Why college sports will never rank alongside Boston’s pro teams

We all know the NCAA Tournament generates money by the billions in advertising sales and broadcast rights, but what if the results were determined by it?

No, I’m not talking about boosters, point-shaving, or any form of wink, wink, nudge, nudge behavior used to influence the outcomes or “take care of players” behind the scenes. The question is: What if the richest team won?

MotherJones.com took that question and answered it with a fascinating infographic, measuring the Davids and Goliaths based on each school’s total athletic revenue, courtesy of information provided by the US Department of Education.

As you can see, the Texas Longhorns would be cutting down the nets this year, thanks to the university’s nearly $165 million in athletic earnings. Compare that to two schools that don’t even crack eight-figures, North Carolina Central and Mercer. Each checks in at $9 million. Cal Poly has made nearly double that at $17 million. Cal Poly!

Locally, four New England programs are represented in the tourney; Connecticut ($63M), UMass ($29M), Providence ($24M), and Harvard ($21M). Based on this year’s seeds, only UConn would make it out of the field of 64 based on this formula, with each of the other schools getting dominated financially. Good thing for Tommy Amaker’s Crimson; it would have been a quick return to the study rooms.

The Huskies, if you’re wondering, would double-up Villanova in the third round before falling narrowly to North Carolina in the Sweet 16.

Had Steve Donahue’s old Boston College team won enough games to make the tourney – or save his job – it would have come in just behind UConn at $61 million. Boston University, already ousted from the NIT, made almost $30 million, still better than those Minutemen.

MoJo’s study also examines how teams in the tournament fared this year in regard to how much money it effectively spent per win on men’s basketball. The range was great, from $34,284.75 for North Carolina Central to Ohio State’s more than $750,000. On the local scene, Harvard would have represented far better after a 26-4 year (entering Thursday) at about $54,000, while the other three schools each exceeded six-figures.

The Eagles were embarrassingly inefficient, spending roughly $683,000 per win, while the Terriers had a far more impressive $82,500 expense for each victory.

While all of the numbers are interesting to dissect, there’s obviously a larger argument that’s been around these parts for decades: Do you care?

Boston, and in larger terms New England, isn’t a college sports community. There are exceptions in certain pockets – just ask the folks in and around Storrs or out in Amherst – but college sports results for the most part just don’t resonate with a sports-rooting fanbase that lives and breathes with each professional result.

Is this a baseball town? Football? Hockey? Basketball? It depends entirely on the time of the year and, more so, how a team is playing. The only certainty is this isn’t a soccer town, though the Revolution have their rabid fans.

The Red Sox and Patriots will always receive attention and scrutiny, whether they’re winning or losing, and the Bruins and Celtics have both shown in recent years they’re capable of engulfing the masses by staffing a contender. As the C’s have learned, the support isn’t quite the same when the results aren’t there.

But, at the college ranks, it generally doesn’t matter.

BC football improved by five wins last year to qualify for its first bowl game since 2010, and was subsequently squashed by Arizona 42-19. It was the Independence Bowl, so nobody noticed. UMass has been laughably bad on the gridiron in the two years since joining the Mid-American Conference, going 2-22. Mark Whipple will take the reins in 2014 after great success at the university from 1998-2003, but for now the Minutemen are a punchline.

New England is astonishingly well-represented on the ice with Boston College, Quinnipiac, UMass-Lowell, Providence, Vermont, Northeastern, New Hampshire, and Yale all ranking in the Top 20 in the nation. Maine has been competitive this year and Boston University is in the midst of a transition after decades of prominence. Still, good luck finding someone who didn’t go to one of those schools counting down the days to the Frozen Four. That, by the way, is an awful shame with so much NHL-bound talent in our backyard.

Getting back to the court, a variety of factors would seem to contribute to the region’s general lack of interest.

Sure, Harvard’s having success, but it’s in the Ivy League. Only a Cinderella run this month would generate buzz and even that would be fleeting.

UMass fans are talking about the days of John Calipari and Marcus Camby right now, but that will end against Duke if it doesn’t today at the hands of Tennessee. Call it a tough Midwest draw.

Boston College is in a powerhouse conference filled with teams it can’t compete with – at least not yet – and Patriot League winner Boston University, again, was merely an NIT team. Nobody gets excited for the NIT. Anywhere.

Schools like Connecticut, Providence, and UMass have learned in the not-too-distant past that star power is everything. To have a chance at public respect in a place like Boston, schools must play in a good conference, have a notable head coach, at least one budding NBA talent, and build a few-year period of deep runs, and even all that may not be enough if the Red Sox are in need of a center fielder, the Patriots signed a Hall of Fame cornerback, and the Bruins are poised to compete for another Stanley Cup. Plus, none of those schools are physically in the city, which automatically lessens the buzz.

Perhaps if college teams were performing better than the pro clubs that would briefly turn the tide, but Boston franchises on the whole spend enough to be competitive, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

It’s clearly not an easy riddle to solve. Should colleges in the area be spending more to land top-caliber coaches? Must the academic requirements be lessened for student-athletes in the admissions process? Should schools be, ahem, influencing recruits to come to Boston in an effort to keep up with the Joneses? Is New England doomed to watch top talent go to warm-weather climates, like in NBA free agency? Is there any way to entice the locally-gifted players to stay, other than the ones who already do for pucks, or will they forever chase the more historically dominant programs because those give them the best chance to win titles and turn pro?

And, of course, are local schools – even those outside the city – simply forever victimized by their locations? Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Arizona, and Louisville, among others, aren’t surrounded by four high-level professional sports teams. How would those programs do in their communities if they were?

The best chance for college teams to get attention here? Win and win a lot. Otherwise there’s no hope beyond blending in. Truthfully, even winning probably isn’t enough.

Follow me on Twitter at @AdamMKaufman