Big-Bucks Recruiting

by patienthornsfan on Aug 1, 2008 2:00 AM CDT

Which team in the Big XII spends the most on recruiting? Texas? Nope. OU? Not so much. Half their recruiting costs are covered by Big Red Auto anyway. OSU? Boone Pickens has bankrolled a lot of facility upgrades, but the Cowboys aren't on the list.

The team that spends the most on recruiting in the Big 12 might surprise you. It's Kansas State, which ranked fifth nationally with a total of $1.316 million, an increase of 267 percent from 1997 and a 110 percent increase from 2002. The reason for Kansas State's philosophical change came when Ron Prince was hired to replace Bill Snyder. Instead of mining the areas near the school's Manhattan campus, Prince opted for a national recruiting philosophy dotted with players from both coasts. Men's basketball coach Frank Martin has made a similar change from Jim Wooldridge's old ways.

The top 15 schools can be found at this link. What would be more interesting would be to see each school's budget as a percentage of the overall school budget. To use the Arms Race analogy, this would likely be like Belgium spending 45% of its GDP on weapons of mass destruction.

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I'd say its money well spent...

wait have they even been to a bowl game worth watching lately?

by tvr'11 on Aug 1, 2008 9:08 AM CDT reply reply 0 recs

Location

The closest airport is Kansas City, which isn’t a cheap one to fly in and out of. I’d also estimate that Manhattan, Kan. is about 2.5-3 hours away, so that gas money adds up. I’m sure that doesn’t account for all the costs, but being close to a major airport sure does help some schools.

by Longhorn13 on Aug 1, 2008 10:59 AM CDT reply reply 0 recs

Oh, but the wind blows cold on the prairie toads...

Has anyone worked up a correlation between recruiting dollars and the resultant W-L record for schools?

There’s the kicker that KSU has recruited some 19 JC players this past recruiting period as Bill Snyder did in his early years. This would suggest KSU will be more dangerous in the immediate future if the Snyder model is still operative.

Nebraska was the next highest but I can see this as throwing dollars at upscaling the program to the glory days. Must have been lonely and cold around the campfire last winter even with the big Husker dolls in waiting.

Of course, if some team had scored 70 points on the Horns, I can see the power that be throwing out butt loads of dollars, too.

by whills on Aug 1, 2008 11:13 AM CDT reply reply 0 recs

I think UT’s budget is generally lower because almost all of UT’s recruiting visits are in-state. Hopping in one of the cushy athletic dept. vehicles and driving is usually much cheaper than hopping a flight from Austin. The state’s big, so I’m sure a few coaches might hop a flight to El Paso instead of driving, but for the most part, being fairly centrally located and no farther than 3-4 hours by car from the majority of the football powers in the most concentrated hotbed of football talent really makes it easy on a recruiting budget, one would think.

I’m half-Kansan, half-Texan, but I know Kansas geography a little better. Manhattan is in the middle of nowhere, the nearest serviceable airport is in Salina, and the nearest airport anyone knows is in Kansas City. Also, K-State has to work extra hard to sell itself to recruits because of (A) its fundamentalist, agricultural, blue-collar feel (K-State:Kansas::TAMU:Texas), (B) it’s isolated location, and© relatively unimpressive facilities. I visited KSU in the recruiting process, and while I wasn’t looking to play football in college, I definitely noticed their athletic department lagged behind most of the Texas schools I visited, even TCU and Baylor.

by burntorangehorn on Aug 2, 2008 9:47 AM CDT reply reply 0 recs