USA Today International - 22.08.2019

SPORTS USA TODAY ❚ THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019❚ 3B

spend more than $7 million, well ahead
of No. 2 Alabama (roughly $5.56 million)
and No. 3 Tennessee ($5 million).
Georgia’s football recruiting expendi-
tures have more than quadrupled in re-
cent years, going from $581,531 in the
2013 fiscal year, when Mark Richt was
head coach, to roughly $2.63 million in
2018 (not adjusting for inflation).
“When you’re in the SEC, you’d better
be able to compete at the highest level,”
Smart said. “That’s across the line of
scrimmage. That’s in the administration
buildings. That’s in what you can do for
student-athletes, and we’ve been able
to do that.”
On the field, Georgia under Smart
won the SEC title and reached the na-
tional championship game to end the
2017 season before again reaching the
SEC title game in 2018. Those two title
games ended in close losses to Alabama,
but Georgia has continued to compile
some of the nation’s top-rated recruit-
ing classes, trending closer to ending a
Bulldogs’ national title drought that
goes back to 1980 and Herschel Walker.
The coach of Georgia’s last national
champion team, Vince Dooley, later
served as the school’s athletic director.
He said the financial investment for
football at Georgia “has always been at a
high level, but never as high as it is now.”
“I’m not surprised that Georgia and
Alabama are right up at the top at
spending the most,” Dooley said. “To be
able to compete at that highest level, the
way that you do it is to recruit at the
highest level, and the way you do that is
that you spend a lot of money going
wherever you need to go. No limit.”

Budgets ballooning everywhere

The NCAA defines recruiting costs as
including “transportation, lodging and
meals for prospective student-athletes
and institutional personnel on official
and unofficial visits,” and the “value of
use of institution’s own vehicles or air-
planes as well as in-kind value of loaned
or contributed transportation.”
Fifty-two Power Five public universi-
ties collectively spent more than
$50 million to recruit football players in
2018, the most recent year totals were
available. That was up from roughly
$35.5 million just two years before.
During the 2018 fiscal year, public
schools in the SEC averaged more than
$1.3 million in football recruiting costs,
compared with public schools in the
Big 12 ($961,981), Atlantic Coast Confer-
ence ($938,424), Big Ten ($855,437)
and Pac-12 ($708,750).
The SEC spent the most, but costs are
climbing nationwide. Texas’ expendi-
tures increased from $420,227 in 2016
to $1.82 million in 2018. Less prominent
programs such as Kansas, Minnesota
and Utah were among the 19 Power Five
public schools to pass $1 million in 2018.
“I don’t think this is sustainable, and
I’ve said that publicly,” said Florida
State athletic director David Coburn. “I
think there are very real risks in not try-
ing to rein in the rate of growth in your
athletic budget. And I don’t think they
are necessarily long term. ... I think
chickens are coming home to roost ev-
erywhere. With the exception of a very
small number of schools, everyone is
feeling the pressure.”
Recruiting spending for Florida State
football soared from $655,785 in 2016 to
roughly $2.28 million in 2017, which led
all 52 Power Five public schools that
year and was more than $600,000 over
the amount the Seminoles had budget-
ed for it.
Coburn was appointed FSU’s athletic
director in May after serving since Au-
gust 2018 in an interim role, and he has
spent much of his time in charge ad-
dressing an athletic department budget
deficit, which has necessitated cuts.
During the 2018 fiscal year, FSU’s
recruiting costs for football dropped to
$1.58 million, while Seminoles head
football coach Jimbo Fisher departed in
December 2017 for Texas A&M.
Coburn said the dramatic jump in
recruiting costs in 2017 could have been
because of changes in the accounting
process. He added, “I suspect that there
may have been more use of private
planes that one particular year,” but
with sweeping changes since atop FSU’s
department and football program, Co-
burn said he couldn’t “really find anyone
who can give me a good explanation for
that jump.”
Fisher’s new program at Texas A&M
spent more than $1.71 million to recruit
in 2018, well exceeding its budgeted
amount of $951,500.
In budgeting ahead for recruiting, ad-
ministrators can often be in a tough
spot. They don’t want to offer a blank
check, so to speak, but “you’re not going
to tell them to stop recruiting,” said Ten-
nessee athletic director and former foot-

ball coach Phillip Fulmer.

“Of all the things that we do, that’s

probably the No. 1 thing that we have to

do,” Fulmer said, “short of supporting

them academically when they get

there.”

UGA athletic director Greg McGarity

cited travel costs and a strategy to

recruit more nationally as a reason for

the Bulldogs’ rising expenditures.

From 2015 to 2018, Georgia exceeded

its budgeted amount for football recruit-

ing by $2.38 million (an average of

$593,948 a year), according to informa-

tion obtained by the Courier Journal

separately from the NCAA reports. The

overage peaked at $945,966 in 2016,

when Georgia’s budgeted amount was

$1.25 million. That budgeted amount in-

creased to about $1.9 million in 2017 and

$2.27 million for 2018, as well as for

2019.

