Recruiting Expenses Continue to Grow
Annual recruiting costs are soaring across the nation, most notably in the Southeastern Conference. Over the past five years, Georgia has upped recruiting costs by over 1.5 million dollars, according to an article by USA Today.
In comparison, Georgia spends 1.5 million more than any other collegiate program in the nation.
When Mark Richt was the head coach for the Bulldogs in 2013, Georgia spent around $582,000. This past year Georgia exceeded 2.6 million, a 381% increase since 2013. These numbers include money for staff, travel expenses, visit expenses, mail, etc.
SEC Influence
The SEC is not the only conference where recruiting budgets have expanded. Texas spent $420,000 on recruiting in 2016. Last season, Texas topped over $1.82 million.
According to the USA Today, Kansas, Minnesota, and Utah were among 19 other Power 5 programs to top over 1 million dollars this past season.
Among these schools, all of the schools interviewed told reporters that they spent more than their allotted budget, but kept spending in order to keep up with the competition.
There are a few outliers when it comes to expenditures on recruiting. There were six Power 5 schools who spent less money recruiting last season than they did in the previous five seasons. These schools include Arizona State, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Mississippi State, and Texas Tech. All of these schools besides Auburn spent less than $1 million on recruiting. Among these six schools are four conference championship game appearances in the past six seasons. If you exclude Auburn, there are two conference championship game appearances, Arizona State in 2013 and Georgia Tech in 2014.
Is there a direct correlation between recruiting expenditures and winning? Here are the six schools listed with the amount spent on recruiting in 2013, with their percent change in recruiting, and their recruiting rankings next to their overall record the past five seasons.
Every school listed above, besides Mississippi State, had a worse record last season than they did in 2013 when teams first started upping recruiting expenditures.
Big 12 Influence
In terms of the Big 12, Texas Tech is ranked seventh in terms of recruiting expenditures. Keep in mind that the data excludes TCU and Baylor, due to the schools being able to withhold information due to their private school affiliation.
In terms of recruiting, excluding Baylor and TCU since we do not know their amount spent, Texas Tech ranks fifth out of eight teams with an average recruiting ranking of 49.66. In the last six seasons, Texas Tech has a record of 4-20 against the four teams who average higher recruiting classes than them (Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, West Virginia). The numbers for Iowa State and Kansas are a little higher than I imagined, but this is in part due to their location and the areas that they recruit the most (Texas, Florida, Louisiana, California).
I do expect Texas Tech to considerably increase the amount of money put into recruiting going forward. Texas Tech has hired on additional staff members for recruiting purposes this season that they have not had in recent seasons. It will be interesting moving forward to see the numbers put into recruiting during Matt Wells’ era of Texas Tech football.
