With all the talk about money, and certain universities throwing money at certain sports, I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers regarding this question: How does a top budget for a given sport compare to how the team ranked at the end of the season? Is more money translating into a higher ranking?
I am selectively looking at some of the so-called minor sports – baseball, softball, volleyball, and women’s basketball – along with men’s basketball. We list some basic budget numbers
based on what is publicly available, and some are estimates. Also, NIL is not included. Most private universities – TCU, Notre Dame, Duke, etc. – do not publicly release budget information on any of their departments and are not included.
In looking as baseball today, a ballpark estimate – pun intended – is all we have. My queries for fiscal year 2024, 2025, 2026 all return the same budget numbers for each year, so it is what it is. Considering how baffling and meaningless baseball rankings are (I mean, no one can decide on a poll and the polls are all over the place), I am hardly surprised.
Therefore, in 2025 and 2026 we are using the same budget numbers for the top 12 published budgets for NCAA baseball:
- University of Tennessee: $13,002,846
- Louisiana State University (LSU): $10,988,407
- University of Mississippi (Ole Miss): $10,561,988
- University of Arkansas: $9,895,654
- Texas A&M University: $9,016,887
- University of Texas: $8,599,070
- University of South Carolina: $8,046,167
- Clemson University: $7,878,612
- Texas Tech University: $7,617,084
- Mississippi State University: $7,586,184
- Auburn University: $7,570,625
- University of Arizona: $7,115,209
2025
Texas A&M, South Carolina, Texas Tech, and Mississippi State did not end the season in the top 25, so what is listed is their RPI at the end of the year.
2026
Even taken as a rough estimate, 2026 is a bit rough if the budget estimates are somewhat close. Out of the 12 teams listed, more than half did not end the season ranked – Tennessee, LSU, South Carolina, Clemson, Texas Tech, Mississippi State, and Arizona all have EOS RPI rankings listed. For whatever reasons, we have not much return for a lot of these universities, given the budget outlay. Also, final RPI in the 49-189 (!) range is a handful of swings and misses.
Pun intended.
