Florida and Mississippi State have split their last six meetings on the football field, a surprise considering the disparity in overall success of each program in recent years.

Throw in the financial situation at each institution, and Mississippi State’s recent resiliency is downright staggering. Florida set a Southeastern Conference record in the 2006-07 fiscal year with $107.8 million in total athletic revenue, according to U.S. Department of Education figures, while Mississippi State’s school record wasn’t even a quarter of that at $25.8 million.

“You do get a little pleasure out of the fact when we are able to compete and win against some of the schools that maybe have other resources,” said Duncan McKenzie, Mississippi State’s associate athletic director overseeing internal operations. “I think everybody in any situation realizes the more resources you have, the easier it is to succeed.”

Resources are evident in the SEC’s most profitable sport, as the athletic departments generating the most revenue are those celebrating championships. Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, LSU and Georgia were the SEC’s top six revenue generators during the 2006-07 fiscal year, and those schools have accounted for every league football title of the past 30 years.

Florida, which won football and basketball national championships in 2006 and another basketball title in 2007, had $92.1 million in athletic expenses last year for a league-high surplus of $15.7 million. Athletic director Jeremy Foley and executive senior associate director Greg McGarity have heard the analogy they operate the New York Yankees of the SEC, only their Gators seem to be winning more titles.

Gators football coach Urban Meyer and basketball coach Billy Donovan each earn more than $3 million annually, the only such tandem nationally doing so.

“There is no question that our football coach and our basketball coach are at the top of the league, and with what they’ve done, they should be at the top of the league,” McGarity said. “But if you compare our other salaries in other sports, I think you would probably see that the Florida coaches are probably in the top half of the league. In gymnastics, you see coaches at Alabama and Georgia who are ahead of us, but look at what they’ve done over the years.

“We’ve been very fortunate in the last two years with these national championships, which grows your ability to generate more revenue from your licensing and apparel.”

Tennessee, which currently has the league’s most successful trio of football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball programs, generated $95.4 million in total athletic revenue in the 2006-07 fiscal year. Alabama, Auburn, LSU and Georgia each generated more than $75 million, while Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Mississippi State were each under $40 million.

The financial gap between those who have and those who don’t have as much is the largest in league history.

“People have a tendency to look at it that way, and I think there are certain things you can do as far as the amounts you put into your facilities, but you have your scholarship limits that are equal that helps disperse the talent over the course of the membership,” SEC associate commissioner Mark Womack said. “Those types of things are not necessarily dollar-driven, and that allows our institutions to compete with each other. Historically, you’ve seen teams at the lower end of the total athletic budget be very competitive in all the sports that we’ve had.”

THE GATOR EMPIRE

Florida athletics have been a financial force since the 1980s, when Ben Hill Griffin Jr. donated $20 million. Though Florida’s football facility is more commonly known as the Swamp, it’s official name is Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

Today, Ben Hill Griffin III is a director of Gator Boosters, a roughly 13,000-member foundation that raised nearly $38 million last year, most of which was earmarked for an expansion of the football offices. That private support is a chief reason Fortune magazine recently tabbed Florida “the most successful major sports program in the country.”

“Our boosters like the way we are doing things,” McGarity said. “They enjoy seeing the high graduation rates (Florida’s 92 percent for student-athletes is well above the Division I average of 78 percent). They enjoy seeing the success across the board. Obviously football generates the most revenue, but it’s not just a one-sport show here at Florida.”

Football and basketball do dominate in Gainesville, but Florida is on track to finish in the top 10 of the NCAA’s all-sports competition for a 25th consecutive year. Only UCLA can match that nationally.

Florida not only has stadium suites at $45,000 annually but profits by operating its campus golf course and operating aviation services for the entire university.

“They have so much more of a population base that they can pull from,” McKenzie said. “Plus, they’ve been successful. Jeremy and his staff have done a great job there, but it does blow your mind some seeing that kind of money being spent.”

Mississippi State was strapped financially in 2004, when the Bulldogs were placed on NCAA probation for violations that occurred under former football coach Jackie Sherrill. When an SEC member is ineligible for a bowl under NCAA sanctions, that school is not entitled to its share of the league’s bowl revenue, which cost State nearly $2 million in ’04.

Auburn went through a similar crunch in the early 1990s, with athletic director Jay Jacobs remembering a year in which university employees got raises but athletic department employees didn’t because they didn’t have the funds.

As for McGarity, well, he can’t recall any tough times in 16 years with the Gators.

“The University of Florida has always been in solid financial shape,” he said. “That’s because you could come here, open our books, and you would not say you could find anything that was considered extravagant. People may claim we are paying Billy Donovan and Urban Meyer $3 million-plus a year, but those are well-deserved.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Tennessee senior associate athletic director Bill Myers believes SEC athletic departments will face challenges in these exorbitant financial times, because there are always expenses cropping up for which they have no control.

For example, Myers said if the university decided to raise tuition 10 percent, it would cost his department $300,000 in additional scholarship funding for student-athletes. A 3-percent raise for all state employees would result in another $360,000 in salaries, leaving Myers with the challenge of coming up with $660,000 a year or $3.3 million over five years.

Tennessee’s media rights contract is locked for 10 years, and all season tickets to home football and basketball games are sold out, so those wouldn’t be new revenue options.

“So where do you generate those revenues or cut your expenses?” Myers said. “I think the hardest question we’ve got going forward is that you’ve got to pay to keep top-line coaches in today’s market, but where does that revenue come from and are the fans willing to pay for it?”

McGarity said no school wants to increase booster donations or increase ticket prices, but that it’s the only way to make ends meet.

It’s hard to doubt future financial growth in SEC athletics. After all, there were those in the league who wondered if their budgets would ever reach $25 million, let alone $50 million or $75 million.

“The numbers today really don’t floor me, because multi-million-dollar businesses like we are expect that kind of growth,” Jacobs said. “I like it, because it shows the interest that our fans and our culture have in intercollegiate athletics. That’s what drives it. However you want to cut it, it’s all based on our fans’ involvement.

“From the season-ticket holder who buys two seats every year to the multi-media contracts that we do with Under Armour and others. It drives that number, and I see it as a very positive thing.”

Not every SEC school will generate the same revenue in future years, and not every SEC school’s athletic teams will be held to the same standards. Any time Florida or LSU loses in football or Tennessee loses in men’s or women’s basketball these days, they are considered upsets, but upsets do happen.

“I can’t speak for the smaller schools, but the larger schools in this league are trying to win at everything,” Myers said. “We’ve built a new soccer stadium. We’ve built a new softball facility. We’ve got a $25 million swimming complex that’s going to open up within the month. If we had $26-30 million in our budget, we would probably have to make some pretty hard choices about what went where.

“I personally think Mississippi State does a really good job with what they’ve got. Their basketball team is leading the West. Their football team went to a bowl game. Their baseball team is perennially tough and has made lots of trips to the College World Series. Duncan McKenzie at Mississippi State may be doing as good of a job as anybody.”

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