Texas A&M Among Most Valuable College Football Programs

Unlike professional sports franchises, college football teams are not for sale (at least not yet). However, pondering what teams could post the highest price tag if they were on the market.

Recently, The Athletic set out to answer that very question. A team of writers took a look at a variety of factors, most notably the team's annual revenue, and compared them to real-life professional sports sales. NFL and NBA sales served as benchmarks for SEC and Big Ten teams, while MLB and NHL sales served as benchmarks for those in the Big 12 and ACC.

The results may be imperfect due to how athletic departments report their revenue, but they still give a fascinating look into the nation's most valuable college football teams.

Texas A&M Football Program Valued at Just Under $1 Billion

To little surprise, the Texas A&M Aggies were among the most valuable teams in college football with a valuation of $973 million. This puts them at No. 15 in the country, but only No. 9 in the stacked SEC.

"The Aggies have the rabid fan base and demographic upside to be higher. Money has also never been an issue at a program that paid Jimbo Fisher the biggest buyout in college football history (about $77 million)," The Athletic's Matt Baker wrote. "But we’re also considering wins and losses because of the money victories bring. Texas A&M is arguably the nation’s biggest underachiever with only four top-five finishes and one national title (1939) since the Associated Press poll began in 1936 and zero conference titles since 1998."

The Aggies obviously have no shortage of booster money, otherwise they wouldn't have paid Fisher his gargantuan buyout. However, their average football revenue of $97.3 million is quite a bit away from the select few teams that bring in $130 million each year - and especially Texas, which leads all programs by a mile with an average football revenue of $183 milllion.

While A&M's valuation fell just short of the $1 billion mark, an actual sale of the team could easily cross the 10-digit mark.

"What a team sells for (our objective with this story) is not the same as a team’s actual value (a story for another day)," Baker wrote. "Buyers routinely pay a premium because there are only so many opportunities to own a sports team.

That sentiment would be even stronger in college football, where pre-established allegiances and irrational decisions already run deeper. Though Texas A&M just missed our $1 billion club, it’s easy to envision a few Aggies boosters artificially boosting the price to brag about spending 10 figures on their team.