College programs aren’t for sale… just yet.
If they were, Tennessee football would be one of the priciest teams to buy in the entire sport. The Athletic looked to put a theoretical price tag on college football teams and came up with a top 10 most expensive teams list. The Vols made the cut at an absurd evaluation.
In the article, Tennessee is listed at an evaluation of $1.37 billion. This is the ninth-highest price point in the country and fifth in the SEC.
A big reason for the Vols’ projection is the incredible amount of money the program brings in every year. The Athletic listed UT as earning $124.9 million in revenue per year.
“Texas, Notre Dame and Michigan are the only programs that reported more football revenue than Tennessee in the last fiscal year,” the article wrote. “The Volunteers, however, were outside the top 12 in some pre-pandemic accounting and have a recent history that we can politely call ‘volatile.’
“This price puts them slightly behind the 2023 valuation of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning.”
More From RTI: Report: Tennessee Football Adds Instate Opponent To Its 2027 Non-Conference Schedule
The highest evaluation went to Texas. The Longhorns sat at $2.83 billion while bringing in $183 million in average revenue. They are the only school over the two billion mark.
Georgia is at No. 2 at an evaluation of $1.92 billion. Ohio State rounds out the podium at $1.9 billion. In fourth, Notre Dame cracks the list at $1.85 billion. The Irish are followed by Michigan in fifth at $1.83 billion.
From there, it’s a group of SEC programs. Sixth is Alabama at $1.74 billion, with Oklahoma at $1.49 billion in seventh. USC slides in at eighth at $1.4 billion before Tennessee’s $1.37 billion mark and LSU in tenth at $1.23 billion.
Only Penn State, Florida and Auburn are also listed above one billion. From there, Oregon, Texas A&M, Washington and Nebraska sit over 900 million, but shy of the billion club.
