What a difference a year can make.

For the Syracuse University football program, it was a difference of nearly $4.7 million.

A year after losing $834,377, the football program made a profit of about $3.9 million in 2009, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics. In its first year under head coach Doug Marrone, the program reported $19,152,691 in revenue and $15,300,740 in expenses.

There were two primary reasons that caused the shift in profit from 2008 to 2009, said Rob Edson, SU’s chief financial officer for athletics and senior associate athletic director.

The main reason for the increased revenue was a decrease in staff expenses, he said. In 2008, SU paid former head coach Greg Robinson $2,214,505, which included a $1 million buyout for not coaching the final season of his five-year contract and $1,095,987 in base compensation for coaching his fourth season.

Because of the buyout, there was a period of time when SU’s athletic department was paying two coaches, Edson said, but that ended in 2009.

The increased number of home games in 2009 meant more opportunities to generate revenue and fewer expenses toward traveling, Edson said. The team had eight home games and four road games in 2009, compared to six and six in 2008.

Attendance at home games increased. The average attendance in 2009 was 39,043, an increase of 5,569 from 2008, giving them the eighth largest average attendance increase from the previous year among Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams, according to the 2009 National College Football Attendance Report.

More home dates and fewer transitional expenses were not the only reasons the football program saw a net revenue increase in 2009.

There was a larger conference distribution of money in 2009 than in 2008, said John Paquette, associate commissioner of the Big East conference. All the Big East football teams share postseason revenue.

The conference takes in the revenue from television and bowl deals, Edson said. The Big East comes up with a distribution system that the member schools all agree upon before money is paid out to each conference team, he said.

There was a slight change in the allocation method in 2009, which allowed for a larger payout than what SU received in 2008, Edson said.

The SU football team went 4-8 last season in Marrone’s first year, an improvement over the 3-9 season Robinson led the Orange to in 2008. A winning program brings increased attendance, more concession and ticket sales, and opportunities to market the institution, which can lead to an increase in revenue, Edson said.

‘Our goal is, every year, for us to be able to increase the revenue regardless of wins and losses,’ Edson said. ‘It’s what we need to do in order to support our program.’

In 2008, SU’s loss of more than $830,000 put them in rare company among automatic-qualifying Bowl Championship Subdivision schools.

Only four of the 66 BCS school programs lost money in 2008. The Orange was last in the Big East and ranked ahead of Duke University and Wake Forest University but behind the University of Connecticut. In 2009, the Orange ranked fourth, behind West Virginia University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of South Florida.

The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act is intended to make prospective students conscious of an institution’s commitment to providing reasonable athletic opportunities for men and women. All higher education institutions that participate in a federal student aid program are required to prepare an EADA report by Oct. 15.

The U.S. Department of Education also uses a lot of the data in developing its own report for Congress on gender equity in collegiate athletics, said Sara Gast, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

‘We don’t try to regulate it or anything like that,’ Gast said. ‘We kind of use it as a common gathering ground. It’s self-reported, which would allow for institutions to take their data into their own hands.’

Since the surveys are self-reported by the institution, accounting procedures may vary between schools, said Daryl Gross, SU’s athletic director. Additionally, SU has costs that other universities may not have.

A state institution may be provided with police by the state, Edson said. SU, as a private institution, has to work with the city of Syracuse and Onondaga County to pay the cost for police services for home games, he said.

Edson also said SU has to pay to play in the Carrier Dome, which is a unique expense among schools.

‘A lot of places, if they have their own facility on campus, they’re not paying to play there, but we do that,’ he said. ‘It’s part of the university budget process, and that’s part of what we do.’

Edson would not say how much SU pays to play in the Dome, but game-day expenses for football were $1,693,145 in 2009, according to the data report.

With the EADA report, Edson said there’s nothing misleading when looking at SU. But problems could arise when trying to compare SU to another school’s EADA report because there are inconsistencies when schools categorize different expenses, he said.

SU might consider something an athletic expense while other schools may not consider it an athletic expense, Edson said.

Despite finishing the season at 8-5 following a 36-34 win versus Kansas State University in the inaugural New Era Pinstripe Bowl on Dec. 30, Edson said he wasn’t ready to presume a larger profit for the football program in 2010.

There are different factors to keep in mind every year when looking at revenue, he said, including home games. The Orange had fewer home games this year, which makes it difficult to assume a more profitable year.

But Paquette, the Big East official, said the conference’s teams will likely make more money in 2010 than they did in 2009.

‘There’s generally an increase because of new bowl agreements,’ he said.

Bowl agreements, such the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl and the Champs Sports Bowl, will help to increase the money paid to Big East member schools compared to 2009, Paquette said. West Virginia’s appearance in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 28 marked the first year the bowl was affiliated with the Big East. The bowl replaced the Gator Bowl on the conference’s bowl schedule.

The increases from the bowl payout in the Champs Sports Bowl and the money given from the Bowl Championship Series will also help 2010 be more profitable than 2009 for Big East members, Paquette said.

And that’s good news for SU’s athletic department.

The football and men’s basketball programs were the only sports at SU with surplus revenues in 2009. The total revenue of all SU sports, excluding football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball, was $8,408,178. The total expenses of those sports were $19,308,250, a loss of more than $10.9 million.

The men’s basketball program brought in $18,309,470 in revenue in 2009 with a profit of more than $10.2 million. Together with the football program, the sports programs combined to make approximately $14.1 million in 2009.

In the Equity in Athletics report, the SU athletic department reported balancing its budget at $49,342,459 for 2009. In 2008, SU also balanced its budget, reporting nearly $51 million in expenses and revenues.

‘The bottom line is that for us to be successful, football and basketball have to be successful,’ Edson said. ‘Because we need them to not only cover their own expenses but to cover the expenses of the other sports who are unable to generate the revenue necessary to be able to support themselves.’

jdharr04@syr.edu

Published on January 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu