I'm gonna be going back to ATL for 9 days so I'll let Dane/Winfield pick up the slack on bloggin'. Sadly, GT will be travelin' to the west coast while I'm in town.

Let's talk about Paul Johnson's raise. Why would you give someone who excites the fan base a 53% raise? One major factor is attendance. This year's poor attendance due to double barrel of I-AA's and lack of marquee crowd pleasers resulted in around 86% attendance.

If every ticket was sold for approximatly 25 bucks (estimation based on mixture of alumni/seat donors higher and 9,000 "free" student tickets), then we generated 8.7 million in ticket revenue. Now, next year we'll be bringing Clemson, uga, and VT to town. If VT sustains some momentum and the game is not a Thursday night, then we're talking at least 3 sellouts. Next year's home slate will be Wake (86-90%), UNC (90-92%), Clemson (99-100%), ugag (101%), VT (95-100%), and Jacksonville State (85%). So an average of 93-95% is not bad for 6 home games. That's a revenue of 7.6 million.

Imagine a team that annually excites the fan base. We continually bring in 95-96% capacity per game and you're taking care of Johnson's pay raise. This coming year's 6 game home slate doesn't help us but the big 3 opponents at home certainly doesn't hurt.

Now, throw in increased revenue from concessions, increased sales in merchandising (e.g. hundreds of #21 Jon Dwyer gold and white jerseys running around town), and increased television exposure and GT's talking an even greater revenue stream because we made the risk of keeping a good coach.

Are you frightful over Tech's financial future? Do you dislike the Tech fan bases poor home attendance yet odd eagerness to travel (except to VT)?