Tennessee the new york yankees of college athletics

#1
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mike hamilton

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#1
I'm new to the board but have been reading it for a long time. I just wanted to touch on something I haven't seen talked about before. In the 3 big college sports attendance wise football, men's and women's basketball, Tennessee is the only team in the country in the top 3 in all sports. When you add the 3 together, we are a good 40,000 fans a game ahead of our nearest rival. We do 104,000 for football, 24,000 for basketball, and 15,000 for women's basketball. That's 40,000 more people paying for parking, and 5.00 sodas and hotdogs. When you include our new softball, baseball, soccer ,track and field, and aquatic facilities, its probably closer to 50,000. Lane Kiffen, like Bruce Pearl before him:), didn't listen to the hogwash about UT not being able to compete. We are the 800 pound gorilla of college sports. Phil Fulmer for some reason never understood this. We need a new defensive coordinator we hire the best in football. We need a new strength coach we find the best and give him a 60,000 raise. Why is coach O going to come here? Because we are going to give him a trunk full of money. Why would rodriguez come from florida? Trunk full of money. We make so much more money then the other schools in the SEC its not even funny. Its time we stopped settling for anything less then the best. And the best doesn't include anyone on the current staff.
 
#3
#3
mike hamilton said:
I'm new to the board but have been reading it for a long time. I just wanted to touch on something I haven't seen talked about before. In the 3 big college sports attendance wise football, men's and women's basketball, Tennessee is the only team in the country in the top 3 in all sports. When you add the 3 together, we are a good 40,000 fans a game ahead of our nearest rival. We do 104,000 for football, 24,000 for basketball, and 15,000 for women's basketball. That's 40,000 more people paying for parking, and 5.00 sodas and hotdogs. When you include our new softball, baseball, soccer ,track and field, and aquatic facilities, its probably closer to 50,000. Lane Kiffen, like Bruce Pearl before him:), didn't listen to the hogwash about UT not being able to compete. We are the 800 pound gorilla of college sports. Phil Fulmer for some reason never understood this. We need a new defensive coordinator we hire the best in football. We need a new strength coach we find the best and give him a 60,000 raise. Why is coach O going to come here? Because we are going to give him a trunk full of money. Why would rodriguez come from florida? Trunk full of money. We make so much more money then the other schools in the SEC its not even funny. Its time we stopped settling for anything less then the best. And the best doesn't include anyone on the current staff.
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EDIT: Missed the attendance part:)
 
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#7
#7
in attendance, in other words money, the mens team was third in basketball attendance, third in football attendance, and first in women's attendance. as i clearly stated, we average a good 50,000 fans a game better then our closest rival. florida, auburn, alabama, and georgia, all did less then half what we did in men's basketball.
 
#8
#8
Well, just like our program, the Yankees haven't done anything significant for an unusually long period of time. That's not a good trait to have in common.

There's no use being the "800-pound gorilla of college sports" if that doesn't translate to winning on the field/court/whatever.
 
#11
#11
mike hamilton said:
florida, auburn, alabama, and georgia, all did less then half what we did in men's basketball.
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Let's take a look at the capacities of the basketball arenas for these universities. This should be fun.

Florida: Stephen C. O'Connell Center - 12,000

Auburn: Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum - 10,500

Alabama: Coleman Coliseum - 15,316

Georgia: Stegeman Coliseum - 10,523

Tennessee: Thompson-Boling Arena - about 21,000

So TBA has double the capacity of the Georgia and Auburn arenas, close to double the capacity of Florida's arena, and holds about 6,000 more fans than Alabama's facility, and you think pure attendance numbers are going to tell the whole story? Brilliant. Listen, I love Tennessee athletics just as much as the next guy, and I'm glad we've got passionate and dedicated fans, but please - exercise some common sense before you post.

Hey, I'm sure we killed Duke in attendance as well. :crazy:
 
#12
#12
ThatVolGuy said:
Let's take a look at the capacities of the basketball arenas for these universities. This should be fun.

Florida: Stephen C. O'Connell Center - 12,000

Auburn: Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum - 10,500

Alabama: Coleman Coliseum - 15,316

Georgia: Stegeman Coliseum - 10,523

Tennessee: Thompson-Boling Arena - about 21,000

So TBA has double the capacity of the Georgia and Auburn arenas, close to double the capacity of Florida's arena, and holds about 6,000 more fans than Alabama's facility, and you think pure attendance numbers are going to tell the whole story? Brilliant. Listen, I love Tennessee athletics just as much as the next guy, and I'm glad we've got passionate and dedicated fans, but please - exercise some common sense before you post.

