With the ten-point bonus for early renewal on football season tickets offered by the Kansas Athletic Department this week, I can't help but admire Lew Perkin's ability to find new ways to generate revenue. It's killing me in the wallet, but deep-down you know this is the only way we can compete with the monster budgets of the big four-Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Nebraska. Big deal, you say. Those people are going to renew no matter what. Maybe, but for the average guy with a pair of season tickets teetering on the brink of buying an extra pair of tickets to add a few friends or family to the game-day experience, the 20-point incentive might push them to pull the trigger. Or in my case, maybe you can change the mind of a guy who has four tickets and was thinking of scaling back to two or three due to the inevitable increase with the eight-game package (season tickets are now $275, it wasn't that long ago that they were $150). Now, I'm looking at the 20-point bonus and thinking, hey we can swing an extra pair.
It's another shrewd move by Perkins to boost season ticket sales and increase overall revenue just right after throwing another million dollars into the pot with the Arrowhead deal. Again, it's not real comfortable to cough up the extra cash, but I'm glad we have Lew in there driving this thing and going to war with the big boys. We're not quite where we want to be in football on the field, but it's clear that Perkins is going to get there one way or another. That's quite a change from the old KU attitude. Consider the following, excerpted from last year's KC Star article:
Man, I'm glad that attitude is gone. One thing that gets lost when KU fans debate whether or not Mark Mangino can get the job done is that he was hired after coming off a stint as the offensive coordinator for a national championship team. That alone makes a statement about where we want to go with our football program. Of course, Mangino was not hired by Perkins but he delivered his message when he signed Mangino to the controversial $1.5 million/year contract. The theme is pretty clear -- KU is serious about building a football program and 6-6 is not good enough for anyone.
Lew's already made some headway by boosting the athletic department budget from $27 million to approximately $40 million in his first three years. As the numbers below suggest, there's work to be done, but with deals like the Arrowhead move, Perkins is chipping away at the gap.
Budget In Millions
$74.4 -- Texas
$62.9 -- Oklahoma
$57.4 -- Texas A&M
$55.8 -- Nebraska
$46.4 -- Missouri
$45.6 -- Texas Tech
$40.0 -- Kansas
$36.6 -- Colorado
$35.9 -- Oklahoma State
$33.5 -- Kansas State
$31.1 -- Baylor
$28.1 -- Iowa State
Source: 2005-2006 EADA Reports