What is glory?

It comes down to three questions

By Charlie Barnes

The Ring Cycle, Richard Wagner’s sweeping 19th Century masterwork, consumes four complete operas. The plot begins innocently enough with the Gods in their mountaintop home displaying a very mortal quality: they contract to build a magnificent castle for themselves, but then the price is more than they are willing to pay.

Should you be inspired to binge watch all four operas in one sitting they comprise15-20 hours altogether. The work is magnificent, and of course it is ultimately tragic in the manner of all classic opera. After many hours of wondrous performances all the heroes are dead, all the Gods are dead, and the castle Valhalla is destroyed and the whole enterprise entirely consumed in fire.

All of this brings us roundabout to discussions of our Seminole athletic aspirations and money.

There are three questions that every university with competitive collegiate athletic programs should ask in this order.

1.) What do you want?

2.) What are you willing to pay?

3.) Where are you going to get the money?

File this under “What do you want?” There’s been a great deal of excitement here lately at news of Florida State’s spectacular rise to a position just under the Top 25 National Academic Rankings of public universities by U.S. News & World Report.

This extraordinary achievement cannot be understated. It is and has been a lengthy, diligent and expensive crusade. If the trend continues upward – which it appears will happen – then soon FSU will enter the rarified Top 25 atmosphere shared by ACC institutions Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Clemson (yes, Clemson).

Florida State at No. 26 shares that ranking with the University of Pittsburgh. Virginia Tech comes in at No. 30 and N.C. State at No. 32. So, seven among the Top 32 schools are members of the ACC.

That list is of Top 25 Public Academic Institutions. However, the ACC has far more private universities than any other Power Five conference. All six private universities in the ACC – all of them – rank among the Top 50 private schools on the U.S. News list. Of those Duke and peripheral member Notre Dame both rank in the top 20 (8th and 17th respectively).

By comparison, the SEC has only three schools on the Top 25 Public list (Texas A&M, Florida and Georgia) and only Vanderbilt on the private side at No. 14.

In stark contrast, 12 of the 13 Big Ten schools are all ranked among the nation’s Top 50 public universities. Only Nebraska lags behind at No. 129 on the longer list of all national universities public and private.

The multi-campus University of California system boasts the extraordinary accomplishment of having five of the Top 10 public universities. They own four of the top seven including both No. 1 and No. 2 (UCLA and Cal Berkeley). Seven UC schools altogether rank in the Top 35.

Our academic ambitions are important to us. We have come a long way and we are never willing to accept going backwards – only ahead. On Sept. 21 President John Thrasher and Trustee Chairman Ed Burr led the University in celebrating a successful end to the $1 billion “Raise the Torch” Campaign. Led by CEO Andy Miller and the Booster Board Chairman Gary Thurston, the Seminole Boosters portion of within Raise the Torch was called the “Champions Campaign.”

It should be noted that “Raise the Torch” included a $100 million gift from Jan Moran and the Jim Moran Foundation, making it the largest single gift to a public university in the history of the state of Florida.

Having calculated Florida State’s academic standing among our peers, let’s turn our attention to funding for Seminole athletics and how that compares with our rivals.

Question: What is financially intolerable in any given collegiate athletic program? Well, that depends on the outlook, the identity and the personality of the school. An average or losing basketball program is intolerable to Duke and to North Carolina.

On the other hand, for example, Florida State and Clemson depend on successful football to safeguard funding and fundraising. For their part, UNC and Duke must protect basketball’s success at all costs. FSU and Clemson know that winning football ensures financial viability of the entire athletic program.

Florida State Athletics is a huge and intricately complex financial operation collecting and spending tens of millions of dollars annually.

In order to make clear the importance of money, let’s take the complexity out of it and use a simple example from long ago.

The Seminoles had a pretty solid football program in the 1960s under coach Bill Peterson. We did reasonably well against a national schedule, won some big games including a Gator Bowl blowout of Oklahoma and participated in three more bowls in an era when bowl invitations were hard to come by.

The Athletic Department’s income was pretty straight forward. It depended on ticket sales, student fees and whatever revenue could be gained from bowls. Football paid the bills. An enthusiastic Seminole Boosters organization existed but the fundraising totals were not remotely on the same scale as today.

Florida State’s football orbit began to slowly decay after the 1971 Fiesta Bowl. Our Seminoles endured a frightening drought, winning a total of only four games from 1973 through 1975. Even Coach Bowden’s first season in 1976 had a losing record.

The practical outcome was that all Seminole sports programs suffered because the income was simply not there to provide the full number of scholarships authorized by the NCAA. Neither was money there to repair and renovate facilities, much less build new and competitive structures.

It should be noted that during the period 1970-1974, the University dismantled Seminole Boosters, Inc. and replaced it with a nebulous and ineffective entity. Once Seminole Boosters, Inc. was resurrected in 1974 new money began to flow into the program for facilities and scholarships.

The Bill Peterson era was more than half a century ago. Only 30 years ago there was no Seminole Boosters Athletic Endowment.

Our endowment today is valued at more than $70 million and all of our Men’s and Women’s sports are fully scholarshipped to the limits allowed by the NCAA.

And, for what it’s worth, In August The Princeton Review Annual College Rankings had Florida State in the No. 5 spot with the “best athletic facilities’ in the country.

Fifteen years ago the ACC was able to recruit Virginia Tech and Miami in an effort to help bolster the standing of ACC football and to give the league more leverage in negotiating a network contract with ESPN, or indeed with any media giant willing to do business.

