A recent exercise by The Athletic made an effort to answer that question.
Just how much value does the Syracuse Orange football program have compared to its peers in the Power Four? It’s a question The Athletic put to the test in a recent story, and in its report, Syracuse ranks inside the top-50 for which college football programs have the most value.
Syracuse sits at No. 46 on the list out of the 68 schools from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12. In its conference, the Orange placed ninth, sandwiched between Georgia Tech and Duke.
According to The Athletic, Syracuse has an average football revenue of just under $55 million and a hypothetical/projected value of $329 million. In its value rankings, here is how The Athletic rated every ACC football program:
For the conference, Florida State ranked first in both average football revenue (the only ACC school to top $80 million) and projected price (over $200 million more than second-place Clemson). Clemson and Miami (FL) both earned spots in the top-three in the ACC and top-25 among the P4, while North Carolina and Virginia Tech cracked the top-five in ACC value.
In terms of average football revenue, Syracuse also ranked ninth in the conference.
Specifically for projected value, here are the other teams that ranked around ‘Cuse:
- #41: Purdue
- #42: Louisville
- #43: Georgia Tech
- #44: UCLA
- #45: Iowa State
- #46: Syracuse
- #47: Colorado
- #48: Duke
- #49: Kansas State
- #50: BYU
- #51: Pittsburgh
To clarify: The Athletic stresses to take these numbers with an immense grain of salt, mainly due to how schools report revenue and the general subjectiveness of the exercise.
Photo by Lance King/Getty Images
Something else to keep in mind is how The Athletic framed how they went about assessing a dollar value for each program listed, labeling its methodology as “part art, part science.” It determined purchase prices by using real-life transactions relative to actual revenue a college football school made over the past three years. The Athletic also says the NFL and NBA “guided its ratios” for the SEC and Big Ten, and used the MLB and NFL as “rough benchmarks” for the ACC and Big 12.
“Most revenue figures for public schools came from their NCAA financial reports, which we compiled largely through public records requests and schools’ websites,” The Athletic wrote. “Sportico and the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database filled in a few missing pieces. We also used figures submitted by schools to the U.S. Department of Education. If the two sets of numbers were vastly different, we split the difference. Our final revenues were a three-year average. For SEC and Big Ten teams, we set the multiplier range as 5-13x a program’s revenue. Because the Big 12 and ACC provide less prestige and more uncertainty, we started with a general range of 4-9x for those teams.”
That framework certainly manifested in these rankings. FSU was the first ACC school mentioned, and it ranked 18th, trailing nine SEC and 7 Big Ten schools plus Notre Dame. Third-place Miami trailed 10 programs from each of these two rankings.
The Athletic says it also considered “everything” like prestige, success, facility renovations and realignment scenarios.
Because of that, this is an exercise where Syracuse fans shouldn’t take everything too literally. With that in mind, there are some positive takeaways from the perspective of the Orange.
The two major ones: Syracuse probably doesn’t rank this high had this story come out, say, five years ago. The program is trending in the right direction, especially under coach Fran Brown. The necessary upgrades to critical areas like facilities have also been significant. And, although Syracuse historically has carried a reputation of being a “basketball school”, it still does generate plenty of money.
And, just for the sake of Syracuse football fans and especially in this era of the sport, it’s always good to take a step back from the 315 and look at the bigger picture, i.e. where do the Orange fit within the broader hierarchy right now and moving forward.
On the flip side, if we reflect this exercise in the real world, being ninth in the ACC means in terms of this projected value, the Orange are behind 16 of the 18 teams in the Big Ten, all but two SEC schools and six Big 12 programs.
And if you’re curious who ranked first in projected price, that honor went to Texas. Georgia, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan made it into the top-five, while Alabama, Oklahoma, USC, Tennessee and LSU were placed in the top-10.