[URL][URL]https://www.nj.com/rutgers/2021/03/heres-what-it-cost-for-rutgers-to-finally-have-an-ncaa-tournament-basketball-team.html[/URL][/URL]]RUTGERS SPORTS INSIDER[/url]
Here’s what it cost for Rutgers to finally have an NCAA Tournament basketball team
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[URL][URL]http://connect.nj.com/staff/ksargeant/posts.html[/URL][/URL]]Keith Sargeant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com[/url]
During the 2015-16 season, Rutgers spent a record $6.15 million on its men’s basketball program.The payoff? A 7-25 record, a last-place finish in the Big Ten and a $2.2 million severance package to fired head coach Eddie Jordan.
As Rutgers prepares for its NCAA Tournament game Friday night against Clemson, the athletics department is still spending big on its men’s basketball program.Rutgers spent more than $8 million for the third time in four years in the most recent season under Steve PikiellBut this time the payoff is bigger.
The Scarlet Knights are in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 30 years, an accomplishment that has rejuvenated a long-suffering fan base.One year after winning 20 regular-season games for the first time in 37 years, Rutgers rebounded from the heartbreak of last year’s NCAA Tournament cancellation with a sixth-place Big Ten finish and a spot in the tournament.
“This is what it costs to build competitive programs,’' Rutgers athletics director Pat Hobbs said. “And competitive programs are going to drive revenues to cover those costs — and more eventually.’'An NJ Advance Media review of Rutgers’ financial documents shows Rutgers’ first trip to the NCAA Tournament came with a cost.The expenditures include:-- $33.2 million spent on its men’s basketball program — or 7.9% of its overall expenditures budget — over the past four seasons under Pikiell.-- $2.27 million paid to Pikiell last year.
His salary ranks as the third-lowest in the Big Ten, where the average annual base salary is $3.1 million.-- $966,725 paid to Rutgers’ three assistant coaches and $507,500 paid to the five-person support staff. While both are highs for the basketball program, the $1.48 million total ranks near the bottom of the Big Ten in staff salaries, according to records reviewed from around the conference.-- $103.6 million on a multi-use sports facility that features the men’s basketball program as the penthouse tenant.-- a $400,000 pre-Covid-19 recruiting budget.
In Jordan’s final year as coach, Rutgers spent $150,000 on recruiting.Rutgers officials say the increased expenditures since Pikiell’s arrival is the cost of doing business in the ultra-competitive Big Ten.
“I love the fact that Rutgers is a place that has a vibrant athletics program,’' university President Jonathan Holloway told NJ Advance Media last year.
“Yes, I’m also aware that there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about the way in which the way athletics has morphed over the last 25 years or so.
We’re in a market right now in which we must be competitive, and being part of the Big Ten is a very competitive conference and we need to be respectable across those sports competing in the Big Ten. We need to do that because nothing can convene more people at once than a really successful team.
’'According to the university’s most recent publicly available financial document, Rutgers spent $8.35 million on men’s basketball during the 2019-20 academic year.A look at financial documents show Rutgers’ Big Ten rivals spent an average of $9.6 million per school on men’s basketball in fiscal year 2019
.Michigan State was the top spender at $16.8 million in the 2018-19 season. Its reward was the Big Ten championship and a trip to the Final Four.
“We still have close to the lowest expenditure budget in the Big Ten,’' Hobbs said. “Even what we’re spending on basketball, we’re still spending far less than the median in the conference, in a place where the cost of living is far higher.’'It’s why Hobbs looks at the $114 million Rutgers spent last year on its overall budget and doesn’t see it as a spending problem.
“We don’t have an expenditure problem; we have a revenue problem,’' he said. “You compound your revenue problem when you’re not successful. So the only way to grow ourselves out of that is to have the success that we’re seeing now with men’s basketball.’'
A deep dive inside the numbers show Rutgers has invested more in basketball under Hobbs’ leadership than at any point in school history. Flash back to that 2015-16 season, when Rutgers was at a low point from a competitive standpoint.The program had languished under Jordan, losing by an average of 25 points-per-game in Big Ten play. Rutgers’ attendance dipped to an average of 2,527 fans per game, a three-year low that resulted in $1.36 million in ticket sales
.Hobbs fired Jordan following the season and nine days later tapped Pikiell, a then-48-year old Connecticut native who was fresh off leading Stony Brook to the NCAA Tournament.
Pikiell, who earned $400,000 annually at the Long Island school, agreed to a five-year contract worth an average of $1.6 million per season. That marked a $150,000 increase from what Jordan was scheduled to earn in 2016-17.Another move by Hobbs from a contractual obligation standpoint: Pikiell was given a pool of $800,000 to hire assistants — a $220,000 per-year increase from what Jordan had available for his staff.Pikiell produced instant results.
His team doubled its win total in Year 1 and attendance increased 5.3 %. In turn, Hobbs went to work to provide his coach with more resources to succeed.Ten months after announcing a $100 million fundraising plan with the goal to build a multi-sport practice facility,
Rutgers broke ground on the RWJ Barnabas Health Athletic Performance Center and the Scarlet Knights’ practice court had echoes of squeaking sneakers three years later.“It’s important to have a coach you have confidence in, and for the coach to know that you’re going to provide them with the resources necessary to win,’' Hobbs said.
Rutgers officials say the total cost of the 307,000-square-foot, four-story facility was $103.6 million. It was kickstarted by a $25 million tax credit — a school official said the construction of the parking garage, which is a university parking facility, was not a cost incurred by athletics — and paid through a combination of an $18 million naming-rights deal and private donations.
In addition, the athletics department is responsible for paying back a $43 million internal loan to the university over the next 27 years.Rutgers’ financial reports show the revenue produced by the men’s basketball program has increased, but not at the level of the annual expenditures. During the 2019-20 season, Rutgers generated $2.23 million in ticket-sales revenue off the men’s basketball team. It was a record thanks to 10 sellouts and an average attendance figure of 6,764 fans per game.
In Jordan’s final year, Rutgers earned $50,516 per home game. Last season, Rutgers averaged $88,637 every time Pikiell’s squad played in the RAC.Rutgers’ financial reports show the men’s basketball program has operated at an average $4.58 million deficit over the past two years.Rutgers officials say the financial numbers don’t reflect the intangible benefits of the university’s academic initiatives receiving airtime on the Big Ten Network during the Scarlet Knights’ 20-plus games a year.
Or, Holloway said, the enthusiasm that comes from the university’s donor base when Rutgers’ marquee teams are winning.“A great basketball program is the front porch of a university and this feels sort of a trite phrase but I actually believe it’s true,’' Holloway said. “It coheres community in a great way. When it’s doing well it’s wonderful and that becomes a vehicle to tap into a good feeling in this case about Rutgers. It will make my case easier as I go around the state trying to talk with people and finding things to connect over. Sports is a great connector.’
'
Hobbs concedes the financial picture for the Rutgers athletics program will look bleak when the 2021 fiscal-year report comes out early next year. Rutgers lost out on more than $10 million in ticket sales because COVID-19 restrictions kept fans out of SHI Stadium and the RAC, financial records show.Still, he believes the investment spent to build Rutgers into a winner was worth it.
“What I’ve said to everybody is we’re in the process of writing the greatest chapter of Rutgers athletics history,’' Hobbs said.
“I just felt so good for everybody — our kids, our coaches, and half-a-million living alums out there who have been waiting for this. The flood of text messages, and the appreciation of everyone at Rutgers was amazing.
Our President, Jonathan Holloway, said to me: ‘Even in this remote environment you can sort of feel the electricity of this moment.’’'
