In a presentation to the Board of Trustees on Thursday, Debbie Yow outlined the athletic department's financial situation:
"We do not have the funding to achieve a top-25 athletic program today," she said. "We don't."
[snip]
Using financial figures supplied to the federal government as part of the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act in 2008-09 and other data, N.C. State athletics officials recently studied where they stand in the ACC. Their research showed that N.C. State ranked 11th among the 12 ACC schools in funding when the budget numbers were adjusted to reflect identical components.
| Revenues | Expenses | |
| Virginia | 81,841,632 | 70,870,413 |
| FSU | 75,209,179 | 75,209,179 |
| Duke | 68,536,289 | 68,094,063 |
| UNC | 67,613,805 | 67,375,161 |
| BC | 64,502,395 | 63,291,198 |
| VT | 58,115,929 | 50,241,096 |
| Clemson | 57,562,999 | 56,120,942 |
| Miami | 56,084,064 | 50,836,569 |
| Maryland | 51,641,771 | 51,418,347 |
| NC State | 50,335,991 | 47,180,081 |
| GT | 46,983,216 | 46,983,216 |
| Wake | 42,253,156 | 41,364,196 |
One of the ways Yow mentioned that NC State could improve financially is through an increase student fees. We lag behind every school in the ACC in this area, more than $9 million behind Boston College, which collects the most from student fees. (Update: It's been brought to my attention that I have confused student fees with scholarship aid, so disregard my comments about fees. Sorry about that.)
| Student Aid | |
| BC | 14,107,165 |
| Duke | 13,993,369 |
| Miami | 12253520 |
| Virginia | 11231866 |
| Wake | 10,828,671 |
| Maryland | 9,185,766 |
| Clemson | 9,045,630 |
| VT | 7,690,542 |
| GT | 7,447,346 |
| FSU | 6,960,132 |
| UNC | 6,666,305 |
| NCSU | 5,084,724 |
The overall numbers underscore why it's so important that we start winning in basketball again. There's huge potential for financial growth there, several thousand more season tickets the school could be selling, but we haven't been good enough in the RBC Center era to realize all of it.
On a lighter note, some folks on Twitter offered some ideas for how we can increase revenue. I think these would be real winners:
Debbie's Little Debbie Bake Sale
I have an additional idea that I feel could prove beneficial:
Introduce the "Stick 'Em Up For The Pack" campaign. Basically, you just encourage people to rob their local banks and forward the profits to the athletic department--after taking a small fee off the top for their troubles, of course. Now I know what you're wondering. Is this legal? What do I do if I can't afford a gun? And to answer those questions: I'll check on it but I'm pretty sure, yeah; rob a damned gun store, sheesh. This may seem extreme but look, Texas has its own freaking television network now. To keep up with the insane revenues at these big time schools, we're going to have to get creative.
If you think of any good money-making opportunities, leave them in the comments.