Texas Longhorns Ranked No. 1 Most Valuable College Football Program

In the state of NIL, and with caps being placed on spending limits by colleges, questions will be asked about how colleges are able to afford all of the changes going on in athletic departments.

For some schools, they have boosters that are in the upper echelon of wealth in the country; others are fiscally set through athletic revenue, and some, like the Texas Longhorns, are both.

In a recent project, The Athletic ranked the top 25 most valuable college programs, with the Longhorns ranked as the No. 1 college football program.

Some Things Money Can't Buy

Matt Baker of the Athletic used real-life pro transactions to gauge purchase prices relative to a team’s revenue over the past three available years of data. They compared the sale of colleges to those of the four major U.S sports.

In the same way that the Power Four conferences are viewed differently in strength, this exercise used different leagues to compare. For the SEC and the Big Ten, the NFL and NBA selling marks guided their numbers, and for the ACC and Big 12, they used MLB and NHL selling points.

They ranked the Longhorns as the No. 1 most valuable program, with an estimated projected sale price of $2.38 billion, which is comparable to what the Carolina Panthers sold for in 2018.

Baker gave his reasoning for the ranking, citing their three year average football revenue of $183 million.

"The Longhorns routinely lead the country in revenue and were the only team to top $200 million in the most recent financial reports," Baker wrote. "No program came within $25 million of Texas in either of the past two years. The Longhorns haven’t won a national title since 2005 but made the College Football Playoff semifinals each of the past two seasons and are among this preseason’s top championship contenders. Add in the SEC brand, and Texas looks like the safest investment."

The Forty Acres is the only program listed with a projected price of over two billion, with Georgia, the second-ranked evaluation, listed at $1.92 billion.

The SEC had 12 schools made the top 30, with Alabama ($1.74B), Oklahoma ($1.49B), Tennessee ($1.37B), LSU ($1.23B), Florida ($1.08B), Auburn ($1.06B), Texas A&M ($973M), Arkansas ($646M), Ole Miss ($591M), and South Carolina ($563M) joining Texas and Georgia.

While there is no one the University would sell to, being named the most valuable program in the country. Despite not winning a football national championship in over 20 years, the value will seemingly only go up for the Longhorns.