Hey, I'm sure we killed Duke in attendance as well. :crazy:
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I think you missed the point.... badly.

And if Duke had a 21,000 seat arena they wouldn't sell half of the seats in there except for the UNC game and most of the fans in there would be Tarheel fans. They can't pack out their small gym for most games.
 
#13
#13
Well, I get that more attendance = more money for the athletic department. Perhaps my post was a bit of a tangent, but don't you think Florida would be able to fill a bigger gym?

Your point about Duke definitely stands, however - a quick search turned up some stories about declining attendance last year.
 
#14
#14
ThatVolGuy said:
Well, I get that more attendance = more money for the athletic department. Perhaps my post was a bit of a tangent, but don't you think Florida would be able to fill a bigger gym?

Your point about Duke definitely stands, however - a quick search turned up some stories about declining attendance last year.
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Yeah - that's what he was basically saying. All about the money.. nicer and bigger facilities = more people = more money = bigger budget or atleast what I took from that wall of text.

I'm not sure. Florida - quite possibly... but I don't think they could fill it as consistently as us. Auburn, Bama, and Georgia.. no chance. We have some of the best fans in the nation and some pretty good basketball fans for a football school.
 
#15
#15
i haven't checked the last year, but UGA and Texas athletic departments both clear more money than Tennessee. There could be others, but those two are typically the tops when it comes to making revenue in the athletic department.
 
#16
#16
volfanbill said:
i haven't checked the last year, but UGA and Texas athletic departments both clear more money than Tennessee. There could be others, but those two are typically the tops when it comes to making revenue in the athletic department.
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how do they do it? volume? higher prices? both?
 
#17
#17
I did a report on it a few years ago for sports finance, but I have forgotten most of the details. I remember Texas absolutely dominates merchandising since they focused on the longhorn symbol.
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#18
#18
I think one of the reasons is that at UT we don't use any taxpayer funds for sports.

Those that beat us in profit do so by using taxpayer money to fund the moneypit sports (Womens athletics, swimming etc). Even the year the Lady Vols went undefeated and won a NC they still lost something like 300 grand total. That year the mens team was piss poor as well and lost even more than the womens team.

So, with our football capacity we COULD appropriate taxpayer funds to the moneypit sports and increase our over all profit, but we don't.

At least this is what I have read anyway.
 
#19
#19
tm3 said:
how do they do it? volume? higher prices? both?
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they have an article ( i will try to find a link- www.texasmonthly.com ) in "Texas Monthly", october or november issue, that outlines how they do it. my in laws are all big oUT ("other ut") fans and my wife and I went to the Texas-Texas A&M game a few weeks back. part of it is mass marketing. they market themselves and sell rights to their logo, use of their name in advertising, coach stuff, etc. like a professional team. i know most teams do that now as well, but they seem to have hit on something a lot of places don't tap into. they brought in an average of almost $17,000 per athlete last year, and thats every athlete, not just the big 3. pretty impressive. their ticket prices are high, $90.00 apiece face for the game we went to.
 
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#22
#22
At the time of my article, Texas wasn't using tax money. They have two separate depaetments, one for men, one for women and while the men's side helped the women, no outside money was used.

Also, Texas offers different prices for tickets depending on the game. An Aggie game is around $90 a seat, while Baylor and Rice are typically under $50
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#23
#23
volfanbill said:
At the time of my article, Texas wasn't using tax money. They have two separate depaetments, one for men, one for women and while the men's side helped the women, no outside money was used.

Also, Texas offers different prices for tickets depending on the game. An Aggie game is around $90 a seat, while Baylor and Rice are typically under $50
Posted via VolNation Mobile
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didn't realize that, thanks. i knew the ticket structure for the OU game was different, but didn't know they fluctuated prices like that. Tennessee does that as well, right?
 
#24
#24
It's been a few years since I had read about it (obviously from my using the undefeated womens season).

The only reason I read about it then was that it was a pretty big story that the LV lost so much money even while having a perfect NC season.

At that time it was unusual to have an athletic budget without the use of taxpayer dollars. It hurt UT in profit margin but helped by using all tax money for academics. It also helped shut up critics that stated "school is for learning not sports" when it was revealed that it was 100% self supported.
 
#25
#25
OrangeU said:
didn't realize that, thanks. i knew the ticket structure for the OU game was different, but didn't know they fluctuated prices like that. Tennessee does that as well, right?
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It has been so long since I have bought a ticket through the university either because I bought scalper seats or had a friend that is a UT faculty member that I don't really know how tickets are priced.
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