As hardcore Tigers fans spend this National Signing Day closely monitoring where the country’s most-heavily recruited high school players will wind up playing college football, a new analysis by USA Today shows LSU and its peers in the SEC have a huge advantage when it comes to recruiting.
And it’s not just winning records and strong football traditions that are bringing the nation’s best football players to Southern states. The analysis shows that over a five-year span between 2009 and 2013, SEC public schools spent on average roughly $150,000 more per year recruiting football players than did public schools in the other four power conferences.
“As in many other ways, the gulf between the Football Bowl Subdivision’s haves and have-nots is growing substantially,” the analysis says. “Power conference schools went from spending an average of $247,000 more than non-power conference schools in 2008-09 to spending $360,000 more in 2012-13, the most recent school year for which nationwide data are available.”
With reported recruitment spending of just under $1.4 million, Auburn led all schools in recruitment spending in the 2012-13 school year. Tennessee and Alabama follow. LSU spent $577,442 on recruiting during the year, ranking it No. 22. Spending on recruiting at LSU has risen by 35% between 2009 and 2013. When the numbers are broken down to factor in the football team’s record over those five years, the analysis shows LSU spent $41,183 on recruiting per win.
LSU’s spending is just below the SEC average of $582,000 per year during the five-year period, far more than schools in the other four power conferences—the Big 12 ($450,000), Big Ten ($444,000), Atlantic Coast ($426,000) and Pac-12 ($403,000). Read the full story and see the full rankings. —Steve Sanoski
