Post by nu5ncbigred on Jan 25, 2015 2:35:39 GMT -5
Boasting three national titles, 11 Final Four appearances and the sport’s biggest crowds, the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln undoubtedly ranks as a
college volleyball powerhouse.
Now those hard-hitting Cornhuskers have emerged within the athletic department as a financial force as well.
Thanks to a big spike in revenue from the team’s move into a new 7,900-seat home arena, the Husker volleyball team netted a profit of nearly $600,000 during the past budget year, according to reports the school recently filed with the NCAA and the federal government.
Not only did it mark the first time Big Red volleyball finished in the black, but that profit figure also appears unmatched by any program in the country. In fact, experts in college athletics finance say it’s extremely rare for any women’s sports program — or any sport outside football and men’s basketball — to be a net revenue-raiser for a school.
Dig into the finances of volleyball’s other top powers, including Texas, Stanford and reigning national champ Penn State, and all report spending more than $1 million above what they generate on the court. The University of Hawaii appears to be the only school joining Nebraska in posting net revenue in volleyball, amounting last year to a little more than $50,000.
“To come as far as we have to where we are now is just an awesome feeling, and something we’re very proud of,’’ said longtime Husker coach John Cook. “That’s why there’s no place like Nebraska.’’
No surprise, but big-time football remains the primary driver of the NU athletic program. Football generates the bulk of the dollars in a total budget that for the first time this year will exceed $100 million. Men’s basketball kicks in a couple of million more in net profits.
However, having a third program generating significant revenues certainly contributes to the overall health of NU athletics, helping make Nebraska one of roughly a half-dozen schools nationally whose athletic program receives no tax-dollar, tuition or student-fee support.
Those subsidies at some major schools amount to tens of millions of dollars. At Nebraska, the flow of money actually goes the other way, with athletics sending dollars over to the academic side of the university. In fact, that amount has been increased from $2.7 million annually two years ago to nearly $4.5 million this budget year.
“To make things work, you’ve got to be making money in football and (men’s) basketball,’’ said John Jentz, the chief financial officer for Husker athletics. “If you have a third sport generating quite a bit of ticket sales, that’s pretty unique. I don’t think anyone in any women’s sport is approaching what’s happening at Nebraska.”
What makes it all possible, Cook and Jentz said, is the support of Nebraska’s passionate fans — known far and wide in volleyball circles as among the most devoted in the sport. They’re much like their Husker football counterparts in the way they tout their team’s unprecedented sellout streak, national championship trophies, homegrown talent and long list of All-Americans.
The Huskers have now sold out every regular-season match in Lincoln since 2001, covering 188 matches. And that record-setting streak didn’t skip a beat over the past two seasons as the school moved its home matches from the 4,000-seat NU Coliseum to the newly renovated Devaney Center.
Of course, it’s much easier for fans to back a consistent winner. Every college basketball team dreams of making the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. Nebraska has reached volleyball’s Sweet 16 a remarkable 20 times in the past 21 years.
“You have to win at a very high level for a long time to create this kind of interest,’’ said former Husker volleyball coach Terry Pettit.
To be sure, turning a profit is not really the goal in college athletics. The vast majority of sports teams at Nebraska or at any college don’t make money and aren’t expected to. They are intended to enrich the college experience for participants and other students, raise a school’s public profile and engage alumni.
But there’s an unavoidable business aspect to a major athletic department. And money and winning are definitely related. The more dollars an athletic department can generate, the better its teams tend to perform.
In the 2013-14 budget year, NU football produced total revenues of some $60 million, the 11th-highest figure in the country. That was enough to cover its considerable $24 million in expenses and still leave $36.3 million to help fund department operations and other sports.
Men’s basketball kicked in another $2.1 million in net profits, a figure not much changed from previous years. Though the team generated increased revenues with its move into Lincoln’s new downtown Pinnacle Bank Arena, team expenses were up, too, including rent and added operating costs associated with the arena.
Now add volleyball to the net revenue mix — success that’s been decades in the making.
It started with Pettit, the godfather of Nebraska volleyball. When he took over the program in 1977, he would set up a couple of rows of wooden chairs behind the team benches to accommodate the fans. But he was intent on building something great.
