Operating the Hogs Is Big Business

It's appropriate that you are reading this column in the pages of Arkansas Business.

What ArkansasSports360.com covers has much more in common with our sister publication, Arkansas Business, than you might think. This is especially true when it comes to the University of Arkansas athletic department, an entity with an operating budget in excess of $50 million.

Sports - for the people running the show - has become less about entertainment and more about business than most folks realize. This isn't just true on the professional level where athletes' salaries are in the tens of millions.

Even in college athletics, where the athletes are given a free education and a handful of other stipends as payment, the money involved is mind-boggling. This year, for example, is the first in a multi-year deal that CBS and ESPN will pay the Southeastern Conference more than one billion over the course of the contract.

Competition off the field is just as important in the SEC as competition on it. They go hand in hand. That's why athletic director Jeff Long and has staff are working hard at finding additional funding for their operation.

Without fund-raising and mining what Long calls "revenue streams," the Arkansas athletic department won't expand beyond its current position in the SEC. What position is that, exactly?

Bloomberg News ranked the Razorbacks 2008 athletic department budget ninth among 11 public SEC schools. By 2009 the numbers hadn't changed enough to affect Arkansas' position much on the list.

Outranking only the Mississippi schools doesn't cut it from a budget standpoint any more than it does from field-level. No fan would be content beating only Ole Miss and Mississippi State in sports.

That's why Long continues to ask for money in one fashion or another. It's not a fun message to hear - or in Long's case deliver - but if folks want an elite-level athletic program, they need to be prepared to pay for it.