College basketball's biggest spenders

AOL Fanhouse and Brett McMurphy put together a very interesting three-part series about the spending done by the universities with big-time college athletics. (Read them here, here, and here.)

The part that is most interesting to us, however, was the list near the bottom of the third article. McMurphy put together the money spent by the basketball team for each of the schools in the BCS conferences, as well as the top 20 spenders outside of the BCS leagues. Some of the numbers you would expect, while others ... well, let's just say some schools are wasting money.

Duke spent $3.5 million more than any other team in 2008-2009.
(photo credit: ESPN)

The biggest spender was, not very suprisingly, Duke, who dropped a cool $13.87 million on the hoops program in 2008-2009. To get an idea of how much money this is, one-third of the BCS schools spent less money on their football teams. A more incredible number? Of the 346 teams in D1 college basketball, 330 of them didn't spend half of what Duke did. And they say the Yankees have an unfair advantage? Like the Yankees, Duke capitalized on that spending this year, winning Coach K's fourth national title.

While Duke isn't a surprise as the country's biggest spender, second place may be -- that would be Marquette, who spends $10.3 million. I have nothing against the Golden Eagles' program -- they made a Final Four back in 2003 and have competed at the top of the Big East for much of the decade -- but if Marquette is the only other team in all of college basketball to spend more than $9.03 million, wouldn't you expect them to be consistently competing for national titles, not conference titles?

Marquette is far from the biggest underachiever. Take a look at Rice. The Owls are the worst basketball program in a downtrodden Conference USA. They have won a grand total of five conference games in the last three seasons, including an '07-'08 season in which they won three games total and went winless in the league. But Rice is the third in the non-BCS schools in terms of spending on basketball at $4.63 million, which is just $10,000 less than UNLV, who spends the second most. That is more than Creighton, Xavier, Dayton, Gonzaga, St. Joe's, and Temple, to name a few.

In fact, Rice is the 45th highest spender in all of college basketball. That's more than schools like Missouri, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest, all of whom have good basketball programs, at the very least they are all much, much better than Rice.

Some of the other underachievers:

Virginia: The Cavaliers had the 12th highest spending in all of college basketball at $7.18 million, yet this is a program that really has been relevant this decade. They had a good year back in 2007, riding the coattails of Sean Singletary and JR Reynolds to an NCAA Tournament berth. But beyond that, this is a team that has been mired in mediocrity for the past decade.

Indiana: The Hoosiers spent $6.94 million two seasons ago, and had a 6-25 season to show for it. Its understandable -- this is Indiana, and they are still rebuilding from the disaster known as the Kelvin Sampson era. But regardless, the Hoosiers are spending a lot of money without a lot to show for it.

Arkansas and Georgia: The Razorbacks and the Bulldogs spent $6.63 million and $6.29 million in 2008-2009, respectively, which was the 17th and 18th highest in the sport. While that seems like a waste for the two teams that have seen the bottom of the SEC's two divisions more often than the top recently, like Indiana, its explainable. Georgia has their own scandal to rebuild from, involving Jim Harrick and the strenuous class load he forced his player's into. (That said, watch out for Georgia -- the Bulldogs are going to have their best season in a long time next year.) Arkansas, on the other hand, has been dealing with a never ending string of player problems. They have talent, they just can't keep that talent on the court.

There are some impressive overachievers as well. Ohio State, Purdue, Wake Forest, Kansas State, Baylor, and Missouri are all winning games with budgets equivalent to the best mid-majors.

The most interesting part in all of this is the budgets that some of the best mid-majors face. You always here about how teams like Memphis, and Xavier, and Gonzaga, and Butler can compete with the big boys and how they are essentially major programs, but looking at these numbers you realize how wrong that statement is. Memphis, at $6.54 million in spending, would slip right in between Arkansas and Georgia, but they are the only non-BCS program in the top 43 teams. Xavier is 69th with $3.93 million, coming in right behind Nebraska and Colorado. Gonzaga, at $3.05 million, is 87th spent less than all but two of the BCS schools -- South Florida and Ole Miss. Butler didn't even crack the top 20 in mid-major spending.

Of the top 11 highest spenders, 10 have been to a Final Four since 2003.

The only school in that group that hasn't?

Kentucky, aka the winningest college basketball program of all-time.