With a Big East tournament championship under their belts and the NCAA tournament underway, every win is a step closer to national glory for the Hoyas – and a big payday for the university.
For every game the men’s basketball team plays in the tournament, the university receives a hefty paycheck from the NCAA, which goes into the athletic department’s budget, according to Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs Kyle Ragsdale.
Some of those funds are used to pay the costs of Georgetown’s participation in the NCAA tournament, such as travel and lodging for the basketball team.
“The expenses for the NCAA go up,” Ragsdale said. “There is an amount that goes back to the operating budget, but a significant portion is also taken up by expenses.”
Senior Sports Communications Director Bill Shapland would not comment on how the university distributes the funds it receives.
“As a private institution, we do not release financial information to the public,” Shapland said.
According to the NCAA’s 2007 budget, the association’s projected operating revenue for this year is $564 million, of which it keeps 6 percent, according to NCAA Director of Public and Media Relations Erik Christianson. A portion of the remaining revenue is distributed among participating conferences based on the number of Division I sports and grants-in-aid offered by the universities in the conferences.
Some of the remaining proceeds are divided into equal “units,” which are allocated to conferences based on their member institutions’ performances in the past six years. Big East Associate Commissioner John Paquette estimated these units to be $177,000 each this year.
Conferences then individually decide how to divide the money they receive among their participating universities. Paquette would not release the Big East’s distribution scheme.
Last year, for every game the Hoyas played, the university was awarded $115,000 by the Big East.
“In general, the plan is a combination of sharing and also finding ways to reward success,” Paquette said. “There are some portions of our revenue that we distribute evenly and there are also times when we follow the argument that `Hey, I’m successful. I’m doing things right. I should be rewarded.'”
Neither NCAA nor Big East administrators said that they believe the distribution scheme adds unnecessary pressure on the Georgetown basketball team.
“The basketball distribution is distributed to the conferences based on their performance in the championship over a six-year rolling period, which is designed to eliminate the pressure [on coaches to perform],” Christianson said.
Peter Keszler (COL ’09), a member of Hoya Blue, said he believes that the revenue Georgetown receives from the NCAA tournament would be useful to several other Georgetown sports, especially those not as lucrative as basketball.
“I know that Georgetown athletics definitely does need the money,” Keszler said. “Most of the sports programs at ours and most other universities are not revenue-generating, so the NCAA money helps pay for things like field hockey and other sports that cost the athletic department money but don’t generate any.”
