COLORADO SPRINGS — Leaving college sports conferences and entering new ones comes at a high price. An economics professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) said money and media rights are the driving forces behind why many colleges change conferences.
Whether it's Friday night lights or Saturday's college football, people show up to cheer on their favorite teams. But off the field, what happens behind the scenes?
“That's a good question. So, you know, it varies from conference to conference, obviously, but the conferences are out for themselves and out for their members,” said Joe Craig, who teaches sports economics and is the Chair of the Department of Economics at UCCS.
“College sports, just the popularity combined with, you know, the playoff system combined with NIL deals has just led to this kind of perfect storm, with the wild wild west right now,” said Craig.
He said if the Air Force Academy were to change conferences or if more teams are added to the Mountain West, Colorado Springs' economy could be impacted.
“What it could do is that Air Force games are pretty well attended already, but suddenly, if you get some of these big marquee games, or some schools that got caught out of the previous realignment that are better than the average Mountain West school, if they join the Mountain West, that can actually make it more lucrative,” said Craig.
Travel is enough area that could be affected.
“Everyone drives out here, shows up here, spends a ton of money, goes to the hotels, that's a huge economic impact. So that could be a big (factor),” said Craig.
Conferences pay universities to be a part of their division, but these prices differ. According to Sportico, the PAC-12 conference brought in $603.8 million from July 2022 to June 2023 and gave about $33 million to each of its schools.
The Mountain West Conference reported $78.2 million in revenue in fiscal year 2023 and they paid most of its members around $5 million for 2022-23.
“That big difference is the TV rights, right? Okay, so the PAC-12 takes the TV rights in and distributes it out to the schools evenly, or sometimes they're sharing,” said Craig.
Schools can also make extra money if they win more games or go to playoff games. Criag said universities use the money to pay for facilities, scholarships, nutrition programs for athletes and so on.
“All of the above, yeah, so all and actually, it helps support other programs as well that may not make as much money as football, so it goes to the athletic director's budget and then they distribute it as needed,” said Craig.
More teams are moving conferences because travel costs are lower, according to Craig.
“It used to be that, you know, if you were in a conference geographically located so that costs were low. And that's still the case for pretty much every sport but basketball and football, right? That's still a really big important thing. But those are some kind of drivers that have kind of started this trend that immediate rights are probably in the background,” said Craig.
He said this pattern of universities leaving and entering new sports conferences is just getting started. Craig thinks teams will continue to change conferences for the next 10 years.
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