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Jersey sales constitute about 5% of collegiate licensing revenue per NYT last year. (Pros make more.) For 2010, the last year for which there's broken-out data, we made $1.6M in total from ALL licensing revenue per Roanoke Times. The Boise State game was that year, and that jersey was a huge hit -- I still see some of those in the stands. So in what should have been a good year given a great one-off jersey, we made $80,000 on jerseys.

Since the licensing rate is itself 5% of retail, that blows out to $1.6M retail sales of jerseys -- if each jersey cost $80 retail, we sold 20,000 jerseys total (special-edition and regular uniform style).

So $80K revenue on 20,000 jerseys sold. Not bad. But concessions for the 2014 season brought in $1.3M, just under $200K/game (p. 8 of the PDF, labeled "Page 5 of 31"). Or, put another way, we could double jersey sales from a good 2010, and they still wouldn't match up to a single game's concession revenue in a year we didn't sell out and didn't have very good food choices. We haven't even moved on to parking, tickets, and donations.

Jerseys look good on TV and maybe attract recruits, but they don't make a ton of money in and of themselves for Virginia Tech.

Alex can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe his logic is: new uniforms excite fans more than any other subject (they do, I have the pageviews to back that up) --> excited fans spend money directly (e.g. jerseys, helmet replicas) or indirectly because there is a buzz.

..wait, this is seriously their conference room? I thought it was a joke.

Damn that D was legit this year.

I agree, just going to a 22" seat would be a huge improvement. I think they are 19" now. That's 1960's America. I was there for the WVU game, those WVU fans need 25"+ seats!!!!

Part of the comfort problem at Cassell is the risers. Only so much you can do to the concrete. Not much leg room front to back.

But lose 2 seats per row, put in new comfy seats with drink holders, paint the aisles with slip resistant epoxy. That would go a looooooonnnnnngggg way to make Cassell better.

They scared

How much better ratings on Thursday vs Friday this year? Seems to me the NFL game has taken over Thursday nights. I'm just as likely to watch the Friday night games as the Thursday and I almost never watch the NFL games. I wonder what people who really like the NFL do, more Friday night games?

I agree there is some significant brand connection there. Unfortunately, Friday night is now UCONN and BYU. But if the ACC took 6 games on Friday nights, we may start to own that image and strengthen the Friday night brand much like VT (and GT) did for Thursdays.

THIS IS AWESOME. THANKS SO MUCH.

App St is a solid team so UT may have to reveal a bit more than VT. However, In both games I'd expect the teams to try and keep the game plan pretty vanilla. I'd wager that the VT offensive coaches and UT defensive coaches are likely to learn more from the film of the previous stops for the coaches than from the initial opponent.

Man, I absolutely love what Whit is doing. We are definitely headed in the right direction. I cannot help but be overly excited.

Yea, I was scratching my head when I read that part of the interview...