How did USM athletics overcome years of financial hardship, even with a small budget?

Southern Miss can put year one in its new Sun Belt Conference home in the rear view mirror.

The Golden Eagles made a splash on paper by debuting at No. 4 in the Vic Bubas Cup standings, the award that goes to the top performing athletic department in the SBC, and improved its financial standing in the process.

Football took a significant leap in its rebuild by playing and winning a bowl game in coach Will Hall’s second season. Men’s basketball completed one of the biggest turnarounds in college hoops history and won the SBC regular season championship and baseball became one of two schools in the country to host a Super Regional for the second year in a row.

The impact on the fan base was noticeable. M.M. Roberts Stadium saw an average of 25,131 fans for each home game, the most since 2016.

In January, the basketball team defeated Louisiana in front of the first sellout crowd at Reed Green Coliseum since 2008. Baseball followed up by finishing top 10 in the entire country in average attendance.

The windfall of support driven by success could not have come at a more opportune time for a department that has battled multiple waves of financial hardship in recent years.

Strategic investments from the University coupled with the ticket sales and fundraising success “has allowed us to really get a more solid footing,” according to athletic director Jeremy McClain.

Southern Miss depends on tickets bought by fans

Southern Miss relies more on fans purchasing tickets to buoy the athletic department’s bottom line than almost any other school in the SBC.

According to data released this summer by USA Today, 11.7% of USM’s athletic revenue during 2021-22 came from ticket sales. That was second-highest in the conference behind only Appalachian State.

The school also had the second-lowest budget in the league, making fan involvement imperative to McClain’s mission.

“If you’re going to rely on (ticket sales) to fund your operation, then you have to be successful,” McClain said. “You have to keep people engaged in what you’re doing. In football, people see the momentum and they see where we’re heading and there’s a renewed sense of interest.”

McClain says football has once again surpassed 10,000 season tickets sold for the upcoming year and says there is a “huge revenue boost that comes with that.”

Conversely to ticket sales, the school is one of the least reliant within the SBC on student fees to beef its budget and has to spend wisely on staffing to create a winning culture that fans will engage with.

“We’ve always been an institution that maximizes our resources,” McClain said. “It’s about hiring the right people. We’re not going to pay our coaches the most, we’re not going to pay our staff the most, but we are going to be competitive and make sure our people are taken care of. But I think it’s about just making sure there’s no fat, that we’re really smart about how we use our resources.”

Future of Golden Eagle athletics

The shot in the arm fans gave USM helped carry the school through a year where the budget was especially tight.

In leaving Conference USA a year early, USM had to forfeit a year of the SBC’s distribution and pay CUSA a $1.75 million exit fee. Conference USA also withheld a portion of its distribution to USM. In total, the cost of the school’s transition was potentially as high as $4.15 million.

While the exact figure of the SBC’s per school media distribution pool is still unknown, McClain says it’s enough to “make us whole again and then some” when it receives its first SBC share this year.

According to the Daily News-Record, that number could be around $2 million per school.

For comparison, CUSA’s new media rights deal with ESPN and CBS Sports will net that league’s schools around $750,000 per year.

The difference may not be done growing, either. The SBC has positioned itself well for the upcoming 2024-slated expansion of the College Football Playoff and will be poised to have a team battle for a spot in the 12-team format.

McClain says the direct access could mean a further increase in ESPN’s payout to the SBC.

“I think there’s an opportunity over the next two to three years to play ourselves into an even larger distribution for the conference,” McClain said. “I think that’s kind of the carrot really, from the standpoint of having successful football. There’s an opportunity for all of us to benefit if we get a team in the playoff and I think that’s very doable.”

Where that money will go within the department is still being closely guarded. Renovations are underway at Reed Green and the football stadium just had brand new turf installed.

What comes next in the school’s master facilities plan has no timetable for a public announcement.

In the short term, McClain has high expectations for the programs that act as the school’s front porch.

“I’ve talked about the Sun Belt, the opportunity is there for us to get better in the league,” McClain said. “At Southern Miss, we want to lead that charge. We want to be up front and be a leader in this conference.”