THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603030094
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
The fund-raising foundations of Atlantic Coast Conference schools operate like free-market businesses. The Greensboro-based conference itself runs a communal operation.
The conference headquarters sells television rights, collects money as its basketball teams advance through the NCAA basketball tournament and brings in money for its schools playing in football bowl games.
Then the conference divides the take by nine - for each of its schools - and returns the money to them. It's an egalitarian system the conference's schools approved to make sure they each have an annual infusion of money. And it's enough to buoy a school even when it's having a string of bad years on the court or the field.
``Obviously, Duke and Carolina contributed a lot in basketball over the past couple of years and Florida State contributed a lot in football,'' said Fred Barakat, associate commissioner of the ACC for the men's basketball tournament. ``If you're on probation, or having a down year, you're still going to get the money.''
At the end of last year, the conference distributed $4.5 million to each school. Of that, $25 million came from basketball - $7 million of which was proceeds from the teams' participation in the NCAA tournament. Nearly all the rest of the $25 million came from a deal the ACC has with Raycom/Jefferson Pilot Sports to distribute TV rights to its games.
The even distribution of money assures somewhat of an equal footing among smaller schools like Wake Forest and Duke and large state universities like the University of North Carolina.
Carolina, for instance, raised $2.1 million last year in licensed product sales, which includes sweat shirts, T-shirts, coffee mugs and just about anything featuring its trademarked logo. Michigan and Florida State, respectively, were the only two schools in the country last year that sold more products carrying their logo, according to the Collegiate Licensing Co. of Atlanta.
Eight of the other nine ACC schools were among the top 30 in the country in licensing, with Wake Forest being the exception.
Even though Wake did not have a large chunk of logo sales to fund its program, it still got the $4.5 million. And like other ACC schools, Wake did not have to worry about paying for travel expenses to championship tournaments. The ACC pays for those expenses out of the pool of money. Last year that was about $700,000.
The ACC is, in a sense, ``a total service organization,'' said Tom Mickel, assistant commissioner in charge of football, bowl contracts and TV contract.
``A lot of people compare us to the NBA or the NFL, but in those things the management is top down,'' Mickel said. ``Our schools approve our budget and every penny in it, and they tell us what to do. We're ruled from the bottom up.'' by CNB