Looking at the school as a whole, it would make a great business. (Photo-Larry Burton)

Alabama Incorporated – Run and Winning Like a Top Company

By: Larry Burton

It’s not just the football program, run by a coach that shares as many attributes with a top corporate CEO as he does with any top coach, but the school as a whole which is one well oiled machine.

Before we get into football earnings, let’s look at the school itself. Many schools rely on their athletic department revenues to help make ends meet, but not at Alabama.

With over a billion, yes over one billion with a B, Alabama has some pretty major endowments that keep the school in the black even without football. Total endowments of over 1.24 billion is impressive. This allows them to be a major research university with a research budget exceeding 55 million dollars a year. That in turn allows Alabama to be one of U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 public universities in the nation. They are well known and respected for their bachelor, master, Education Specialist and doctoral degrees.

They have Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright award winners, and we won’t even mention how many  Truman, Hollings and Boren scholars they’ve had or how many professors have won nation acclaim and awards.

But again, it’s not just about the money and awards, they are attracting more than just Alabama local students and are a leader in attracting top out of state students, which now outnumber instate students 57% to 43%. Alabama’s law school is a top 10 of all public schools. Their School of Communication and School of Accounting have been top 10 programs in the nation for many years in a row. This is a school that wants to win as an educational powerhouse and they are doing a great job.

Then there is athletics.

I travel the world and have been to every continent on the planet but Antarctica and if I wear Alabama gear, I can expect a loud “Roll Tide” from every country. Yes Alabama’s dominance in college football has not gone unnoticed anywhere on the planet.

Major corporations around the world have watched Alabama dominate and worked out formulas to create their own “process” to success. Many of those points are identical the ones that Saban uses for his football team.

And like any successful corporation, there are measures of success that determine if you’re doing that job correctly. While Saban is more concerned with championships, he realizes that money is part of that puzzle to get those championships and he delivers that too.

Last season the football program brought in just a little shy of  104 million dollars dollars to the university. After total football expenses, that left a whopping 47.7 million dollars of profit for the school. Like a good corporation, you want to increase your profits each year and Alabama succeeded in that making about eight million dollars more in football profits than it did the year before.

But that’s just football, Alabama just hired a new athletic director that is determined to make Alabama’s other sports to be leaders also. Money is going to be spent on new facilities and improvements and you can count of future staff changes to help them achieve that goal. Alabama is already known for outstanding gymnastic teams, golf teams and softball teams and you can bet more are coming.

Yes, Alabama is a well oiled machine. They will continue to be a top educational university and are picked by the great minds in Las Vegas to challenge for yet another football championship and the other programs are coming on too.

Alabama Incorporated is a brand to be proud of from top to bottom.

Larry has been published in almost every media outlet for college sports and now primarily writes here for Touchdown Alabama. Follow Larry on Twitter for inside thoughts and game time comments at https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter

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