One of the first things Pettit set out to do was raise the level of high school play across Nebraska, holding clinics with young players and coaches. He knew these players could one day become the backbone of his team.
It worked. For the state’s size, Nebraska today produces more major-college talent than every state but Hawaii.
Pettit’s teams proceeded to win big, annually sweeping through the Big Eight Conference and reaching the Final Four for the first time in 1986. By then, Pettit was directly marketing volleyball to the school’s football-crazy fans, putting up fliers in the restrooms at Memorial Stadium and encouraging folks to stick around for the evening volleyball match.
Fans quickly became hooked. By the time the Huskers won their first national championship in 1995, the school was frequently selling out the 4,000-seat Coliseum.
Two more titles followed, in 2000 and 2006, under Cook, Pettit’s hand-picked successor.
But despite the Huskers’ winning ways and big crowds, the program wasn’t generating quite enough revenue to cover expenses.
Cook said he set a personal goal of achieving profitability after a Husker football booster in 2000 gave him grief for the cost of sending the volleyball team on an overseas trip. The sellout streak started the following year, but that still wasn’t enough to tip the program into the black.
The key came when then-Athletic Director Tom Osborne approached Cook about renovating the Devaney Center into a new, bigger home for volleyball. Osborne told Cook if the Huskers didn’t move they would miss out on an entire generation of new fans. Thousands who wanted tickets were being shut out.
Cook was concerned about losing the home-court advantage the Huskers enjoyed in the packed and raucous Coliseum. He said he had to be dragged “kicking and screaming’’ into accepting a nearly 8,000-seat arena. He had nightmares featuring thousands of empty seats and an end to the coveted sellout streak.
Cook gives Osborne and facilities administrator John Ingram much credit for turning the once-cavernous Devaney Center into a big yet intimate home for the Huskers, lowering the ceiling and replacing many seats with a bank of skyboxes. It’s not the Coliseum. But at critical moments in matches, the atmosphere is electric.
“When the crowd really gets into it, it lifts you off the floor down there,’’ Cook said.
As fans packed the new Devaney Center beginning in the fall of 2013, Nebraska overtook Hawaii as the NCAA’s attendance leader, with a record, standing-room-only average of 8,175 fans per match. That spiked annual ticket revenue from $1 million to $1.7 million, the key to the new profitability.
The Huskers, in the end, spent $2.39 million on volleyball in 2013-14, the third-biggest budget in the country. But no volleyball program topped Nebraska’s $2.97 million in generated revenues or its $578,000 in net profit.
Final finance figures for Nebraska’s most recent volleyball season this past fall, when the team again averaged more than 8,000 fans, won’t be known until the current fiscal year ends in July. But the team is again projected to finish in the black.
Just how rare is that for a women’s sports team? Very — though exactly how rare is a little elusive.
Schools sometimes differ in how they categorize revenues in the finance reports they’re required to file each year with the U.S. Department of Education. Some include university subsidies that can be revealed only if the schools release the more-detailed finance reports they must file with the NCAA.
But among the schools that rank as the attendance leaders in volleyball, Nebraska and Hawaii were the only ones to report net profits last year.
Most major volleyball schools reported spending significantly more than they took in. Texas had the biggest budget in volleyball, at $3.4 million last year, as well as the second-biggest net deficit, at $1.8 million. Penn State, which has won the past two national titles and six of the past eight, ran a net deficit of $1.3 million.
Closer to home, Iowa State and Iowa each reported spending at least $1.3 million more than was generated.
As for women’s basketball, it appears only Tennessee, the national leader in attendance and a longtime power, is generating net revenue, totaling about $800,000 last year. That, too, is a relatively new development, traced to the retirement three years ago of legendary coach Pat Summitt. The new coach is paid nearly $2 million less than Summitt’s $2.7 million in compensation.
Even the University of Connecticut, which went undefeated and won its fourth national title in six years, and Iowa State, which ranked No. 2 in attendance at nearly 10,000 fans a game, reported being more than $2 million in the red.
“It’s pretty well known that, outside of football and men’s basketball, sports just don’t make money,’’ said Kristi Dosh, who writes books and blogs about the business of college sports. “I think what Nebraska volleyball has been able to do is incredible.”
Cook doesn’t think people should be too surprised. He’s never been particularly modest about his program or the status of volleyball in Nebraska, often calling the state “the epicenter of volleyball in the United States.”
