The SEC and Stadium Woods

The Stadium Woods debate, being considered by the Hokie powers that be as I type, can have profound impact beyond the building of the new Beamer field house.

If the Hokies do move to the SEC, they face numerous obstacles, including the differential in size and ability at the offensive and defensive line positions and recruiting. But, the biggest obstacle is financial. While the SEC teams will equally split up the huge pot of television revenues, each dime one team makes over another is reinvested in recruiting, infrastructure, keeping a coaching staff intact, and all the other elements which keep a program as a top power. Stadium seating puts the Hokies at a distinct disadvantage right off the bat in the SEC East. Without a major expansion of Lane Stadium, the Hokies can not compete long term with those schools simply because those schools have more resources than the Hokies.

Let's do a very quick simplified example. A move to the SEC East puts the Hokies head to head against Tennessee every year. Tennessee right now is a middling SEC program despite vast resources and a passionate fan base. Every home game, Tennessee averages 100,000 fans. Using $50 a ticket as an average (which is probably low), every Vols home game produces $5,000,000 in gross revenue. Meanwhile, the Hokies sell out Lane Stadium at 66,000 fans at $50 a pop, they make $3.3 million in gross ticket sale revenue. That means, every time the Hokies and Vols play a home game, the Vols have a minimum of $1.7 million additional revenue over the Hokies that can be reinvested into the football program or the athletic department. Over the course of a season, that figures to be almost an extra game and a half's worth of gross revenue WITHOUT having the additional costs that come with hosting the extra games. That disparity would exist with every team in the SEC East except for Vanderbilt, and perhaps Kentucky.

I may be even be lowballing the potential discrepancy. Ultimately, if all other things are equal, that money results in investment which will grow the talent gap. The only way that VT can lower the gap without pricing out their fan base is stadium expansion, and any such expansion would threaten the woods. I am not an engineer and I don't know what the best method would be to make Lane Stadium a bowl or to make the north end zone larger, but it is only a matter of time before the Hokies must do it to win in big boy football.