A consistent Big Ten football contender would reap cash, benefit all MSU athletics

EAST LANSING - When Mark Hollis was a student and basketball manager at Michigan State in the early 1980s, he took notice of the man who held his dream job - then-athletic director Doug Weaver.

"Any request he'd get," Hollis recalled of Weaver, "he'd say, 'How's that gonna help us get to the Rose Bowl?' "

Weaver remains the last MSU athletic director to get there, on Jan. 1, 1988 with then-football coach George Perles. Hollis plans to be the next one - he keeps a rose on his desk as a reminder because "the goal is that going into every year, we have that legitimate anticipation that the year could end in the Rose Bowl," he said.

The Spartans haven't been at that level in decades. They haven't had consecutive winning seasons since 1989-90. Yet MSU was the Big Ten's fourth-most-profitable football program in 2006-07, according to the latest available federal reports.

MSU football had a reported profit of $18.3 million in 2006-07, trailing just the Big Ten power trio of Michigan ($36.1 million), Penn State ($29.4 million) and Ohio State ($26.6 million).

And there's room to grow, to a ceiling that Hollis and his department would love to encounter. If MSU could "max out" and fill every seat, club seat and suite on game days, it would mean more than $2 million in additional, annual revenue - plus the prestige and indirect benefits (camps, sponsorship deals, donations, applications to the school) that could fortify MSU athletics.

"There's a lot of upside there," Hollis said. "It's a pretty substantial margin to (the ceiling). The season-ticket base isn't full. When you're turning people away, that's when you're churning money."

And after football takes its cut, that's when other sports get more funding, recruit better athletes, become more competitive and silence any talk of elimination.

Much is riding on football coach Mark Dantonio, who made optimism popular again with a surprising 7-6 debut season in 2007.

"We're all in this," Dantonio said. "It's not just the football coaches, it's marketing, it's everything that goes into it. I've said from day one, it's not about one coach, one player. It's about everyone, and if we're all going in one direction, we can be ultra-successful."

A MUST HAVE

Hollis has made it clear since he was named Ron Mason's successor last fall that football would be his top priority. That's nothing new at MSU, despite the program's inconsistency since the glory of the 1950s and '60s.

The men's basketball program - which reported a profit of $6.8 million in 2006-07 - has become a national force under Tom Izzo and provided benefits to the athletic department and university.

But MSU needs football. Everyone, it seems, needs football.

With athletic budgets continuing to escalate, other departments that have made do without strong football programs are starting to invest more.

"You can't be successful anymore without football," Izzo said. "It's the only thing that gives you a chance. Indiana needs football to come around. Duke's been (OK without it), but look at Kentucky, even they've had to get football going."

And Duke is now paying David Cutcliffe $1.5 million a year to revive its perennially bad football program. That's $400,000 more a year than Dantonio makes, at a school that hasn't sniffed pigskin respectability since Steve Spurrier coached there in the 1980s.

Indiana has been able to survive on its storied basketball program, which outgained football $7.4 million to $6.8 million in 2006-07.

But former head coach Terry Hoeppner, who passed away of brain cancer in June of 2007, made $550,000 a year, and IU has added luxury seating to Memorial Stadium.

"We need it more now than ever for a lot of reasons," IU athletic director Rick Greenspan said of football. "There's the money requirement, and there's the cultural requirement for all our programs, it affects how donors and others feel about the school. It's too big and too important to be bad."

MSU is hoping to discover just how big and important football can be when it's good. Can it overcome a slumping economy?

ROOM TO GROW

MSU projects season-ticket sales to come up about 1,000 short of last season's 57,377. That would make this one of the lowest-selling seasons of the past decade, which is somewhat surprising considering the team's winning 2007 season.

But Hollis said at least half of those who aren't renewing told MSU they've had to leave the state for better economic conditions.

"Not much we can say to change their minds," he quipped.

Spartan Stadium's capacity is 75,005. In that regard, MSU is well behind U-M (107,501 stadium capacity), Ohio State (102,329) and Penn State (107,282) - a reflection of the success of those programs and the most obvious reason for the profit disparity.

MSU continues to try to sell all of the luxury seating it included in the $64 million Spartan Stadium expansion in 2005.

Of the 24 suites, 19 are sold for this season. They range in price from $35,000 to $80,000 depending on proximity to midfield, plus the cost of season tickets.

Of the 838 club seats, 496 are sold, with a September goal of 515, said senior associate athletic director Chuck Sleeper. The outer-most club seats have been discounted from $4,500 to $3,000 a year since opening to slow sales.

"Am I happy with where we are? No," Hollis said. "With the club seats revenue-wise, we're OK, as far as making our ($3.2 million annual debt) payments for the building. But you don't want to look up and see a half-full building. That's a negative.

"We've invested a lot into football, and when you're investing like us, it's critical that your program is successful."

If MSU becomes a consistent winner under Dantonio, there are still tough economic times to overcome. But the history of the MSU football fan base suggests ticket demand will be high.

MSU hopes to find out if this equation is true: Sustained excellence on the field equals a butt in every seat plus a stable athletic department.

"If they max out, then at least for five or 10 years, there should be no real issues with their budget," Richard Sheehan, a Notre Dame finance professor who specializes in college sports finance, said of MSU.

And if football ever gets tapped to the limit, one revenue source with growth potential will remain: the folks who have a lot of money and a desire to spend it on MSU athletics. The donors.

Coming Wednesday: Day 4 examines the giant gains made recently in MSU athletics fund raising, and the push to keep gaining.