Quote:
Originally Posted by bacalaopeace
I'm fairly sure that within the decade they'll be genuinely better than teams like Oklahoma. The school is better located and draws on a similar talent pool. Why do you think FSU is so bad now?
I'd anticipate something like has happened in basketball will happen in football. These academically mediocre second tier state schools have a recruiting advantage and should be able to field stronger and stronger teams. It may not be long before Georgia Southern is consistently the second best team in its state, UCF is already consistently the second best team in its state. What's better about FSU than UCF or South Florida for a random kid?
Dude, money.
UGA's endowment is $1,200 million. Oklahoma's is $1,600 million. Stanford's is $24,800 million.
Georgia Southern's is $64 million. UCF's is $155 million.
Endowments are a reasonable proxy for how rich alumni are and how much they feel connected to the school, and thus are also a reasonable proxy for how much money the ath department has.
Obviously, this varies by school (Stanford's athletic department does not have 20x more money than UGA's), but the point is to illustrate that the scale differences we are talking about are ****ing enormous.
Gus Malzahn's buyout is almost as large as Georgia Southern's entire freaking endowment for their entire freaking university.
The "big boys" are playing on a totally different monetary scale than the little brothers.