We do not know what negotiations subsequently took place. At the same time, each of the other four “Power Five” conferences moved ahead quickly to make their own lucrative network deals to ensure guaranteed income for each member school.

Why? Why did the ACC appear to be less energetic in negotiating a big media contract like the SEC, the Big 12, the Big 10 and the Pac 10?

One suggestion – probably incorrect – is that the ACC didn’t feel especially compelled by a need to act. It’s been speculated that the Carolina-centric ACC hierarchy simply was not motivated to aggressively pursue a big-money media contract for all the league teams because they already had enough money.

In 1991, the ACC actually paid its members more money per school than the SEC, primarily because of the ACC’s draw as the nation’s premier basketball conference. But that was a different day, before the big conference-wide TV contracts that have showered fabulous riches on the Big 10, the SEC and the Pac 10.

In 2003 when Miami and Virginia Tech joined the conference, the 10 largest athletic endowments in America were led by Stanford with $270 million. Four ACC schools including Notre Dame ranked among the top seven athletic endowments in the country! They included the old blue bloods North Carolina, Duke and Virginia.

Money does matter. It matters in pursuit of superior academics, and it matters in the chase for athletic championships.

Among the multitude of lists comparing the assets of different universities, one of the “Top 25 Largest Public University Endowments” shows four ACC schools among the Top 15: Virginia, Pittsburgh, North Carolina and Georgia Tech. The only SEC school among the Top 15 is Texas A&M.

The smallest total university endowment among the Top 25 Publics is the University of Indiana with $960 million. The largest is Texas A&M with $10.5 billion. Florida State’s Endowment is listed at $707 million. Assume that the accounting for FSU’s successful $1 billion ‘Raise the Torch Campaign’ has not yet been fully integrated into the numbers.

If critics were right, then perhaps the ACC appeared lackadaisical in pursuit of a network because the decision makers felt they just didn’t need the money and the wealthy schools could easily cover the enormous gap between what the ACC now pays and what the other conferences provide each of their teams.

That accusation really doesn’t sound reasonable but it would be helpful to hear a better explanation. Florida State President Eric Barron signed over Florida State’s media rights to the ACC in 2013, just months ahead of our NCAA Football National Championship. USA Today produced a comprehensive examination of the issue titled “Anatomy of One School’s Role in the ACC Media Rights Deal.”

The article explained that the ground had been shifting beneath Florida State’s feet for more than two years. “The ACC had added Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Notre Dame (as a partial member). The Big East was imploding, and rumors were circulating nonstop that FSU was being courted by the Big 12, Big Ten or SEC.”

ACC Officials made several trips to Tallahassee to make their case. “The wooing of Florida State and its rich football tradition was vital to the recently expanded ACC’s ability to renegotiate a top-dollar, long-term deal with ESPN, the network that holds broadcast rights to most of college football.”

Former Seminole Boosters Chairman Andy Haggard and Dr. Joe Camps – then in the role of Trustees – both signed on. Haggard said, “It all came down to what was best for Florida State. I wanted to make sure he (Commissioner Swofford) was investigating the possibility of getting the best deal he could with ESPN.”

The USA Today article continued, “Before last week’s (Grant of Rights) deal, FSU and other ACC schools each received about $17 million annually in TV revenue. That number is expected to increase by at least $3 million with the new deal; the pending ACC Network would mean untold additional millions.”

All this happened five years ago, in April 2013. A month later, in May 2013, the SEC announced a 20-year deal with ESPN to create the SEC Network. By 2013 the Big Ten Network, now owned 49 percent by Fox, had been in place since 2007. In 2012 the Big 12 announced a 13-year network broadcast deal with Fox and ESPN. Also in 2012, the Pac 12 launched the only network to be owned by a conference outright without support from outside companies.

In 2016 the ACC and ESPN finally announced the projected creation of an ACC cable channel network to air in 2019.

Five years ago ESPN was the king of all sports broadcasting, but things do change and ESPN has lost subscribers due to shifts in technology of how fans view their games. ESPN revenues are down, but their built-in guarantees to the conferences are still there and must be honored. This is not a good circumstance for a conference still looking forward to launching a network. At this point the likelihood of financial guarantees is unknown.

Two years ago, this feature in the Raleigh News & Observer sounded twin notes of optimism and caution. “It’s impossible to say how much revenue the ACC Network might generate. That answer will come in time, yet Jordan (Dean Jordan, Managing Executive: Global Sports Media Rights) said with confidence recently that if the network ‘performs even moderately, it’ll put the ACC in a situation where they’ll be very, very competitive financially’ with the SEC and Big Ten.”

Absent a contract comparable to those currently enriching the other Power Five conferences we are largely on our own, as we have always been. We have extraordinary generous fans and alumni and we’ll be fine. Smile in acknowledgement that only three national championships have been won by schools that didn’t start playing football until sometime in the last 80 years.

And of course you already know that all three of those trophies are on display in the Moore Athletic Center.

On the day “Raise the Torch’ campaign concluded, Seminoles Boosters, Inc. announced their next capital campaign. Called Unconquered, it will raise $100 million for athletic facilities and scholarships.

Past Chair Nylah Thompson and current Board Treasurer John Crowe will co-chair the campaign.

Consider it to be good fortune for us and for the ACC that Clemson now bears the crown as the league’s national champion contender. I’ve no doubt that once Florida State gets our footing back, the crown will return to Tallahassee and to its rightful brow.

In fact, I know our fans would view it as intolerable it that does not happen.

We know who we are. And we know the answer to that first question.