Grab Your Ankles USF

If you haven't already, and I doubt you have, read this article in today's Tampa Tribune. It details the absolute screw job of a rental agreement the Bulls have at Raymond-James Stadium with the NFL's Buccaneers.

Here are some high points:

• Under the agreement, the Bucs get all profit when the professional team plays at the stadium. But the team also gets the first $2 million of profit from parking and concessions at non-Buc events annually, such as concerts and USF games.


• The Bucs and the sports authority split any profit beyond $2 million, which happened for the first time last year, thanks to strong turnout for a concert by country singer Kenny Chesney. The Bucs and the sports authority each got $15,781.


• In late June, the sports authority approved a new lease that raised the Bulls' base rent to $105,000 per game this season, up about $19,000 per event from previous years. But that only includes rental of the stadium's lower deck, which seats about 40,000. The costs go up dramatically if ticket sales require the second deck to be opened, as it will for the game against the Mountaineers.


• Additional costs include added security, the use of the large video boards and other stadium amenities.


• Stadium staff figure that every ticket holder for Friday's game will spend an average of $9.02 on food and drinks. The company that runs the concession stands gets about 60 percent of that and the Bucs get the rest. If the game is a sellout, the Bucs could make $236,890. The USF Bulls do not share in the profit from concessions.


• The Bucs also get the game-day profit from the sale of 6,000 parking spaces at $10 a piece, or about $60,000.

I suspect that when this agreement expires in 2011 that USF will be able to negotiate better terms, but in the meantime, sweet baby Jesus in a manger are they getting bent over.