USA TODAY: Billions at stake on playing 2020 football season

by TigerNet Staff - Wed Apr 15 10:36:47 GMT-05:00 2020

Football is the lifeblood of college athletic programs. With pundits and college officials assessing just how a 2020 football season may come about, USA TODAY put the price tag on what's at stake this fall (and maybe into the spring).

Their reporting estimates $4.1 billion in lost revenue without a season for just the 50-plus public schools like Clemson, which works out to an average of $78 million per school.

The USA TODAY report estimates that making up over 60 percent of the total annual operating revenues for the 2019 fiscal year.

Minus the expenses that come in staging events and more, their estimate is a net loss of $3.3 billion.

The cancellation of the NCAA Tournament already meant the NCAA cutting its distribution by $375 million to programs.

“This is way beyond anybody’s imagination,” Oklahoma athletics director Joe Castiglione said recently. “I was telling somebody the other day that I feel like we are living one of those movies. … We’re enthralled by the storyline, the cinematography, the drama and whatever emotions get invoked. Then the movie would end and you would get up and walk out of the theater and realize it was quite a story but it was just a movie. This one, we are living day to day and we still don’t know exactly if we are a fourth of the way through it, halfway through it, three-fourths of the way through it.”