ESPN: Big East hoops money outstrips football

[TopFrog]

ESPN: Big East hoops money outstrips football

By Eamonn Brennan

Veterans of the Great College Sports Realignment of 2010 -- we should get t-shirts made or something -- are aware of one very important thing about college sports in the modern era: Money drives everything. And football drives money.

This all-important notion was hammered home again and again in the realignment fracas. The Big Ten added Nebraska. The Big East adds TCU in 2012. TCU! When the Big 12 appeared to be on the edge of dissolution, Kansas, one of the nation's true hoops bluebloods, found itself contemplating a potential move to the Mountain West. Dogs and cats living together ... mass hysteria.

Which is why it's maybe just a teensy bit refreshing that the Big East -- the one major conference that can conceivably be called a basketball league in the year 2011 -- that in 2011, the Big East received more money from the NCAA for basketball than it did for football. CBS's Brett McMurphy ran the numbers: ...

 

[KillerFrog InD KitchenSink]

This headline (derived from the CBSports article) is rather deceptive. First, it only includes BCS distributions and no other bowl distributions. Second, although the BE is the only one with more NCAA tourney money than BCS money, all BCS AQ conferences are rather similar:

1. BE (basketball/football): 24.9/21.2 million
2. Big 12 18.9/21.2
3. Big Ten 18.4/27.2
4. ACC 18.2/21.2
5. Pac-10 16/27.2
6. SEC 15.5/27.2

Is the BE really that different?

 

[sous vide]

...

Is the BE really that different?

Chi-squared = 4.229, d.f. = 5, p-value = .5178.

No.