Florida football: How much do the Gators spend on recruiting?

The college football recruiting game is more and more feverish. Programs across the country, including Florida football, are picking up the pace … a lot.

Let’s be honest. When you watched the movie “Blue Chips,” you thought it was just a movie, right. No way would that happen with, say, Florida football, right?

I mean, who would think a college would buy a tractor for a basketball recruit, or find shady ways around academic standards to get a player enrolled.

Well, in the last 10 years, we have learned it’s not far off from reality.

The college recruiting game is cutthroat. And now we learn, it’s expensive too.

Florida Gators Football

USA Today recently put out a study examining how much money college football programs spend on recruiting.

For its part, Florida football has increased its recruiting spending by 68.2% over the last five years. In 2018, the Gators spent $1.15 million on recruiting, alone.

This includes spending for “transportation, lodging and meals for prospective student-athletes and institutional personnel on official and unofficial visits,” according to the NCAA. It can also include “value of use of institution’s own vehicles or airplanes as well as in-kind value of loaned or contributed transportation.”

You might be wondering who topped the list.

Well, coming in at a whopping $2.62 million, one of Florida football’s biggest rivals, Georgia, topped the list. The school has increased its recruiting expenditures by 351.7% since 2013.

Alabama, you might be wondering, has increased its recruiting spend by 138.3% to $2.34 million in 2018.

Oh, Florida’s big in-state rival (and I don’t mean Central Florida) Florida State has increased its recruiting budget by 271.4% to $1.58 million in 2018.

"It should be noted the Seminoles have spent more than $600,000 over what they budgeted for recruiting since 2016, according to the report."

The report also showed the Southeastern Conference outspends its fellow Power 5 conferences. SEC schools averaged more than $1.3 million, compared to public schools in the Big 12 ($961,981), ACC ($938,424), Big 10 ($855,437) and Pac-12 ($708,750).

Keep in mind, those are only averages of public schools in those conferences. You would have to add in Baylor and Texas Christian in the Big 12; Boston College, Duke and Syracuse in the ACC; and Stanford and USC in the Pac-12. So, the numbers are a bit skewed as there are no private universities in the SEC.

Here’s a look at the schools in the SEC spent in 2018 and how that’s changed since 2013.

School                              FY2018 Expense                                % change from 2013-2018
Alabama                             $2,344,057                                                        138.3%
Arkansas                            $1,254,138                                                        103.8%
Auburn                                $1,081,836                                                        -21.8%
Florida                                 $1,155,802                                                         68.2%
Georgia                                $2,626,622                                                        351.7%
Kentucky                             $791,863                                                            57.0%
LSU                                       $1,287,344                                                        122.9%
Mississippi                          $704,836                                                            26.5%
Mississippi St.                    $453,116                                                            -3.3%
Missouri                               $685,834                                                            8.6%
South Carolina                    $861,747                                                           185.1%
Tennessee                            $2,002,871                                                        55.0%
Texas A&M                           $1,710,101                                                       326.3%

As you can see, six schools increased recruiting expenses by triple-digits. Texas A&M may be the most notable, outside of Georgia, with a 326% jump. Coincidently, Florida State overspent more when Jimbo Fisher was the head coach. Now, at Texas A&M, that program went almost $100,000 over its recruiting budget in 2018.

And, despite the whopping increases for Georgia, the school has averaged a $593,000 overspend in each of the last three years. The school was nearly $1 million over budget in recruiting expenses in 2016. While Georgia spent $2.62 million on football recruiting, it only spent $1.36 million on recruiting for all other sports combined (but, that is not outrageous considering it is likely the case at many other SEC schools).

There is also plenty of disparity in the SEC.

Mississippi and Mississippi State have combined recruiting expenses ($1.15 million) is still less than the expenses of at least six schools (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, LSU, Tennesse and Texas A&M).

Florida football sits kind of in the middle of the pack. The increases haven’t been massive and the spending hasn’t been exorbitant — at least not to the effect of Georgia, Alabama, Florida State and others.

But, all these numbers do speak to one thing:

College football recruiting remains as competitive as it has ever been.

And, it’s not likely to get any better anytime soon.