Not sure comparing to Virgina or UNC is appropriate for CU in the near future. They run $70+ million budgets compared to CU's $48 million, and were talking
no institutional support (CU is listed at 5.5 mil... not sure how exactly that is tallied).
Their conference shares were $12 million compared to CU's $10 million. CU will never have the donation levels of UVA or UNC realistically.
(budget numbers are 2009-10 from
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ncaa-finances.htm)
Purdue had a $58 million budget and Minnesota a $78 million budget (where the hell did that all go? must be some expenses with the stadium?). Michigan State was at $81 million in revenue and Iowa $88 million. Wow.
Football only costs $20-30 million at even the biggest spending schools, so that's a lot of extra money. I think I saw somewhere that CU was spending in the $12-15 million range, which is really doing it on the cheap, even compared to the Pac 10.
CU has a huge advantage for the time being - it carries a smaller number of sports. Untill the warchest is built up, it doesn't seem prudent to add sports unless Title IX need arises for some reason.
2012 Pac 12 TV money will only be ~$15-16 million, so it's not a huge boost on the $9-10 mil CU was getting as part of the B12. The contract escalates every year, so it will be much larger pretty quickly, but the real big numbers come in 2020-2023.... hope the conference makes it that far in it's current state. The contract seems to be poartially an anomoy driven by cable TV's desire for live programming to fend off streaming video - who knows if that money will be around in 2024? I really hope the Pac schools are prudent with this money. P12 network could take a couple of years to really overcome startup costs, but an extra $8-10 mil after that is not out of the question. Every school should be putting $10 million away per year into an endowment to fund future activities IMO. Still plenty left after that to build some new facilities or pay a coach or two.