Forbes: Texas Longhorns are college football’s most valuable program

According to Forbes, the University of Texas football program is the most valuable in all of college football. The Texas Longhorns program is worth $139 million, roughly $22 million more than the second place school, Notre Dame.

That is why the Texas head coaching vacancy draws links to the big names in college football and the pros. Many of those names have declined interest, but as seasons come to an end who knows what could happen.

This is how Forbes’ figures it out:

"To determine college football’s most valuable teams, we consider each team’s value to its athletic department, its university’s academic endeavors, its conference and its school’s local economy. Athletic value consists of football profit that is directed toward supporting non-revenue sports, like softball or gymnastics, while a team’s value to academics consists of money that supports football scholarships or other non-athletic programming, like faculty support, non-athletic scholarships or a library fund. Conference value consists of revenue generated for other conference teams by participating in a bowl game, and a team’s value to its local community consists of the direct spending injected by fans visiting the area on days of the team’s home games.Our financial data is for the 2012-13 season, and we utilize team revenues and expenses as reported to the Department of Education. We also standardize those financial figures to account for differences in each school’s accounting practices."

Here is Forbes’ top 10:

1. Texas ($139 million)
2. Notre Dame ($117 million)
3. Alabama ($110 million)
4. LSU ($105 million)
5. Michigan ($104 million)
6. Florida ($94 million)
7. Oklahoma ($94 million)
8. Georgia ($91 million)
9. Ohio State ($83 million)
10. Nebraska ($80 million)

The break down by conference for Forbes top 20 is:

• SEC – 9
• Big Ten – 5
• Big 12 – 2
• PAC 12 – 3

Auburn comes in at the No. 11 with a value of $77 million. Their BCS National Championship opponent, Florida State, didn’t make the top 20, nor did any ACC schools. Forbes noted that FSU and Clemson both had valuations of over $50 million that will rise with BCS bowls this year.

One of the biggest surprises might be that the Washington Huskies were ahead of the Oregon Ducks.