The annual 990 financial reports for 2014 show that Syracuse made the right decision five years ago, at least from a monetary standpoint, to join the ACC.
It's hard to believe that Syracuse decided to become a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference almost five years ago. That choice has literally and figuratively paid dividends, amounting to a sizable cash flow over the past few seasons. Syracuse.com's Chris Carlson makes sense of it all in his piece from yesterday afternoon:
According to the 990 financial report for 2014 Fiscal Year, the Orange received $23.9 million from the ACC, the lowest total for the entire conference. Meanwhile, former Big East rival UConn was given $10.6 million from the American Athletic Conference as its highest performer. That's a difference of about $13.3 million.
The next order of business is total television revenue earned by each conference. Last year, the ACC made $217,906,808, an average of $14.5 million for each of the 15 basketball schools. The American only made $19.1 million by comparison, amounting to $1.6 million per school. That, my friends, is a whopping difference of $203,406,808. If that number alone doesn't speak volumes about how valuable being in one of the Power Five conferences, then I don't know what does.
One final figure of note: because of the ACC's involvement in the respective NCAA postseason tournaments, the conference earned $112.6 million in just basketball and football alone this past year, while the American earned $40 million.
As history shows, these figures will continue to grow, no matter how dismal any of our teams happen to be. Carlson made a great point when he said that even though we had a less than ideal year in football, the money the ACC earned and divided accordingly helped us secure a new head coach in Dino Babers. Thus, the future looks bright.
