According to CNBC and private sports-related firms Student Athlete NIL and Athletic Director U, the value of Arizona’s athletic department is ranked No. 41 in college athletics. Arizona State is 68th.
Moreover, the combined study of the three groups says that Arizona’s athletic department has a value of $532 million, while the Sun Devils are worth $279 million.
Can that be accurate? Arizona is worth almost double ASU’s athletic department? Until someone comes up with a more detailed and more authoritative study, the CNBC figures will probably be used as a source on how much college athletic programs are worth.
Jason Belzer, founder of Student Athlete NIL, and CNBC’s Mike Ozanian spent the last few weeks examining the value of each NCAA athletic department, getting input from private equity firms and studying the NCAA’s Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.
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They considered on-field success, conference affiliations, school subsidies, the number of alumni at each school, NIL spending and input from private investors looking to get a piece of the action in the money-first era of college athletics.
They concluded that Arizona’s athletic department is worth almost twice as much as ASU’s. That’ll make ASU president Michael Crow‘s head spin.
The CNBC study told us what we already know, ranking Ohio State ($1.32 billion) and Texas ($1.28 billion) as the two most valuable schools. The aggregate value of each Power 4 conference: Big Ten $13.2 billion; SEC $13.1 billion; ACC $9.6 billion; Big 12 $6.7 billion.
No surprise there. The Big 12 is not a Big Hitter.
Arizona is the fourth highest-rated Big 12 school, following Texas Tech, $619 million; Kansas, $543 million; and TCU, $542 million.
This is probably humbling news to UA and ASU followers, but it shouldn’t be unexpected. ASU’s glory years were in the 1970s, when the Sun Devils were a national power in baseball, men’s basketball and track and field. Now, it is a national power in men’s swimming, period.
Arizona’s glory days were the 1990s, when the school regularly finished in the Top 10 in the Learfield Director’s Cup that measures an athletic department’s total on-field success. Last year, Arizona was 48th.
The debate raised by CNBC’s study is how Arizona could be worth twice as much as ASU. Let’s see: Over the last decade, Arizona won 11 Pac-12 championships. ASU won six.
Arizona led the Pac-12 in total attendance for the five core sports – men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and football – the last two years, drawing almost 200,000 more fans than ASU.
Arizona fans jump out of their seats as Arizona scores another basket against Duke in the first half during a game at McKale Center in Tucson, Ariz. on Nov. 22, 2024.
More? Here are the records of ASU and Arizona in those five sports the last 10 seasons:
Softball: Arizona 357-151 with seven NCAA Tournament berths. ASU 307-172 with six NCAAs.
Men’s basketball: Arizona 232-82 with six NCAAs. ASU 183-135 with three NCAAs.
Baseball: Arizona 286-188 with seven NCAAs. ASU 253-213 with three NCAAs.
Women’s basketball: Arizona 163-123 with four NCAAs. ASU 158-137 with three NCAAs.
Football: Arizona 47-70 with three bowl games; ASU 60-58 with five bowl games.
Lest Arizona start feeling snug, ranked so far above ASU and most of its Big 12 rivals, it should remember how fragile it is to be in the Big 12, whose values are far below the SEC and Big Ten.
In the past few years, Arizona lost perhaps its two best coaches, baseball’s Jay Johnson to LSU, and women’s golf coach Laura Ianello to Texas. LSU has more than doubled Johnson’s salary, giving him a seven-year deal for $12.5 million. Arizona pays Pac-12 champion baseball coach Chip Hale $450,000.
Texas lured Ianello, the 2018 NCAA champion, by paying her $280,000. Her successor at Arizona, Giovana Maymon, formerly an assistant at Texas A&M, is making $140,000.
It’s not that Arizona isn’t fighting back. Arizona’s first-year athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois, who inherited a financial mess nine months ago, has surely gone beyond expectations in a short time. She has already arranged to have $20.5 million in hand for the NCAA’s new “revenue sharing’’ plan that takes place next year.
But again, there is a much higher financial threshold in college athletics. Tennessee athletic director Danny White last week announced the Volunteers have raised $574 million in its “My All Campaign,” to help fund Volunteer athletics.
“Tennessee stands shoulder to shoulder with the nation’s elite, championship-caliber athletic programs,” said White.
Arizona stands shoulder-to-shoulder with ASU, or a bit above.
Greg Hansen
Columnist
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