For comparison sake, as these are the first G5 numbers I've seen. UMass has a budget of $50m. Not super far off from our $43m. They do have almost double the athletes we have. 619 vs 349 according to the last numbers I saw.
But still, this shows roughly where we will need to be per athlete. $6m avgs out to $9,700 per athlete. So we would need around half, $3m, to be comparable.
UMass' goal is to hit $10m in a few years with $5m going to football. That'll absolutely put them at the top of the MAC.
The AAC for comparison has a minimum spend of $10m over three years. And it can include revenue share, scholarships, and Alston payments (which we already do of course). So smaller AAC schools (not looking at USF and their $100m budget), will spend minimum $3.3m per year on average. Comparable to where we need to be.
For a school like us, $3m extra per year is a huge chunk of change.