In the money game, Tigers will overwhelm initial foe
By Kyle Veazey on March 18, 2013 10:12 AM The University of Memphis won't know until tomorrow night who it will face Thursday afternoon in its opening game of the NCAA tournament. It'll either be Saint Mary's College of the West Coast Conference or Middle Tennessee State University, a fellow Tennessee Board of Regents member that does its work in the Sun Belt Conference.

Either way, though, the Tigers will know one thing: They're much more well-heeled than either opponent.

You knew this already, of course. Yes, Memphis likes its basketball and likes to spend money on it. But let's look a little closer at the gap between the programs, according to data mined this morning from the U.S. Department of Education's Equity in Athletics database.

(I'll add the usual caveat when I write about these numbers: They're not as exact a science as you'd think, but they're the best numbers we have and are reasonably worth comparing, so we will. Again, not all schools account for things the same.)

According to the database, in the 2011-12 academic year:

-- The U of M spent $7,515,987 on men's basketball.

-- Saint Mary's spent $2,533,902.

-- MTSU spent $1,844,219.

So no matter who the Tigers face Thursday, they'll dwarf their financial resources by at least a 3-to-1 margin.

But maybe that isn't the most interesting part of our journey in to the spreadsheets on this rainy Monday. Here's another thing we found out -- again, not a surprise, but interesting to see when laid out in front of you: Among teams that made this year's field of 68, the Tigers' spending is 12th-highest.

That means that if the bracket were re-seeded based on resources, Memphis would be a 3-seed.

The 11 teams in front of Memphis: Duke, Louisville, Syracuse, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Georgetown, Marquette, Michigan State (a potential Saturday matchup for the Tigers), Indiana, Florida and Arizona.

And since we count some Ole Miss fans among our readership, here's what the Rebels spent on hoops in 2011-12: $2,510,418. Again, as someone who has covered them before, I'm not sure that's an all-encompassing number; much of coach Andy Kennedy's contract, for instance, is paid by private funds that I'm not sure go into that.

But food for thought, regardless.

CA Police coming for you.

I want to know where we are nationally out of all 347 teams.

I think we were somewhere in the 20s or 30s a couple of years ago.

(03-18-2013 01:20 PM)Dak10 Wrote:  CA Police coming for you.

This was a free link on the front page of MSN, Is that wrong???Excuse me!

I thought it was Memphis Edge. My bad, good sir.

What are the Laws on reprinting articles. There is a good one in todays Memphis Business Journal about what schools are makeing a profit and how much. UL made the most on it's BB program, Almost 27 Million. I thought was intresting.

(03-18-2013 01:28 PM)stratecashomie Wrote:  I want to know where we are nationally out of all 347 teams.

I think we were somewhere in the 20s or 30s a couple of years ago.

We are 12 highest in the tourney and I doubt there are too many schools that didn't make the tourney and are ranked higher. Obviously, Kentucky likely is. However, there probably aren't too many others.

We're very likely somwhere in the 14-20 range.

you copy a sentence or two and provide a LINK to the rest of the article -- you need to do the same with your original post in this thread.