Despite a 3-9 season and missing a bowl game for the second time in five years, the Syracuse University football program saw an increase in revenue last year, while the men’s basketball program took a slight hit, according to government data.

The football team generated $41,877,234 last academic year, up from $38,532,172 in 2013, according to data from the Department of Education. The men’s basketball team, meanwhile, saw $412,370 less in revenue, but still generated $29,354,167, according to the data, which spans from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

 

While the men’s basketball program didn’t generate as much revenue as the football program last year, its revenue-to-expense ratio was better. For every dollar in expenses for the men’s basketball program, $2.20 was generated in revenue. As for the football program, $2.11 was generated for every dollar in expenses, according to the data.

The men’s basketball team accomplished this despite facing a self-imposed postseason ban last year and a record of 18-13, which produced the worst winning percentage for the program since 1981-82.

The expenses for sports other than football and basketball was about $23.1 million, according to the data. Football and basketball expenses totaled more than $37.5 million.

 

One of the main sources of expenses comes from coaches’ salaries. The education department data does not list each individual sport’s coaches’ salaries. Head coach salaries made up about $5.4 million in expenses, according to the data, and assistant coach salaries totaled about $4.6 million.

While those salaries aren’t known, in the university’s Form 990 for fiscal year 2014 — a document nonprofit organizations file with the IRS each year — it was revealed that men’s basketball head coach Jim Boeheim made about $2.14 million in total compensation and then-head football coach Scott Shafer, who was fired last week, made about $1.3 million in compensation.

Boeheim and Shafer were the only athletic coaches listed in the fiscal year 2014 Form 990. The timeframe for that data began on July 1, 2013 and ended on June 30, 2014.

 

 

The football program generated the fourth-most revenue among Atlantic Coast Conference schools last year, according to the data, while having the fifth-lowest expenses. On the hardwood, SU trailed only Louisville and Duke among Power Five conference schools in revenue generation and had the third-highest total expenses in the ACC, according to the data.

Across the entire athletics department, SU reported the third-lowest amount of expenses in the ACC, behind only Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Louisville reported the most in expenses with $101,624,438. SU Athletics had the fifth-most revenue in the ACC at $87,175,761, according to the data.

The difference between SU’s grand total revenues from its grand total expenses was $19,784,567, according to the data.

SU’s revenue-to-expense ratio was not only the best in the ACC last year, but among all Power Five conference schools. For every dollar in expenses, SU generated $1.29 in revenue, according to the data. That figure is the best among current ACC schools since Notre Dame in 2007.

 

The university had $1,068,879 in recruiting expenses last year, while spending more than $15.7 million in athletics-related student aid. On average, a male athletics participant — 308 total — received $25,340.19 in aid, while female athletics participants (297) got $26,744.31 on average.

The full-time undergraduate tuition for the 2014-15 academic year was $40,380.

The athletics budget for fiscal year 2015 is about $60 million in operational costs and an additional $9 million for Carrier Dome operations.

Published on November 30, 2015 at 10:42 pm

Contact Justin: jmatting@syr.edu | @jmattingly306