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By Paul Stanford

James Quaschnick/Special to The Madera Tribune Fresno State football coach Pat Hill watches the Bulldogs during a 2007 preseason scrimmage at Bulldog Stadium.

James Quaschnick/Special to The Madera Tribune Fresno State football coach Pat Hill during a 2007 game against Sacramento State.

There's a reason why major college football coaches like Fresno State Bulldogs head coach Pat Hill get paid what many might consider to be an exorbitant salary. Producing a quality product on the field is one consideration, but generating a revenue sufficient enough to fund virtually every other school sport while also tossing a little into the university's collection basket and making a profit is just as compelling.

And he must win much more than he loses. This task would be made much easier if not for Hill's penchant for aggressive non-conference scheduling of BCS opponents, sometimes to the disdain of Bulldog supporters, instead of herding a bunch of middle-of-the-road teams to slaughter at Bulldog Stadium.

But when your motto is "Anyone. Anyplace. Anytime." rolling up a perfect non-conference record against patsies is not an option.

And while Hill's primary charge is recruiting, coaching and developing players, he also has an obligation along with Fresno State athletic director Thomas Boeh to make decisions for the program and the university that have little to do with the current product on the field, but have a great impact on future product development.

"Every year, we get a budget to work with and do the best we can with what we are given," Hill said. "You work with what you have and you coach what you have. No matter what other schools have, when we line up on the field, it's our job to win."

And those non-football decisions all revolve around the business of college football. And make no mistake, college football is big business that by some accounts produces over $6 billion annually.

Fans may focus on touchdown passes, rushing yardage, turnovers and third-down conversions, but the reality of college football is revealed in far less sexy terms. Budgets and revenues, spreadsheets and balance sheets, profit and loss, return on investment, running in the red or black.

And in the red is where 110 of the 119 Division I-A athletic programs ended last season.

It matters little whether the coach is the revered Urban Meyer of the University of Florida. If the Gators stop winning and the nearly $59 million in revenues that were produced from football in 2006 go away, so too will a good chunk of the $38 million in contributions from the Gator Boosters.

Coaches are the CEOs of these revenue-generating machines and it doesn't matter that Meyer has a national championship and is the savant of the spread offense, if the football money dries up Meyer may well find himself pitching the gas efficiency of the Toyota Prius on a radio station in Gainesville.

And in functioning essentially as CEOs, major college football coaches now reap nearly the same financial rewards that their peers in corporate America would for producing revenue.

In 2006-07, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops was the highest paid coach in college football at nearly $3.4 million annually followed by Alabama's Nick Saban at $3.5 million and Florida's Urban Meyer at $3.1 million.

Hill's salary, while providing a very good living, is nonetheless middle-of-the-road for a football coach who enters this season with his team ranked No. 25 in the nation in the recent USA Today coaches poll, the first time the Bulldogs have ever had a preseason Top 25 ranking.

"Sometimes people tend to focus too much on the money," Boeh said. "Pat is probably in the range of the 40th or 50th highest paid coach in the country but if he was paid more, would that make him a better coach? The answer is no. He is without a doubt one of the best coaches in the country regardless of pay."

And managing budgets and revenues is the same stark reality that Hill deals with each and every year and for the most part plays significant roles in many decisions he makes.

BCS bowling for dollars

With the advent of the Bowl Championship Series in 1997, the disparity between the haves and the have-nots in college football has caused a great chasm in terms of potential revenue opportunities. Programs in non-BCS conferences have desperately tried to overcome these obstacles in order to establish a national reputation and line up for the bounty that playing in a BCS Bowl brings in terms of revenue, but the learning curve has been steep.

There are six major conferences - ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, Pac-10 and SEC - that receive automatic bids to play in BCS games if they win their conference title. Breaking into the party for so-called "mid-major" conferences - Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, WAC and Sun Belt Conference - has been exceedingly rare and is made much more difficult being subject to the often maligned BCS rating system.

But Hill's aggressive scheduling remains a testament to his belief that the plan on how to storm the BCS gatekeepers is sound. And in walking down the hallway towards Hill's football office, this template for success is clearly demonstrated. Lining the east wall are individual trophy cases in which helmets from each of the BCS schools that the Bulldogs have played, all 24 of them, are proudly displayed. And once inside his office, there are three helmets - Oklahoma Sooners, USC Trojans and LSU Tigers - all of whom Fresno State played when they were the top-ranked team in the nation - prominently displayed on top of his tank filled with tropical fish.

