As a small business co-owner in the Triangle, I thought it wise to subscribe to the Triangle Business Journal to stay on top of market trends in the area. Truthfully, I’m not one of those folks who is mesmerized or enamored by big business, the stock market, or even political economic policy. To further admit my shortcomings on the topic, I sometimes find myself trudging through what in turn are mundane articles on the same in the TBJ only because we paid for the subscription and I am at least partly obligated to my business partner to follow through with my assurance that it was a worthy investment. Rest assured, the irony in that does not escape me. Occasionally, however, the TBJ is riddled with great and interesting stories of local business owners with new ideas and there’s even the occasional story about the finances of sport. Those sorts of things can hold my attention.
On the front page of today’s issue of the TBJ is a piece entitled: “ACC injects $12M into members to help in tough time” You can read it yourself by clicking here.
I never really thought about the fact that the Atlantic Coast Conference, much like the Federal Government with its tax paying citizen states, would have a cash reserve. Clearly, however, it does. And it must be relatively substantial. Twelve Million dollars isn’t the type of gift horse you look in the mouth, and N.C.State took what essentially was its cool million and hopefully at least said, “Thanks.” I know that many of us long time Wolfpack supporters will look at this as little more than a pittance of blood money after being repeatedly scorned and defamed by Swofford and the ACC. But before you pounce, keep in mind that this two-time payment of $505,000 was in addition to regularly scheduled payments to the member institutions comprising of television contracts and post season tournaments. These payments likely helped both State and UNC meet their revenue projections for the most recent fiscal year.
Carolina claims their revenue will exceed $61.4 million and put its program in the black for the year. Our revenue was a paltry $40 million, but that was $700k more than we prepared for!!!! That’s not including $6 million from the Wolfpack Club for scholarships which brings revenue up to a still somewhat paltry $47 million.
The bowl game helped us. But we took a bath to the tune of $300,000 for not being able to sell our allotment of ACC Basketball Tournament tickets.
The article ended with this clip:
UNC Associate Athletics Director Clint Gwaltney says season ticket sales for football are down this year. So far, UNC has sold 34,700 season tickets out of a possible 36,100.
There seems to be a number of ways this conversation could go. I am curious as to how our athletic department plans to use the surplus. I found one website with a quick Google search that sets out the average salary for a physician with three or more years of experience in the field of sports medicine to run about $450,000. I guess that’s a place to start…. maybe.
