4B - December 9, 2013
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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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MONEY
From Page 1B
er adds roughly $5.5 million in
direct revenues each year.
For a star player like former
Michigan quarterback Denard
Robinson, Texas A&M's Johnny
Manziel or, to a lesser degree,
Gardner, that figure can climb
much higher.
"At that extreme level, you
can't even say how much," said
Lawrence Kahn, a professor of
economics at Cornell Univeristy,
referring to players like Robin-
son or Manziel. "All you can say is
he's, I'm sure, way more valuable
that the average NFL draftable
player."
That is likelytrue of most quar-
terbacks who play at Michigan, a
schoolthat typically creates NFL-
caliber players at the position that
often become the face of the pro-
gram.
"You take Gardner, and you put
him at Utah State,he's notgoingto
generate the revenues obviously
that he will at Michigan," Brown
said.
For Gardner, the current
quarterback, the conservative
$5.5-million estimate puts his
value to the program at $16.5 mil-
lion over a three-year career as a
scarcer.
The players do receive com-
pensation, including scholar-
ships, apparel, travel, training and
meals. According to the Knight
Commission, Michigan spent
$273,863 on each scholarship foot-
ball player in 2011, ninth most in
the nation. For comparison, that's
more than 10 times the $26,345 it
averages in academic spending for
all students.
But James Duderstadt, Univer-
sity president from 1988 to 1996,
says that figure is inflated by fac-
tors other than direct spending on
athletes.
"The fallacy on that is that, in
fact, the ($273,863) that is spenton
each student is primarily spent on
coaches and staff salaries," Dud-
erstadt said. In 2011, Michigan
spent $8.76 million on salaries for
coaches, support staff and admin-
istration.
The athletes, he said, are "the
people that are generating the
wealth, but the wealth is going to
athletic directors, coaches, con-
ference commissioners. None of
it, I would add, really goes to the
universities."
IN EXPOSURE VALUE, MORE
VALUES
The study's $5.5-million
annual figure includes direct rev-
enue sources such as television
revenues and ticket sales. But it
ignores indirect sources like jer-
sey sales and media exposure.
Jersey sales receive the bulk
of the attention, but for universi-
ties, they account for a tiny frac-
tion of total revenues. Even with
Manziel, the most attention grab-
bing in the country, Texas A&M
earned just $59,690 on all jersey
sales for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 2013, according to ESPN.
Jersey sales account for 1.1 per-
cent of licensing revenue, accord-
ing to the Collegiate Licensing
Company.
Most teams, like Texas A&M,
take 10 percent of the wholesale
cost in royalties. Michigan takes
12 percent. Jersey sales are lucra-
tive for the manufacturers and
retailers, but not for the schools
themselves.
The real money comes from
the freeradvertising generated by
players like Gardner. To estimate
the value of Gardner's exposure,
the Daily commissioned analysis
from the Ann Arbor-based Joyce
Julius and Associates, a research
firm that specializes in measuring
and evaluating corporate spon-
sorships. The company looked at
Gardner's media exposure on tele-
vision, print and online for August
- a month with just one game -
and September.
"We're basically saying, 'OK,
how many people saw or hear
the message or heard the article
or story' of whatever the topic
was that we were monitoring,"
said Eric Schwartz, president and
executive director of research
of Joyce Julius and Associates.
"Say Devin was mentioned on
SportsCenter, we would value
that mention based on the number
of folks that were watching that
particular broadcast."
DE:VIN G"A RD N ER'S
PRINT MEDIA EXPOSURE
KEY (* of Storkes)
* S- a i"
696 STO R IES40FRMMCHGA
106,783,895 IMPRESSIONS 3
$2,367,399.07 EXP. VALUE ,SY AV
momm"
In other words, the company
determined how many people
each piece of media reached, and
evaluated how much money the
University would otherwise have
to spend to reach a similar-sized
audience.
The results revealed an enter-
prise even more profitable than
on-field revenues. In the two
months analyzed, Gardner was
mentioned or appeared in an arti-
tle 7,565 times, reaching an audi-
ence of 702 million people. That
was worth $15.6 million in free
advertising in just two months,
for a team that struggled early on.
Of the media exposure, a major-
ity of the value - $11.7 million -
came from Internet news sources.
Another $2.4 million came from
print media and $1.5 million from
television news.
Most of the value came during
the month of September - about
$11 million compared to the $4.5
million in August.
Of course, NCAA rules pro-
hibit any monetary compensation
and puts restrictions on transfers
and other forms of compensation.
Economists, including Brown,
describe the NCAA as a cartel
operating in whatthey call a mon-
opsony - one buyer for labor but
many sellers.
"Because they restrict the pay,
there's exploitation," Brown said.
"Players are worth more than the
compensation they receive. That's
the bottom line."
A Seea multimedia piece about
this story on MichiganDaily.com
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THE MICHIGAN DAILY TOP-10 POLL
Each week, Daily sports staffers fill out ballots, with first place votes receiving 10 points, second
place receiving nine votes, and so on.
0
1. FLORIDA STATE (20): Turns
out Duke football was a joke after
all.
6. BAYLOR: Will a bear die from
eating Tostitos? Science would say
no. History majors on the staff say
otherwise.
' S" 11?
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i r .: i4 ir~... II
2. AUBURN (2): Guess wasting 7. OHIO STATE: Urban Meyer
toilet paper is better than burning stress eats cold Papa John's Pizza
couches. sans (the artery clogger that is)
Garlic Sauce.
3. ALABAMA: Nick Saban doesn't 8. SOUTH CAROLINA: BEAT
stress eat. He eats the souls of his THE COCKS: Badgers edition
competition
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