"This is a big part of what we offer to recruits, big-time teams and national television," Hill said. "We can't offer them a 100,000-seat stadium, huge football budgets or as lavish facilities as BCS schools, but we do give them the chance to play against the best and be seen."

Plenty of Bulldog supporters echoed displeasure at the Bulldogs traveling to LSU in 2006 to suffer a resounding 38-6 defeat when it was obvious their talent level that season made it a body-bag game.

But what a lot of folks don't know is that, just as in 2005 when the Bulldogs accepted the invitation to play in the Liberty Bowl, heading to LSU's stadium, known as Death Valley, to take on the top-ranked Tigers was a decision with financial overtones. Not only did it fulfill Hill's desire to play the best and gain national notoriety but the Bulldogs also received according to Hill, an $850,000 payout from LSU for the game.

This is an example of a football decision prompted by financial implications. If Hill had chosen to decline the LSU game and do what many fans want - namely, come up with a soft preseason schedule against the likes of Portland State, Weber State or some lower-tier program, the result would not be justified in terms of maintaining the Bulldogs national presence or being more attractive for a major bowl bid.

And from a business perspective, it would be disastrous as the Bulldogs would have to pay one of these teams in the neighborhood of $250,000 to come to Bulldog Stadium and get walloped. And ESPN would surely not pony up money for the game. Also, Bulldogs fans would likely not come close to filling the stadium for such a weak opponent so the net result would be not only giving up the large LSU payout but also losing television revenue and a substantial amount of gate receipts at Bulldog Stadium.

Now for those who still would rather win the WAC first than get bloodied by a national powerhouse, there are other factors that come into play when the plan is to develop a program that can compete at the highest level while sustaining itself in the future.

"That's what we have worked very hard for in the past 11 seasons," Hill said. "To develop a program that competes at the highest level and can be consistent year in and year out. A lot of people thought we had completely lost our reputation and couldn't come back when we went 4-8 in 2006, but last year showed that it was just one bad year, and this season should be one that shows Bulldog football is still a national presence."

College football has evolved into a revenue-generating mechanism that is every bit as dependent on finances as any business in corporate America. And financial decisions drive this unquenchable thirst of college football revenue more so that a well executed game plan or a running back who rushes for 2,000 yards.

Boeh knows this and so does Hill.

It takes money to make money in college football

Of the high profile football programs that are generally found at the top of the polls and playing in BCS games at the end of the season such as Texas, Florida, Ohio State, LSU, USC and Miami, there is a direct and quite staggering correlation between their success on the field and the budgets they have to work with.

According to the U.S. Department of Education website, Equity in Athletics, a database consisting of athletics data that are submitted annually as required by the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act by all co-educational post-secondary institutions that receive Title IV funding (federal student aid programs) and that have an intercollegiate athletics program, Ohio State's operating budget for athletics in 2007 was just over $109 million with Texas not far behind at $105 million.

In 2006, the Buckeyes football budget was over $32 million which generated revenue of more than $59 million while Texas brought in nearly $64 million of football revenue

In the same year, Virginia Tech allocated more than $26 million for football while Auburn operated with a budget of nearly $23 million.

In fact, last year ten teams generated football revenues more than $45 million compared to none as recently as five years ago. In this upcoming season, more than $240 million will be paid out to college football teams.

Gatorade is the corporate sponsor of five of the six BCS conferences while the University of Florida brokered its own deal with Pepsi Cola for the tune of $27 million over ten years.

College football programs in BCS conferences have raised more than $3.9 billion in the past six years to fund stadium expansions and Fox television entered into a contract with the NCAA to televise BCS bowl games the next four years for $320 million.

If business is about money, then college football is a business. Big business.

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Paul Stanford Paul Stanford is the sports editor for the Madera Tribune. You can contact Paul at 674.8134 ext. 225 or e-mail at pstanford (at) maderatribune.net The Madera Tribune online subscription To subscribe or log on, CLICK HERE. For more information first, CLICK HERE.