Wanna Know How Your Schools Budget Compares?

Going back and looking at how some people responded to question #3 of the most recent BlogPoll Roundtable, I started wondering what the reason was that some schools never play 1-AA schools. For West Virginia, I know that it has come down to a matter of money. We have had our 1-A patsy bail out on us at the last minute each of the last two years for more money against larger schools. Forcing us to call around for anyone available. And that has ended up with us playing a 1-AA school. But getting back to the roundtable, and it is by no means finished. I think there are still quite a few to be posted. But of the ones that said, "we don't play no stinking 1-AA schools," how many do you think are at the top of this list? All of them, except Notre Dame, who must not disclose the athletic budget to the public. But I would say they compare favorably to the top ten, if not one.

Now I'm not necessarily picking on these schools, as I know I wouldn't complain if West Virginia had more money to throw around. But I think it explains a lot of why we have had such poor schedules over the last couple years. For God's sake, Rutgers has a larger Athletic Budget than West Virginia.

So yeah, I guess you could say we have a little bit of Schwartz envy. And there isn't really any way around it. If there was an easy way to increase the budget, I'm sure it would have already happened. I would love to see the second level completed all the way around the stadium. And talk about loud! But I think we would run into a point of diminishing returns with adding that many more seats. I don't know that we could fill up a 75,000 seat stadium week after week. I'd love to try, though.