With an estimated value of $111 million, the LSU Tigers are the nation’s fourth-most valuable college football team, according to Forbes’ latest annual ranking.
As reported earlier today, the latest annual ranking of college football team values by Ryan Brewer, an assistant professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus, has the Tigers at No. 9, valued at $612.3 million.
The difference between the two rankings is due to methodology. Brewer’s ranking, as highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, includes each major program’s revenues and expenses, but also includes an analysis of cash-flow adjustments, risk assessments and growth projections “to calculate what a college team would be worth on the open market, if it could be bought and sold like a professional franchise.”
Forbes, however, doesn’t see much use in trying to calculate college football teams’ value as if they were professional franchises. Instead, it relies more heavily on revenue and profit to determine a team’s worth.
“College football teams obviously can’t be bought or sold, so there’s no use in considering what they might go for on the open market like we do with our NFL valuations,” reads the Forbes article accompanying its latest annual rankings.
Though the numbers in the two rankings vary wildly, many of the same teams are in the top 10 of each. On Brewer’s rankings, the top teams are: Ohio State, Texas, Michigan, Notre Dame, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Penn State. On Forbes’ ranking, the top teams are: Texas, Notre Dame, Tennessee, LSU, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio State, Alabama, Oklahoma and Auburn.