“They can’t sit here (ahead of time)

and say, ‘I’m going to make 10 trips to

California. I need to make eight trips to

Miami.’ I mean, there’s just no way to

do that,” McGarity said. “There is a bit

of flexibility because you’re not going

to shortchange, especially, football

recruiting. ... Contingency funds within

your operation budget, that’s how you

cover overages. But you try to do the

best job that you can to estimate the ex-

penses that you’ll incur during the year.”

McGarity stressed that comparing

recruiting costs for schools is not apples

to apples. In particular, amounts for

travel can vary based on access to

planes.

For instance, Georgia does not have

regular access to private aircraft for

coaches’ travel, McGarity said, “so we

basically use four of five different

groups to facilitate our travel depending

on where coaches have to go.”

Yet in a previous job, McGarity over-

saw aviation for the University of Flori-

da’s athletic department, which he said

had access to two private planes.

“That was a great thing to be able to

use the aircraft at Florida because their

budgets just had to absorb the fuel

costs,” McGarity said. “The pilots were

on salary. The plane, it was all in a differ-

ent account. It’s different than us. Basi-

cally, we just write a check to a vendor

for the trip, whichever trip that our

coaches may be on.”

‘It just means more’

Arkansas director of football opera-

tions Randy Ross, who previously

worked for 17 years at Alabama and

oversaw recruiting efforts, recalled a

player once choosing Tennessee over

Alabama while citing that the Volun-

teers had soft-serve ice cream readily

available.

“Buddy, you’d better believe we had a

soft-serve ice cream machine in Bryant

Hall after that,” Ross said with a laugh.

When Ross arrived in Tuscaloosa in

1990 and was put in charge of Alabama’s

recruiting operations, he met with then-

athletic director Hootie Ingram.

“He said, ‘Listen, at Alabama, there is

no recruiting budget,’ ” Ross said.

“Whatever we’ve got to spend to recruit

• now he wanted it done legally – but
  there is no limit. He said, ‘I want you to
  go get the best players you can. Money is
  not a factor.’ ... I never heard the word
  (‘budget’) again in the 17 years I was
  there. I heard it that one day, and I never
  heard it again, because of the support.
  And that’s what I think you’ll find at a lot
  of SEC schools.”
  In 2006, the year before Nick Saban’s
  arrival at Alabama and the final full year
  of Ross’ tenure in Tuscaloosa, the Crim-
  son Tide spent $237,774 in football
  recruiting. Five national championships

later, Alabama spent $2.34 million in

2018, second only to Georgia among

public Power Five programs and ahead

of third-place Tennessee.

Those top three spenders all have ties

to Alabama’s coach and program.

Georgia’s Smart was hired away from

his post as Saban’s defensive coordina-

tor at Alabama, and Tennessee is

coached by Jeremy Pruitt, who replaced

Smart as coordinator in Tuscaloosa be-

fore being hired in Knoxville.

“Really, (recruiting costs) are just a

reflection of the coach and how they ap-

proach recruiting, how they approach

official visits, how they approach the

entire world of recruiting,” McGarity

said. “I would just say you have some

coaches that are visionaries, and a lot

depends on who you surround yourself

with and where you’ve been.

“I think in the case of Kirby, he had

experience at other institutions, saw

some things that we could do better. So

we’re moving forward in a lot of those.”

Schools are spending more to recruit

football players because, generally, it’s

an investment with proven results.

Only three teams – Alabama, Clem-

son and Georgia – have played in the

past four national title games, and each

of those three ranked in the top five na-

tionally among public Power Five col-

leges in 2018 recruiting expenditures,

with Clemson (fifth at $1.79 million)

coming in behind UGA, Alabama, Texas

and Texas A&M.

Georgia’s 2017, 2018 and 2019 recruit-

ing classes ranked third, first and sec-

ond in the country, respectively, in 247

Sports’ composite rankings. The next

highest spender, Alabama, ranked first,

fifth and first in those three years.

“They do more (in the SEC) than any-

body else as far as recruiting-wise,” said

Western Kentucky head coach Tyson

Helton, who was Tennessee’s offensive

coordinator this past season. “It’s mon-

ey well spent. ... It’s an arms race, and if

you’re able to get that particular two,

three, four guys, they’ll make a differ-

ence. Because in the SEC, the parity is

everybody is pretty much the same. It’s

just those few marquee guys.”

After losing the 2017 season’s nation-

al championship game in overtime to

Alabama, Georgia’s Smart pledged,

“We’re not going anywhere.”

In 2018, Georgia spent $2.63 million

on football recruiting and roughly half,

$1.36 million, on all other sports’ recruit-

ing combined. The next highest sport

was men’s basketball at $341,064.

The price tag for football recruiting

was more than Georgia spent for athlet-

ic financial aid for its six men’s teams

other than football ($2.45 million) and

for travel for all of its women’s teams

combined ($2.37 million).

