The Athletic’s College Football Valuation Rankings Don’t Favor Cal

The Athletic puts a hypothetical price tag on the football programs of every Power 4 conference school, then ranked all 68 programs. This article ranks the projected price of ACC programs

California Memorial Stadium during the 2024 Big Game / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

How much is Cal’s football program worth?

The Athletic attempted to calculate a hypothetical price tag for the football programs of all 68 Power 4 conference football schools. It then ranked them based on that price tag.

The price tags range from the $2.38 billion value calculated for the University of Texas football program down to the $91 million price tag attached to the University of Houston program.

Interestingly no ACC school ranks among the top 15, and Cal is way down the line at No. 65 with a calculated price tag of $158 million.

The Athletic adds this comment bellow Cal’s projected price:

Cal shares Stanford’s long-term realignment concerns but adds an extra wrinkle as a public institution.

Presumably the fact that Cal and Stanford won’t receive full shares of ACC revenue over the next several years affects their projected price and ranking. The fact that The Athletic used MLB and NHL as sales benchmarks for price calculations for ACC schools while using NBA and NFL benchmarks for the SEC and Big Ten projections might also have  contributed to Cal’s low ranking.

Here is The Athletic’s description of what it is doing:

As much as college football has drifted toward professionalization, one major difference remains: NCAA teams are not for sale. Not yet, at least. But private equity explorations by schools like Florida State and Boise State led The Athletic to consider a future where the Seminoles and Broncos could be bought and sold, just like the Boston Celtics and the Tampa Bay Rays.

We approached the hypothetical question with a methodology that was part art, part science. We used real-life pro transactions to gauge purchase prices relative to a team’s revenue over the past three available years of data. NFL and NBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and Big Ten, while the MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the ACC and Big 12. For each school in a Power 4 conference (plus Notre Dame), we factored in everything from prestige and championships to facility renovations, population trends and realignment scenarios. That means treating Notre Dame more like the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston College more like the Kansas City Royals.

Here is how The Athletic ranked the hypothetical price tags of the ACC football programs, along with the college’s calculated football program price tag and football revenue:

---1. Florida State (No. 18 overall)

Projected price: $867 million

Average football revenue: $86.7 million

---2. Clemson (No. 22 overall)

Projected price: $665 million

Average football revenue: $78.2 million

---3. Miami (No. 24 overall)

Projected price: $604 million

Average football revenue: $75.5 million

---4. North Carolina (No. 26 overall)

Projected price: $572 million

Average football revenue: $63.6 million

---5. Virginia Tech (No. 31 overall)

Projected price: $455 million

Average football revenue: $65.0 million

---6. North Carolina State (No. 32 overall)

Projected price: $455 million

Average football revenue: 63.6 million

---7. Louisville (No. 42 overall)

Projected price: $350 million

Average football revenue: $49.9 million

---8. Georgia Tech (No. 43 overall)

Projected price: $340 million

Average football revenue: $56.7 million

---9. Syracuse (No. 46 overall)

Projected price: $329 million

Average football revenue: $54.9 million

---10. Duke (No. 48 overall)

Projected price: $323 million

Average football revenue: $64.7 million

---11. Pittsburgh (No. 51 overall)

Projected price: $303 million

Average football revenue: $50.5 million

---12. Virginia (No. 56 overall)

Projected price: $257 million

Average football revenue: $51.4 million

---13. Stanford (No. 60 overall)

Projected price: $202 million

Average football revenue: $40.3 million

---14. SMU (No. 63 overall)

Projected price: $178 million

Average football revenue: $29.7 million

---15. Boston College (No. 64 overall)

Projected price: $172 million

Average football revenue: $43.1 million

---16. Cal (No. 65 overall)

Projected price: $158 million

Average football revenue: $39.5 million

---17. Wake Forest (No. 66 overall)

Projected price: $124 million

Average football revenue: $31.0 million