It’s not just bragging. He has the attendance figures — and now the dollar figures — to back that up.
Now those hard-hitting Cornhuskers have emerged within the athletic department as a financial force as well.
Thanks to a big spike in revenue from the team’s move into a new 7,900-seat home arena, the Husker volleyball team netted a profit of nearly $600,000 during the past budget year, according to reports the school recently filed with the NCAA and the federal government.
Not only did it mark the first time Big Red volleyball finished in the black, but that profit figure also appears unmatched by any program in the country. In fact, experts in college athletics finance say it’s extremely rare for any women’s sports program — or any sport outside football and men’s basketball — to be a net revenue-raiser for a school.
Dig into the finances of volleyball’s other top powers, including Texas, Stanford and reigning national champ Penn State, and all report spending more than $1 million above what they generate on the court. The University of Hawaii appears to be the only school joining Nebraska in posting net revenue in volleyball, amounting last year to a little more than $50,000.
“To come as far as we have to where we are now is just an awesome feeling, and something we’re very proud of,’’ said longtime Husker coach John Cook. “That’s why there’s no place like Nebraska.’’
No surprise, but big-time football remains the primary driver of the NU athletic program. Football generates the bulk of the dollars in a total budget that for the first time this year will exceed $100 million. Men’s basketball kicks in a couple of million more in net profits.
However, having a third program generating significant revenues certainly contributes to the overall health of NU athletics, helping make Nebraska one of roughly a half-dozen schools nationally whose athletic program receives no tax-dollar, tuition or student-fee support.
Those subsidies at some major schools amount to tens of millions of dollars. At Nebraska, the flow of money actually goes the other way, with athletics sending dollars over to the academic side of the university. In fact, that amount has been increased from $2.7 million annually two years ago to nearly $4.5 million this budget year.
“To make things work, you’ve got to be making money in football and (men’s) basketball,’’ said John Jentz, the chief financial officer for Husker athletics. “If you have a third sport generating quite a bit of ticket sales, that’s pretty unique. I don’t think anyone in any women’s sport is approaching what’s happening at Nebraska.”
What makes it all possible, Cook and Jentz said, is the support of Nebraska’s passionate fans — known far and wide in volleyball circles as among the most devoted in the sport. They’re much like their Husker football counterparts in the way they tout their team’s unprecedented sellout streak, national championship trophies, homegrown talent and long list of All-Americans.
The Huskers have now sold out every regular-season match in Lincoln since 2001, covering 188 matches. And that record-setting streak didn’t skip a beat over the past two seasons as the school moved its home matches from the 4,000-seat NU Coliseum to the newly renovated Devaney Center.
Of course, it’s much easier for fans to back a consistent winner. Every college basketball team dreams of making the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. Nebraska has reached volleyball’s Sweet 16 a remarkable 20 times in the past 21 years.
“You have to win at a very high level for a long time to create this kind of interest,’’ said former Husker volleyball coach Terry Pettit.
To be sure, turning a profit is not really the goal in college athletics. The vast majority of sports teams at Nebraska or at any college don’t make money and aren’t expected to. They are intended to enrich the college experience for participants and other students, raise a school’s public profile and engage alumni.
But there’s an unavoidable business aspect to a major athletic department. And money and winning are definitely related. The more dollars an athletic department can generate, the better its teams tend to perform.
In the 2013-14 budget year, NU football produced total revenues of some $60 million, the 11th-highest figure in the country. That was enough to cover its considerable $24 million in expenses and still leave $36.3 million to help fund department operations and other sports.
Men’s basketball kicked in another $2.1 million in net profits, a figure not much changed from previous years. Though the team generated increased revenues with its move into Lincoln’s new downtown Pinnacle Bank Arena, team expenses were up, too, including rent and added operating costs associated with the arena.
Now add volleyball to the net revenue mix — success that’s been decades in the making.
It started with Pettit, the godfather of Nebraska volleyball. When he took over the program in 1977, he would set up a couple of rows of wooden chairs behind the team benches to accommodate the fans. But he was intent on building something great.
One of the first things Pettit set out to do was raise the level of high school play across Nebraska, holding clinics with young players and coaches. He knew these players could one day become the backbone of his team.
