Oregon’s place in recent athletic department ranking raises some questions
I think it’s pretty fair to say that fans of the Oregon Ducks think highly of themselves and the programs they root for. That’s not a bad thing, either.
For the most part, Duck fans should be incredibly proud of the teams they cheer on yearly. Consistently, they have a football team that ranks among the top 10-15 teams in the nation, sometimes better; they have a pair of basketball programs that have made multiple deep trips in the NCAA Tournament; they also have really solid baseball and softball program, and the track and field program is consistently among the best in the nation.
Behind all of that are Nike and Uncle Phil Knight, who are inarguably among the best donors in the world of college athletics.
So with all of that in mind, you would think that the Ducks have one of the top athletic departments in the Pac-12 if not the nation, right? Well, depending on how you look at things, that may not be the answer.
The past week, well-respected Mercury News columnist Jon Wilner debuted his Pac-12 athletic department power rankings. In essence, he wanted to look at which schools in the conference got the highest number of wins per dollar spent on athletics. With a focus on the “revenue sports” of football, and both men’s and women’s basketball, Wilner compared operating expenses to the number of wins across those three sports.
In his rankings, Wilner has the Ducks ranked as the No. 8 athletic department in the Pac-12, giving the following reasoning:
Football success was impressive but just short of the top tier; the Ducks didn’t qualify for the conference championship or reach the New Year’s Six. However, the twin regression by the basketball programs guided our calculation when comparing the Ducks to departments ranked above them. The more you spend, the more difficult the wins-per-dollar road becomes to navigate.
Here are my quick takeaways…
I can't say I disagree...
To be completely honest, I can’t say I disagree with the ranking from Wilner. If you are looking at just football and basketball, it’s understandable that after a year of regression on the hardwood, and a solid, but not spectacular year on the gridiron, Oregon is in the middle of the pack.
Who stands ahead of the Ducks?
In the power rankings, the Ducks find themselves just behind both Arizona and Washington. While Oregon fans may disagree, look at those two schools separately and compare them to the Ducks.
Arizona’s football program wasn’t good this year with 5 wins, but the men’s basketball team was dominant — despite their first-round loss in the NCAA Tournament as a No. 2 seed — and the women’s basketball team was really solid as well.
For Washington, the football team was better than Oregon this year, no matter how hard that is for Duck fans to admit. They finished with a better record, won a more prestigious bowl game, and beat Oregon head-to-head. The men’s basketball team was worse, but the women’s basketball team was slightly better than Oregon’s. In the end, it makes sense that the Ducks find themselves behind both Arizona and Washington.
“That said, we view Arizona, Oregon, and Washington as effectively interchangeable in these rankings,” Wilner said.
The Budget is Key
One of the biggest misconceptions about these rankings is that they are based purely on success. Don’t forget that it has to do with wins per dollar spent, though. While few people would argue against the opinion that Oregon has a better athletic department than Washington State or Oregon State — two teams that are ranked ahead of the Ducks — it’s hard to argue the ranking when you consider that Oregon spent $140.9 million for their production, when the Cougars ($84.5 million) and Beavers ($87.7 million) got similar production for far cheaper.
The Ducks spent the second-most of any Pac-12 program in the 2022 fiscal year, behind only the Washington Huskies.
In a different year, the rankings are different
What a revelatory statement, right? In a different year, these rankings would look different. I know, I’m really breaking your brain with that one.
The reality is that if you were to look at these figures say in 2020, the Ducks might be No. 1 on the list. They had a football team that won the Rose Bowl, a men’s basketball team led by Payton Pritchard set to make a deep tournament run, and a women’s basketball team led by Sabrina Ionescu that was viewed as the championship favorites going into March Madness.
In 2023, Oregon saw some regression with both men’s and women’s basketball, which obviously hurt the rankings. Will it be the same next year? Impossible to say.
However, I think that fans of the Ducks would take Rob Mullens and their athletic department over any other school in the Pac-12 every day of the week.
