Louisville might be unable to participate in this year's NCAA Tournament, but that doesn't mean the Cards can't be the most valuable group of players in Division-I basketball, at least according to Business Insider. Using the NBA's collective bargaining agreement as a guideline, BI found that Louisville scholarship basketball players are worth about $1.7 million each to the school. Here's how that number was discovered:
Using the NBA's most recent collective bargaining agreement in which the players receive a minimum of 49% of all revenue, each school's men's basketball revenue was split between the school and the athletes with the players' share divided evenly among the 13 scholarship players.
Business Insider put together this little graph showing some of the rest of the best and how much each scholarship player would make at that school.
Louisville, Duke and Syracuse being the only schools with players worth something in the millions is a little surprising and most people would have assumed Kentucky would be in there too, but the Wildcats miss the cut just ever so slightly. Those guys are "only" worth $930,417 each.
For those doing the math, that means that Louisville made about $45 million in basketball revenue alone. Imagine if they were still good at football.
[h/t CollegeSpun]
