BY ADAM ZUVANICH
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

When Texas Tech and Texas met on the football field last fall, the Red Raiders managed to score six more points than their counterpart.

One measly touchdown might not seem like much of a difference, but considering the vast gap in resources available to each program, it was quite an accomplishment.

Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said the Longhorns’ athletic budget was roughly $126 million in the 2009 fiscal year, the largest in college sports and more than two-and-a-half times the size of Tech’s.

“It makes us feel great to know we’re as competitive as we are with the resources we have,” said Bobby Gleason, Tech’s deputy athletic director and chief financial officer.

Myers said it’s a constant struggle to compete with the fat cats of the Big 12 Conference — Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas A&M — which have much larger football stadiums and, in turn, much deeper pockets. But the Red Raiders have narrowed the gap somewhat in recent years, which has helped them become more of a player between the lines.

Gleason said Tech’s most recent operating budget of $48 million was about the middle of the road compared to the rest of the Big 12, and it’s grown substantially during the last decade. Gleason said the Red Raiders had an athletic budget of about $12 million in 1996, the conference’s first year, and last year they generated about $10.5 million in revenue from football alone.

Gleason and Myers said inclusion in the Big 12 has provided the biggest boost — Tech receives about $8 million annually from the conference’s bowl payouts and national television contracts for football and basketball — and they said increased ticket sales also have helped. The Raiders’ football attendance has gradually increased as the team has enjoyed a successful run under 10th-year head coach Mike Leach, climbing from an average of 42,215 fans per game in 2000 to an all-time high of 53,625 last year.

And by selling out its entire allotment of season tickets (about 41,732) for the first time last season, Gleason said Tech football generated about $700,000 more than it did in 2007.

“Our football revenue has grown,” Myers said. “We were probably averaging somewhere over 40,000 (fans per game) in the Southwest Conference, and now we’re averaging over 50,000. And we’re expanding (Jones AT&T Stadium), so it’ll give us a little over 60,000 when all this construction’s done (in 2010).”

Cost of keeping up

Speaking of construction, participating in the Big 12 has been just as expensive for Tech as it has been lucrative. Gleason said the athletic department has spent about $200 million on new facilities and renovations since 1996, roughly half of which has been poured into the football stadium.

United Spirit Arena opened in 1999, the west-side building at the football stadium went up in 2003, and Tech also built the football training facility along with new facilities for soccer, softball and tennis. Tech also has renovated its baseball and track and field facilities in recent years.

And while the Rawls Golf Course was constructed with a donation from its namesake, Jerry Rawls, the athletic department is charged with maintaining it.

Gleason said the new facilities generate about $12 million a year in revenue, but the annual debt they incur is about $2 million more than that. That’s partly why Tech has finished three of the last four fiscal years in the red, according to Gleason, but Myers said it’s a price the department must pay to remain competitive.

“We just had a lot of facilities we had to build in the Big 12, just for our competition and everything,” said Myers, who added that Tech is starting to reap the rewards on the field of play, particularly in the Olympic sports. “Just being in the Big 12, you’ve got to have the facilities to attract athletes and fans. Our facilities were about as limited as anybody in the Big 12 when we started.

“… We’ll catch up with it at some point and start realizing some revenue for our operating budget,” he added. “That debt service will start coming down at some point.”

Travel costs, however, aren’t likely to decrease much. Myers said each of Tech’s athletic programs probably spends between four and five times as much on travel as they did during the days of the SWC, leading to an overall travel budget that’s “astronomical,” although he couldn’t provide specific figures.

There’s much more out-of-state travel associated with the Big 12, and Myers said most of Tech’s teams use charter flights now instead of commercial airlines, especially for weekday games.

“If they play a Wednesday night game up in Lincoln, Neb., and you go commercial, it’s a three-day trip,” he said. “You’ve got to go the day before, play and come back the next day. Well, you miss three days of school every week, so we do charter a lot of those weekday games. Not every sport, but we do.”

Adjusting operations

Like most every business in the current economic climate, Myers said colleges across the country — including Tech — are searching for ways to cut costs. Myers said the athletic department will save about $50,000 by not printing football media guides this season, and the travel budget also has been targeted.

Beginning in the spring, Myers said Tech’s coaches were encouraged to drive whenever possible, generally within a 400-mile radius. All of Tech’s athletic programs also have been forced to make their non-conference schedules more regional, which means facing opponents in New Mexico or Louisiana as opposed to California and Florida.

Myers said more regionalized scheduling will “have a positive effect on that budget,” but neither he nor Gleason could say exactly how much it would save.

“It will save significantly,” Gleason said, “and sometimes it’s the difference between staying in the budget or not.”

The Red Raiders also are looking for ways to boost revenue, which is why they’re expanding their donor-based seating system at football games from 10 sections to 22 this year. Making more money also was the driving force behind moving the annual football game against Baylor to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex beginning this season.

Gleason said biennial home games against Baylor typically generate about $1.5 million, so by playing the Bears at a neutral site every season — and selling about 33,000 tickets for each game — Tech can make that amount every year.

“That’s the whole key right there,” he said. “You get money every year instead of every other year.”

Gleason said Tech’s athletic budget will increase to about $53 million in the fiscal year 2010, which began Sept. 1, and he and Myers expect continued growth in the years to come. But Gleason said such growth depends greatly on the success of the football and basketball programs, which generate the most revenue, and that the athletic budget certainly won’t quadruple like it did between 1996 and 2009.

Either way, the Red Raiders are doing all they can to keep up with the Joneses of the Big 12.

“It makes us better,” Myers said of competing with the likes of Texas, OU, Nebraska and A&M. “It makes us work harder, really, to try to improve what we do.”