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Florida Gulf Coast Eagles: Will March Madness Wins Mean More of Everything for FGCU?

March 24, 2013 - 7:00pm

The Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles, March Madness 2013's hard-charging Cinderella sensation, have much to celebrate after their weekend smackdowns of the Georgetown Hoyas and the San Diego State Aztecs, but the impact on the school's future budgetary appropriations remains to be seen.

One thing is certain: The university is definitely not going back to where it was just a few years ago.

TheNaples Daily News reported FGCU President Wilson Bradshawon Monday said that on the day following the teams win in Philadelphia, there were roughly 177,000 hits to the universitys home page.

Over the last few days, even today we were on the cover of USA Today, local newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the New York Post, he said. I mean, its just been great, great exposure nationwide and internationally, if you count all the tweets that have been going on around the world, Bradshaw said.

Ken Kavanagh, FGCU's athletic director, told ESPN Monday about the state of the school's basketball program when he was hired in June 2009."It was clear to me that the school was hoping to be at the Division I level operating a Division II type budget.We didn't have office spaces. We could only afford to give out 11 (instead of 13) scholarships. The men's basketball coaching staff combined was making $175,000. We had a third assistant named Leo Miller, who had won more than 600 games at the high school level, helping us out for a $5,000 salary. Our recruiting budget was $15,000 each for both the men and women."

Requests for comment from FGCU were not returned before this story went to press, but public records show the basketball coaching staff is today making a lot more than a combined $175,000. Head coach Andy Enfield makes $157,500, followed by assistant coaches Kevin Norris and Marty Richter at $71,400 and $51,000 respectively. It's unknown how much assistant coach Michael Fly and operations director Joey Cantens make.

That's still not much to brag about. By way of comparison, Florida State University Seminoles' head coach Leonard Hamilton is making $211,150, while assistant coaches Corey Williams and Dennis Gates each pull in $221,344. Michael Bradley, the Seminoles' strength and conditioning coach, makes $77,467.

Kavanagh also told ESPN that in 2009 the school was charging $180 for men's and women's basketball season tickets, which came out to $6 a game. This past season, the best seats at the men's games were still just under $18.


The Eagles' entry into the Sweet 16 has already earned their regional college athletic conference, the Atlantic Sun Conference, at least $736,500 a year -- $245,500 for each NCAA game they'll have qualified to play so far -- for the next six years. Kavanagh explained that FGCU will be receiving one-ninth or one-tenth of that (depending whether Northern Kentucky is eligible to participate), plus a $15,000 stipend for each round in the tournament played.

Asked whether he expected the school to profit from the stipends, Kavanagh told ESPN "[i]t has helped us obviously that we played two games in one place [i.e., Philadelphia] so far."

As Sunshine State Newspreviously reported, FGCU has declined to speculate on what future projected revenues the school can be expected to gain from all the publicity the Eagles have drawn over the past few weeks. Kavanagh told SSN "[t]here's a fallacy out there that we make all this money, but we really don't. What we hope to do is capitalize on our achievement and create, maybe, more people who will buy season tickets, more people to join our booster club, etc.

And more prospective students who will flood the school with applications. An offshoot of March Madness for teams that create the kind of buzz the Eagles have is a much-increased enrollment -- an in-demand, well-rounded educational experience.

Butler University, for instance: Two studies estimated that television, print, and online news coverage of Butler's men's basketball team's 2010 and 2011 appearances in the NCAA tournament championship game resulted in additional publicity for the university worth about $1.2 billion. Applications for admission to Butler rose by 41 percent after the 2010 appearance.

Another school reported to have experienced a similar growth spurt as a result of a basketball accomplishment was the University of Northern Iowa. In the 2010 NCAA Tournament, the Panthers sprung an upset of top-ranked Kansas. The game and the national exposure that went with it led to massive increases in donations, website traffic, and e-commerce for the athletic department, and a 30 percent increase in calls to UNI's admissions office on the Monday after the upset.

The Eagles (whose school's athletic budget is $9.2 million) go on to face the University of Florida Gators ($107.2 million in comparison) on March 29.

For most universities, no doubt including FGCU of Fort Myers -- or "Dunk City" as it's being called -- winning is the best salesman.


Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116. Nancy Smith contributed to this story.

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