USA Today compiled a list of the Athletic department revenues and expenses as well as the % of the budget that's subsidized. There's some VERY interesting data in here to say the least. This is for the 2015-16 school year. Note that this is only for public schools as they're required to release the data, but privates aren't (so the Ivies and big privates like USC, Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, etc. aren't on here). Despite only being public schools on here, I think this gives us a very good idea of where we're at.
Among FCS schools (top 5):
JMU #59 overall (You get what you pay for clearly, they won the FCS natty this year)
Delaware #77 overall
UC Davis #82 overall
Stony Brook #90 overall
New Hampshire #99 overall
The schools immediately ahead of us and behind us as far as overall athletic budgets are:
87 Utah State
88 Ohio
89 Appalachian State
90 Stony Brook
91 Central Michigan
92 Nevada
93 San Jose State
And here are all the FBS schools that are below us in terms of overall revenue, plus North Dakota State just for the hell of it
91 Central Michigan
92 Nevada
93 San Jose State
94 Georgia Southern
95 Eastern Michigan
96 Marshall
97 Western Kentucky
98 Florida International
104 Georgia State
105 Toledo
106 Texas-San Antonio
108 Troy
109 South Alabama
112 Coastal Carolina
114 New Mexico State
117 Kent State
118 Southern Mississippi
119 Louisiana-Lafayette
120 Ball State
121 North Dakota State
124 Louisiana Tech
126 Bowling Green
127 Idaho
...
170 Louisiana-Monroe (LOL)
Buffalo is #78 on this list just behind Delaware and despite being FBS their total revenue is only 3 million a year more than ours.
Despite being FCS, we're already in the top 2/3rds of the public schools in the G5 in terms of athletic department budgets and spending. Including outspending several Mountain West teams. Some of these programs are quite good too. I take this to mean that we could move to FBS tomorrow and still field a competitive program without spending an additional dime of money if we chose to do so. FBS obviously would have increased travel costs, scholarship awards, stadium expansion, etc. so our budget would have to rise, but so would our revenues due to the vastly increased visibility of being FBS. This was quite eye opening to me since despite not performing like it, we're at the very top of FCS in athletic spending and are already well positioned for the big time. We just need to improve our stadium, and finally get that invite. Winning some football games in the mean time would also greatly help (Get Priore OUT!!).
I also find it fascinating how with the exception of UC Davis (darkhorse Pac-12 expansion candidate in the far future), the top 5 schools in the FCS are all in the CAA and all have been rumored to want to move up to FBS and form a new conference. Very interesting indeed.
Source:
http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
Good investigated work VA seawolf. Get Priore out and SB could go FBS within 10 years, if they choose to do so..