In the 2013-’14 academic year Ohio State’s athletic department brought in $145.2 million in revenue to rank No. 5 nationally. LSU ranked No. 6 on the same list compiled by USA Today earlier this year with $133.7 million in revenue, while Oklahoma came in No. 7 with $129.2 million.
Way down on that list, ranked below non-traditional football schools like Indiana, Virginia, Illinois and Rutgers was Clemson, which ranked 39th after pulling in $74.8 million worth of revenue.
It is easy to assume given the number of dollars some schools are bringing in that it would leave smaller schools with smaller budgets, such as Clemson, with a competitive disadvantage. Or does it?
“When we played LSU, Ohio State and Oklahoma, if we had to meet at the middle of the field and compared checkbooks before the game, then I would have been real concerned because we would have got our butts kicked,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said.
Instead, the opposite happened. The Tigers did the butt kicking as they rallied to beat LSU in the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl, physically matched Ohio State pound-for-pound in winning the 2014 Orange Bowl and then last year they physically dominated Oklahoma in every area in winning the Russell Athletic Bowl.
Clemson has also beaten No. 19 Georgia ($103.5 million) and No. 22 South Carolina ($98.6 million) in the previous two seasons.
Clemson is one of just three Power 5 schools in the last four years to win at least 10 games very year. Its 42 victories during that time span ranks seventh nationally.
“I want to be able to compete at the highest level, and I don’t have any doubt at Clemson we can do just that. You don’t have to have the biggest budget,” Swinney said. “There are a lot of teams out there that have huge budgets and they are not very good. There are other teams out there that have very small budgets and they are doing great.
“I think from my perspective, I better focus on things that I can control … our coaches, our players, our moral, how we prepare, the toughness in our program, how we train, how we think … those are the things that ultimately are going to decide football games.”
Clemson running back Wayne Gallman and the Tigers ran through Oklahoma in last year’s Russell Athletic Bowl.
Since 2011, Clemson is 12-4 against the top 20 winningest programs of all-time, and has defeated eight different top 20 teams. One of those is Auburn, who the Tigers have defeated twice since 2011. Those SEC Tigers brought in $113.7 million in revenue in 2013-’14, which ranks No. 13.
Do the math. Clemson by itself has defeated six programs from other conferences, four from the SEC, that rank in the top 25 in total revenue since 2011.
“The game is played on the field and that is what I focus on,” Swinney said. “I focus on the players and I let everybody else worry about all that other stuff. I think we are well positioned here as a conference now, and into the future from a financial standpoint and all of that. Every program is trying to get better.”
But skeptics say the ACC has fallen behind the other Power 5 Conferences, especially when it comes to the never-ending race in terms of television dollars. In a story by CBS Sports.com earlier this summer, the ACC is ranked fourth by the Pac-12, Big Ten and SEC after it reported $302.3 million in total revenue during 2013-14. The Pac-12 brought in $374 million, the Big Ten $338.9 million and the SEC $325.9 million.
All three of those conferences have their own television networks, which some might say has helped them pull away from the ACC. However, at the ACC Football Kickoff in Pinehurst, N.C. last week, ACC Commissioner John Swofford did not seem worried at all with those facts. Though the ACC does not plan to break out an All-ACC sports channel in the next year, the commissioner seemed content with where things are going in regards to that process as well as the conference’s relationship with ESPN.
“We continue to have quality discussions with ESPN, and ESPN is as good a partner as you can possibly have and they will be our partner through at least 2026-27,” Swofford said. “They bring — and our other partners — bring outstanding exposure for our players, for our teams, for our schools and for our league. At some point, as we go through our analysis and discussions and we’re being very thorough and deliberate about that, because it’s an important long-term decision, but together we’ll make a joint decision about the best route to go for the future of our television as we move forward.
“It’s a very important decision as you know, and I think we have positioned ourselves extremely well as a league for future options, whatever those options may be.”
Thanks to the success programs like Clemson, Florida State and Georgia Tech have had in recent years on the football field, the ACC will have better options. Though coaches at the ACC Football Kickoff had to defend the credibility of the league, once again, the facts of the matter prove the conference should not have to defend itself at all.
In the last three years, the ACC is 4-1 in BCS and College Football Playoff Games. Florida State won the national championship in 2013, while the Seminoles, Clemson and Georgia Tech have each won the last three Orange Bowls.
Since 2011, the ACC has had 186 players selected in the NFL Draft, and 93 percent of those players are still in the league. This past May, the ACC tied for the most first-round draft picks with nine and had 47 players selected overall, one of only two conferences (the SEC) to have 42 or more players chosen in back-to-back years.
“I don’t know how people view the conference, but I know how our opponents view the conference,” Swinney said.
In last year’s four big rivalry games with the SEC, to conclude the regular season, the ACC went 4-0 as Clemson knocked off South Carolina for the first time in five years, Georgia Tech defeated Georgia, FSU downed Florida and Louisville beat Kentucky.
Since 2011, Clemson is 12-4 against the top 20 winningest programs of all-time, and has defeated eight different top 20 teams, including LSU in the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl.
“To me, this conference is the most complete conference in college football. When you look at the whole side of it … winning on the field, draft picks, APR, graduation rates, all of those types of things, it’s the whole package. Our conference does not take a backseat to anyone out there,” Swinney said.
“I think six years ago as a conference, at least when I came into the league, we were kind of getting beat up a little bit because we were not winning some of those games. We were not winning them. All you have to do is look at what has happened and the results on the field. That has changed. This conference is as good as there is in the country. I’m not going to sit here and argue about this and that, but this conference can stack up with anybody and I think that will prove itself as we continue to move forward.”
The ACC became the first conference in history to have 11 teams qualify and participate in bowl games in each of the last two seasons.
“Don’t let the facts get in the way. Sometimes somebody says something and they run with it,” Swinney said. “That speaks to the depth of this conference. There are a lot of conferences out there that may have three, four or five teams that are pretty competitive, but when you have eleven teams in bowl games that shows the parity we have in our league, the competitiveness of our league.
“You better bring it every single week. I think we have outstanding coaches. I think the ACC is going to continue to strive in every area, on the field, in the classroom, the college football awards, the NFL Draft, on and on and on the ACC is right there.”
Off the field, the ACC had nine schools honored by the American Football Coaches Association for their graduation rates, with Duke being tied for the nation’s top honor. The ACC has finished first nationally among all conferences in seven of the last nine years in the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate and first in each of the last eight years in the NCAA’s APR.
Clemson is the only school in the country to rank in the top 10 of APR scores and in the final top 25 of both major polls in each of the last four years. In fact, Clemson has finished in the top 10 of the APR rankings in each of the last five years, while the streak on the field includes three straight final rankings in the top 15.
“Clemson is never going to be Ohio State. It is not going to happen. We have 17,000 students, they have 50,000. We don’t have quite the alumni base and things like that,” Swinney said. “But we are not trying to be Ohio State. We are trying to be Clemson and be the best Clemson we can be.
“We are very blessed. We have tremendous resources. We have people that give graciously to our program and we have to be good stewards to that and we try to be.”