“I think Kirby would be very aggres-

sive in recruiting,” McGarity said. “It

just is the style and the approach that

the head coach desires to take. ... I think

he’s going to find ways – as he talked

about at (SEC) media day – what are the

incremental improvements we can

make that may make a difference?

“Because there’s a thin, thin line be-

tween really being good and great. And

what can you do to close that gap?”

Where does the money go?

Costs for prospects on official visits

to campuses can be steep, especially if

those visits happen on game weekends

with increased travel and hotel rates.

Along with the addition of an early sign-

ing period for football, the NCAA recent-

ly changed the window for official visits

to include months in the spring, thus in-

creasing visits and costs.

Additional cash is now being spent

on recruiting travel via private planes,

specifically for assistant coaches.

“Before if the head coach was flying

on the plane, then the assistants could

jump on,” said Texas A&M athletic di-

rector Ross Bjork, who until recently

held the same role at Mississippi. “Now

there’s assistant coaches flying by

themselves or in a smaller group on pri-

vate planes, and then the head coach

might be on another plane going some-

where else.”

Schools willing to spend more to

charter expensive flights for assistant

coaches can obtain an advantage of

having them reach more prospects in a

short period of time and then be back

and ready to do it again the next day.

Rising costs have also accompanied

larger staffs devoted to recruiting,

whose salaries aren’t reflected in the

budgets. The additional input means

more brainstorming and more extrava-

gant efforts to impress prospects, not

just on visits.

Some coaches, including Smart, have

traveled via helicopter to watch practic-

ing prospects at high schools.

“The splash of the coach showing up

in a helicopter, I think I did that one time

at Kentucky,” said Rich Brooks, UK’s

head coach from 2003 to 2009. “It

doesn’t make sense, a lot of it. But you

have to one-up the competition, and it

gets very, very expensive, and I’m not

sure where this round of the great vol-

leys of ‘Let’s see who can outdo the oth-

er’ is going to end.”

Arkansas will often send daily mail-

outs with promotional materials,

whereas in the past those might have

gone weekly from schools.

“Everybody has got 20 people in their

recruiting department,” Ross said, “and

when kids come on campus, they’ve got

all the fancy bells and whistles. ... Every-

thing we do focuses on recruiting. So

we’re always trying to think of some-

thing. We’re always trying to keep up

with the latest things. You have to spend

money to make that happen.”

Closing the gap

Some schools might be new to higher

recruiting costs, but at Tennessee,

“We’ve been there from a commitment

to recruiting,” Fulmer said.

In the previous decade, Tennessee

was consistently the SEC’s pacesetter in

football recruiting expenditures. From

2006 to 2008, during Fulmer’s time as

head coach, the Vols were the only pro-

gram in the conference that annually

spent more than $1 million.

“When I was growing up, Tennessee

was one of the premier programs in the

country,” said Pruitt, the Vols’ current

coach, “and that’s still the expectations

of the fans, everybody associated with

the athletic department, our coaching

staff and our players.”

Tennessee remains one of the lead-

ers among Power Five public schools in

recruiting expenditures, ranking third

in 2018 behind Georgia and Alabama. In

2017, Florida State ranked first. Pruitt

worked at each of those four universi-

ties in the past six years, serving as de-

fensive coordinator for the Seminoles,

Bulldogs and Crimson Tide.

Unlike the other three programs, the

Vols haven’t enjoyed much success on

the field since Fulmer was fired as head

coach during the 2008 season.

“As we build our program back and

show young people that we’re for real

again,” Fulmer said, “our facility and

tradition and history and all those

things are still very much intact. Our

goal is to get back competing at the top

of the league. Nobody is going to roll

over and just play dead and let us do

that, so we’ve got to fight and get there.”

The cost of the facilities race in col-

lege football goes well beyond budgeted

amounts for recruiting, but in many

ways, it’s tied to the same pursuit: Im-

pressing recruits to want to attend your

school.

“I’m not sure that recruiting expendi-

tures are any different than facilities ex-

penditures or coaching salary expendi-

tures, quite frankly,” FSU’s Coburn said.

“Practically, it’s your lifeblood. You have

to compete. You have to spend what you

need to spend.

“Politically, it’s very hard to defend

cutting your recruiting budget, not just

with your coaching staff but with your

supporters and your boosters, your for-

mer players. You draw back a nub if

you’re not careful.”

Now in the administrative chair as a

former coach, Fulmer said, “It’s unde-

niable that it’s an arms race.”

When are the costs going to be too

much for colleges to support?

“You wonder about that,” Fulmer re-

plied. “You see the escalation of facili-

ties, the competition of stadiums. Does

it become corporate with people and ad-

vertising? I don’t know. But everybody

said 20 years ago this is not sustainable.

“But here we are, right?”

USA TODAY Sports’ Steve Berkowitz

contributed to this report.

Recruiting

Continued from Page 1B