USA Today calculates that college football generates at least $4.1 billion in fiscal-year revenue for the athletics departments at the 50-plus public schools in the Power Five conferences, or an average of more than $78 million per school. Most of these schools budgeted for the coming year with the expectation that that money would be there. Now, much or all of it won’t be.
Schools with top football programs have already lost the television revenue from out-of conference games and all of the revenue from ticket sales, luxury boxes, parking fees, etc. Now, they might be losing all of their expected revenue.
Dan Patrick — the sports journalism icon, not the lieutenant governor of Texas — reports from his sources that “the Big 10 and Pac 12 will cancel their football seasons tomorrow. . . . The ACC and the Big 12 are on the fence. . . . And the SEC is trying to get teams to join them for a season.”