in the thread - but this is just an entertaining hijack.
Well, I didn’t claim that endowment size is correlated to athletic success - just that endowment correlates to a donor base which can be tapped into for athletic support.
Weird list - Liberty is under 16,000 residential. Either way, I was talking about living alumni. You combine very large alumni numbers with an historically prominent football team, and you have a good recipe for being able to scrape up enough scratch for a top quality coach.
Now, that begs the question of why in the world UT has saddled themselves with Mack Brown. The answer to that may just make this entire conversation pointless, especially if it’s “Texas couldn’t get anyone better”. Either way, I don’t have much doubt that Texas would be able to find $500,000 in their couch cushions if they looked.
If your arguments about their advantages are correct, it sure seems like Texas has underachieved as an athletic powerhouse: 4 national football titles, and 0 men’s basketball titles. Great baseball team, though, granted.
Yeah, no kidding. But Ohio State has 4, and being head coach there is a top spot in football. Florida has 3. Michigan has 3 since the AP era. And if you really want to count titles, that works against you in some places. No matter how many titles Saban wins at Alabama, he’ll ALWAYS be second fiddle to Bear Bryant. I think if Saban jumped ship to Texas and won them a couple titles, he’d be elevated to minor diety status in the Lone Star State.
Okay, well I didn’t source the list (and I should have), I think those counts include on-line students. Here’s the US News list from 2012 (2011 numbers):
DeVry University (IL) 70,158
Arizona State University 58,404
University of Central Florida 49,900
Ohio State University—Columbus 42,916
Texas A&M University—College Station 39,867
Pennsylvania State University—University Park
University of Texas—Austin 38,437
Michigan State University 36,675
Florida International University 35,875
University of Minnesota—Twin Cities 34,812
These are number of undergraduate students as reported by the Universities themselves. Suddenly Liberty is nowhere to be found…
But now we have a different issue. Texas A&M is bigger than UT!
Actually based on the data I compiled from the NCAA, OSU can lay claim to 7 national titles.
And the new rules for which titles you can claim are garbage. Woody Hayes himself didn’t claim the titles in '57, '61, or '70, and their athletic department didn’t until the NCAA opened it up. Any Big Ten school trying to claim a title in a year they didn’t even get to the Rose Bowl should be ashamed of themselves.