Budget changed Rutgers

NEW YORK – When Rutgers hired athletic director Robert Mulcahy eight years ago, he was given a mandate to upgrade a beleaguered football program – and a budget to get the job done.

The Scarlet Knights went to the Insight bowl last year, their first postseason appearance since 1978. This year, they got even better and made a tantalizing run at playing for a national championship until Cincinnati stopped their undefeated season.

Rutgers doubled its spending on football from $7 million to $13.2 million since 1998. The Scarlet Knights (9-1, 4-1 Big East), who rose to No. 7 this season, spent more than Michigan ($12.2) in the 2004-05 fiscal year, according to the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Web site.

“Football has become the front porch of the university,” Mulcahy said. “The free publicity and national telecasts – we could never have gotten that anytime before.”

Among the top 10 teams in the AP poll, Ohio State spent the most on football at $29.6 million in total expenses, followed by Southern California ($21.4), Florida ($19.2), Notre Dame ($17.1) and Wisconsin ($16.6), according to the report.

The football spending comes at a time when NCAA president Myles Brand is cautioning schools to rein in budgets, and Rutgers is facing an $80 million shortfall in state aid.

Rutgers plans to drop six sports next spring as part of universitywide cuts. The school will retain 24 sports after dropping men’s tennis, swimming and diving, heavyweight and lightweight crew and men’s and women’s fencing.

With an overall athletic budget of $41 million, which also doubled under Mulcahy, no financial cuts are planned for football.

“That’s the one thing that has the ability to generate money,” he said.

Rutgers took in $1.25 million from the Insight Bowl, but did not finish in the black. Michigan had the largest reported surplus among the top 10 at $34 million, followed by LSU ($25.4), Notre Dame ($24.6), Florida ($24.1) and Ohio State ($22.2) in 2004-05.

Brand recently defended the NCAA’s tax-exempt status in a letter to Congress, arguing the primary goal of the NCAA is education regardless of money schools receive from TV contracts and championship events.

Athletic budgets at Division I schools increased 8 percent to 12 percent annually during the last decade while university budgets increased only 3 percent to 4 percent, Brand said.

Those findings came from a 50-member presidential task force assigned nearly two years ago to consider the future of Division I sports. Brand noted that about only 24 athletic departments earned a profit among the approximately 330 Division I schools in the last decade.

Rutgers, now No. 15 in the AP poll, ranked sixth in per-player spending among top-10 teams. USC led at $40,993 per player.