It worked. For the state’s size, Nebraska today produces more major-college talent than every state but Hawaii.
Pettit’s teams proceeded to win big, annually sweeping through the Big Eight Conference and reaching the Final Four for the first time in 1986. By then, Pettit was directly marketing volleyball to the school’s football-crazy fans, putting up fliers in the restrooms at Memorial Stadium and encouraging folks to stick around for the evening volleyball match.
Fans quickly became hooked. By the time the Huskers won their first national championship in 1995, the school was frequently selling out the 4,000-seat Coliseum.
Two more titles followed, in 2000 and 2006, under Cook, Pettit’s hand-picked successor.
But despite the Huskers’ winning ways and big crowds, the program wasn’t generating quite enough revenue to cover expenses.
Cook said he set a personal goal of achieving profitability after a Husker football booster in 2000 gave him grief for the cost of sending the volleyball team on an overseas trip. The sellout streak started the following year, but that still wasn’t enough to tip the program into the black.
The key came when then-Athletic Director Tom Osborne approached Cook about renovating the Devaney Center into a new, bigger home for volleyball. Osborne told Cook if the Huskers didn’t move they would miss out on an entire generation of new fans. Thousands who wanted tickets were being shut out.
Cook was concerned about losing the home-court advantage the Huskers enjoyed in the packed and raucous Coliseum. He said he had to be dragged “kicking and screaming’’ into accepting a nearly 8,000-seat arena. He had nightmares featuring thousands of empty seats and an end to the coveted sellout streak.
Cook gives Osborne and facilities administrator John Ingram much credit for turning the once-cavernous Devaney Center into a big yet intimate home for the Huskers, lowering the ceiling and replacing many seats with a bank of skyboxes. It’s not the Coliseum. But at critical moments in matches, the atmosphere is electric.
“When the crowd really gets into it, it lifts you off the floor down there,’’ Cook said.
As fans packed the new Devaney Center beginning in the fall of 2013, Nebraska overtook Hawaii as the NCAA’s attendance leader, with a record, standing-room-only average of 8,175 fans per match. That spiked annual ticket revenue from $1 million to $1.7 million, the key to the new profitability.
The Huskers, in the end, spent $2.39 million on volleyball in 2013-14, the third-biggest budget in the country. But no volleyball program topped Nebraska’s $2.97 million in generated revenues or its $578,000 in net profit.
Final finance figures for Nebraska’s most recent volleyball season this past fall, when the team again averaged more than 8,000 fans, won’t be known until the current fiscal year ends in July. But the team is again projected to finish in the black.
Just how rare is that for a women’s sports team? Very — though exactly how rare is a little elusive.
Schools sometimes differ in how they categorize revenues in the finance reports they’re required to file each year with the U.S. Department of Education. Some include university subsidies that can be revealed only if the schools release the more-detailed finance reports they must file with the NCAA.
But among the schools that rank as the attendance leaders in volleyball, Nebraska and Hawaii were the only ones to report net profits last year.
Most major volleyball schools reported spending significantly more than they took in. Texas had the biggest budget in volleyball, at $3.4 million last year, as well as the second-biggest net deficit, at $1.8 million. Penn State, which has won the past two national titles and six of the past eight, ran a net deficit of $1.3 million.
Closer to home, Iowa State and Iowa each reported spending at least $1.3 million more than was generated.
As for women’s basketball, it appears only Tennessee, the national leader in attendance and a longtime power, is generating net revenue, totaling about $800,000 last year. That, too, is a relatively new development, traced to the retirement three years ago of legendary coach Pat Summitt. The new coach is paid nearly $2 million less than Summitt’s $2.7 million in compensation.
Even the University of Connecticut, which went undefeated and won its fourth national title in six years, and Iowa State, which ranked No. 2 in attendance at nearly 10,000 fans a game, reported being more than $2 million in the red.
“It’s pretty well known that, outside of football and men’s basketball, sports just don’t make money,’’ said Kristi Dosh, who writes books and blogs about the business of college sports. “I think what Nebraska volleyball has been able to do is incredible.”
Cook doesn’t think people should be too surprised. He’s never been particularly modest about his program or the status of volleyball in Nebraska, often calling the state “the epicenter of volleyball in the United States.”
It’s not just bragging. He has the attendance figures — and now the dollar figures — to back that up.
