Longhorns the most valuable team in the country

If Texas were to happen to lose the national title game to Alabama next month, at least they can take comfort in the fact that they can wipe away any tears shed with wads of $100 bills.

According to a report at Forbes.com, Texas is the most valuable college football team in the country, coming in at what Forbes estimates as a value of $119 million. The Longhorns also reportedly cleared $59 million this past year.

As noted by the report, 18 of the 20 most valuable programs came from the SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten. That can be attributed in large part to the television deals signed by the respective conferences.

The magazine laid out its criteria for determining a football’s worth, breaking it down to into four categories.

But it’s what the Longhorns were able to do with that money that makes them college football’s most valuable team. Unlike NFL teams, which can be bought and sold on the open market, college teams have value in terms of what kind of dividends they pay to their stakeholders. “Dividend” money is what’s left for the team’s university (for academic purposes, including scholarship payments for football players) and athletic department (to support non-revenue sports) after the cost of running the football operation in question. It also includes what’s generated for its conference (the distribution of bowl game revenue) and the community around the university (estimated incremental spending by visitors to the county that’s attributable to the program). In our scoring system, the first two factors were given the most weight, while county revenue was given the least.

Notre Dame, the most valuable program the past two years, was a distant second with a value of $108 million.

Rounding out the Top Five were Penn State ($99 million), Nebraska ($93 million) and Alabama ($92 million).

It should be noted that the Tide’s value according to Forbes has increased 31% since the hiring of Nick Saban in 2007.