When the University of Connecticut football team beat Buffalo in January’s International Bowl, the school received a boost to its reputation that will likely pay dividends on the recruiting trail.
But the game itself wasn’t much of a boost to the school’s bottom line.
While UConn received $1.1 million from the Big East Conference for participating in the game, the university spent nearly all of the money on bowl-related expenses, including $258,000 on unsold tickets.
The final profit was $18,484, down nearly 27 percent from the $25,266 the school made in its previous bowl appearance, the 2007 Meineke Car Care Bowl in North Carolina.
And those expenses don’t include about $191,000 in bonuses — built into the payroll budget — that the school paid to coaches and other staff members for making it to the game.
“It’s not a financial benefit to go to lower tier bowl games,” said Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission, an independent organization that promotes academic and fiscal integrity in college sports. “Most of the time bowl games aren’t benefiting the university and we’ve seen time and time again that some of these bowl games end up costing schools more money than they actually receive from going to it.”
UConn officials admit that bowl games outside of the Bowl Championship Series are not big moneymakers.
“Based on how much money you are given to spend and the enormity of traveling a football team, the goal for UConn and most schools is to break even,” said Mike Enright, a spokesperson for the school’s athletic department. “It’s more for recruiting, and to bring notoriety to the school. It gave us national TV exposure that will help boost the football program’s profile.”
Enright said expenses for the trip were paid for by the Big East Conference, which receives, pools and then redistributes the revenue that each of its teams earn from playing in a bowl game. Six Big East teams went to bowl games last season and netted $7.5 million, including $750,000 from the International Bowl, which was played in Toronto.
UConn received about $1.19 million in total revenue but spent $1.17 million during the trip, not including $191,000 in bonuses paid to coaches and staff, money that came out of the athletic department’s payroll budget, Enright said.
Head coach Randy Edsall, who earned a base salary of $1.4 million in 2008, received the largest bonus of $25,000.
Enright said that it’s not uncommon for colleges to reward coaches for making it to the postseason.
The single largest expense incurred by the university was $258,000 for thousands of tickets the school was obligated to purchase for the game, but couldn’t sell.
In order to play in the International Bowl at the Rogers Centre, UConn had to purchase 10,000 tickets at $40 apiece. The school made back $82,000 through the public sale of about 2,000 tickets, but they had to pay $60,000 for tickets for band members, faculty, staff and student athlete guests and $258,000 for tickets that they couldn’t sell.
The University of Buffalo, which made its first ever bowl appearance and is 100 miles from Toronto, sold all of their tickets.
Enright said there were many factors that prevented UConn from doing the same.
“This bowl game presented some unique challenges,” Enright said. “From the standpoint of attracting fans, it was a little difficult. The economy was in a sputter and the game required fans to get passports since it was outside the U.S.”
The bowl game was also played Jan. 3, just a few days after the holiday season ended and the same day both the men’s and women’s basketball teams played games, Enright said.
Among other major expenses incurred by the team’s trip included $491,938 spent on travel and lodging for members of the football team, coaching staff, faculty, athletic department employees and guests. That entourage of about 224 people spent nearly $120,000 on meals, $77,000 on a hotel stay at the Sheraton, and $190,413 on a chartered flight into Canada.
The school also rented several buses while in Toronto, which cost about $26,000.
The cost for 317 members of the band and cheerleading squad was $162,745.
Other expenses included $45,095 on team awards, which included gift certificates to an electronic store that each player received for earning their way into the bowl game.
“It’s a team award that is permissible by the NCAA,” Enright said.
The team also spent $54,000 in marketing and advertising to promote the game.
Perko, of the Knight Commission, said there are far too many bowl games and that the bowl system has grown beyond a championship event. Instead, she said it has turned into an excuse for coaches to practice longer and for teams to end their season with trips to fancy cities.
“Broader questions need to be raised about the system as a whole,” Perko said. “At a time when many universities are facing very difficult budget questions, it’s appropriate to ask if this system makes financial sense.”
Perko said that many teams that go to bowl games end up losing money.
Rutgers University, for example, played in the PapaJohns.com Bowl last December and lost more than $184,000.
“It’s not financially sound for colleges to subsidize these bowl games,” Perko added.
But Enright defended the bowl games and said there are many good things that come out of them.
“There are a lot of good intangibles in going to a bowl game,” Enright said. “It helps put the program on the map.”
