Penn State's Ranking Will Drop

9-Aug-12
Published in: timesleader.com
Author: Andrew M. Seder
Description:

The ongoing sexual abuse scandal and loss of sponsorships will lower Penn State's ranking in future years, according to Forbes magazine, which publishes an annual list of most valuable college football programs.

In 2010, the most recent rankings released, the school was third, behind Notre Dame and Texas. It was the second consecutive year the State College school attained the ranking.

"This year's rankings were not impacted by the Jerry Sandusky scandal, but we expect the team to fall quite a bit in future rankings. Cars.com and an estimated half-dozen other companies pulled their ads from telecasts of Penn State games after the scandal broke," the magazine noted in a story accompanying the list. "The good news for Penn State is that major sponsors like Pepsi and Nike have yet to jump ship. The loss of those sponsors would seriously hurt the school"s athletic revenue, "It seems almost certain that Penn State's reign as a top-earning program is coming to an end," the story concluded.

Patrick Rishe, an economics professor at Webster University in St Louis, said he would not be surprised to see Penn State fall into the teens on that list in the next year or two.

And that means another financial hit for the school, which has already spent millions on a private investigation into the school's role in the Sandusky abuse scandal, and has been fined $60 million by the NCAA.

It also will lose revenue from not appearing in NCAA bowl games over the next four seasons and will lose millions each year because it will not receive a share of Big 10 bowl revenue for the next four years.

"That could cost $5 million to $10 million annually," Rishe estimated.