Cal Had More Than $1 Million in 2022 Football Recruiting Expenses

Cal incurred more than $1 million in football recruiting expenses in 2022, more than three times what it spent the previous year, and more than the 2022 football expenses of about half the Pac-12 schools.

However, it was well shy of the $4.5 million Georgia had in 2022 football recruiting expenses, providing a clue as to why the Bulldogs are the class of college football at the moment.

USA Today did extensive research to collect and rank the football recruiting expenses of football programs in the Power Five conferences, and CBS Sports further broke it down by conference. USA Today could not determine the expenses incurred by private schools, such as USC, Stanford and Northwestern, but we can assume USC had more recruiting expenses than Cal, and it’s a good bet Stanford did too since the Cardinal must recruit on a nationwide basis.

The information, as illustrated in tables at the end of this story, is interesting.

One comment from CBS Sports stands out:

California's number was surprisingly high -- more than Nebraska and Florida State -- despite having few results to show for it.

The Golden Bears’ 2022 recruiting expenses exceeded those of Oregon State, UCLA, Colorado, Washington State and Arizona State. The Sun Devils’ paltry $461,196 in expenses probably stems from the fact that ASU was in the midst of an NCAA investigation with the entire staff in flux.

But the fact that Cal’s expenses increased to $1,041,868 in 2022 after being just $288,540 in 2021 is thought provoking. Inflation and the increased use of the transfer portal probably had something to do with higher expenses in 2022, but a bigger factor in 2021 presumably was the lingering effects of the pandemic, which severely limited travel while limiting Cal to four games in 2020. The football recruiting expenses of nearly every school dipped noticeably in 2021.

The 2022 recruiting year was the first time Cal exceeded $1 million in football recruiting expenses, although it should be noted that most schools increased their recruiting expenses considerably that year.

A more informative figure is the six-year average of recruiting expenses. Cal’s average expenses of $619,171 from 2017 through 2022 are more than only three Pac-12 schools – Colorado, Washington State and Arizona State. Yes, even Oregon State had a higher average football recruiting expense total than Cal, by more than $100,000 per year.

Although Georgia’s six-year average of $2.7 million in recruiting expenses may help explain why the Bulldogs have won the last two national titles, the recruiting budget is not the only factor in on-field success.

Washington State’s yearly average football recruiting expenses of $449,554 over the six-year span from 2017 through 2022 are the lowest in the Pac-12 and the second-lowest of any Power Five conference school that was measured (Mississippi State was lower). Yet Washington State has been to a bowl game each of the past seven seasons (excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season). The Cougars even had a controversial coaching change in the middle of the 2021 season, but that did not prevent them from going to bowl games that year and the year after.

You can draw all sorts of conclusions from the recruiting expense numbers. Obviously the fact that Georgia, Alabama and Clemson rank first, second and fourth, respectively, in average football recruiting expenses over the past six years has a lot to do with their success on the field.

And the fact that Oregon and Utah rank first and second in the Pac-12 in average recruiting expenses may help explain why the Ducks (14-4) and Utes (15-3) have the two best conference records over the past two seasons.

Here the Pac-12 football recruiting expenses, as presented by CBS Sports, followed by CBS Sports’ comments about the Pac-12 hierarchy:

Oregon and Washington naturally hold the top two spots on the list by a wide margin, but the next tier is more interesting. Arizona's spending exploded under new coach Jedd Fisch as the Wildcats put together one of the best recruiting classes in recent memory. To the contrary, Arizona State's recruiting budget tanked under Herm Edwards as the Sun Devils faced NCAA violations for improper recruiting tactics during the pandemic.

Colorado is near the bottom of the list, but expect that number to rise dramatically as the Buffaloes get rolling under new coach Deion Sanders. California's number was surprisingly high -- more than Nebraska and Florida State -- despite having few results to show for it. Utah has built a robust-yet-cost-effective system to capture the last two Pac-12 championships.

Here are the national power-five-conference rankings of football recruiting expenses as presented by USA Today.

Cover photo of Cal head coach Justin Wilcox is by Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports

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