In the newly-released “Billon-Dollar Ball,” two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gilbert M. Gaul sets out to chronicle, in minute detail, the corporatization of college football in the 21st century.

An investigative reporter by trade, Gaul’s premise is as simple as it is cynical: the money culture of college football has lined the pockets of a powerful few and skewed the academics-first mission upon which our universities were founded.

It’s not a new idea — that Alabama coach Nick Saban’s salary of more than $7 million per year, about 70 times what a full professor makes in Tuscaloosa, is borderline obscene. But in a book that interlaces personal anecdotes and curious first-hand explorations with hard facts and data, Gaul manages to encapsulate the sport’s transformation in such detail that it could become a seminal book on the era.

Despite the obvious editorial slant — “Billion-Dollar Ball” reads like Gaul sets out to prove a point, rather than objectively present whatever reality he uncovered — the author does raise some interesting societal questions that often get brushed aside, especially in the football-crazed South.

Here are some of the facts and figures Gaul uncovered:

  • Arkansas (345 percent), LSU (266 percent), Georgia (215 percent), Auburn (210 percent), Florida (149 percent) and Alabama (108 percent) are among schools that experienced huge revenue growth between 1999 and 2012.
  • “Football schools” like those mentioned in the previous point about revenue growth feature attendee populations that are between 0.02 percent and 0.05 percent student-athletes. By comparison, “smaller schools” like Princeton, Dartmouth and MIT feature student-athlete percentages in the mid-teens and higher.
  • Despite that disparity, Texas spent about $170 million on athletics, compared to $20 million for Princeton, which featured 413 more varsity athletes in the year examined.
  • Gaul cited an Alabama ticket official to report that just 40 season tickets changed hands in 2013 — in a stadium that seats more than 100,000 people. With a season ticket waiting list that at the time reached 26,000 — almost one-third the population of Tuscaloosa — the Tide employs a seat donation program called “TIDE PRIDE.” The short version: donate the most money and you’ll get access to season tickets when they become available.
  • Between the “TIDE PRIDE” program and ticket sales, Gaul reported, Alabama collects about $45 million per year for its athletic programs. The author actually commended Alabama for being willing to go on the record. The practice is common throughout college football, but most athletic departments declined to speak on the record with Gaul.
  • In 2012, Georgia fans “paid $22 million to secure premium seats at Sanford Stadium — again, that amount is above and beyond what they paid for the tickets themselves. Nearly two thirds of the 92,000 seats at Sanford require a donation. The minimum fees are set annually by the athletic department.” In 2008, the donation required for the right to purchase tickets for one of the premium seats reached $10,651.
  • Saban earned an annual salary of $697,000 at Michigan State in 1999. In 2014, he got paid 54 times what Robert Bentley, the Alabama governor, earned and 12 times more than the university’s president, “who is responsible for a budget seven times the size of the football budget.”
  • Despite making more money overall, Alabama’s profit margin declined from 72 percent in ’07 to 54 percent in ’12, and the school paid more money than ever per victory.
  • The book reminded Tennessee fans that the school has spent about $1 million per football victory dating back to Phil Fulmer’s firing in 2008. Due to a drop in attendance — and the fact that the university owes Derek Dooley money through the 2015 season — “Tennessee’s chancellor, Jimmy Cheek, agreed to let the (athletic) department forgo millions it had pledged to share with the university.”
  • From 1980 to 2014, the SEC distributed about $2.2 billion to its member schools. From 2002 to 2015, the SEC’s revenue more than tripled. ESPN alone paid $2.25 billion for the right to broadcast the SEC’s games for 15 years.
  • Five of the 10 richest athletic departments in the country are in the SEC. But in 2011, SEC schools “reported a staggering $1.2 billion in debt on their football stadiums and other athletic facilities — double what they had reported only five years earlier.”
  • Wrote Gaul: “… the SEC clearly values football above everything else. In 2013 the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics released some remarkable data on the gaps in spending between college football and academics. Among other things, the data showed that Auburn University spent the equivalent of $14,000 on each of its students but about $400,000 on each football player. Similar gaps were the case at other SEC schools.”
  • Gaul detailed two highly-visible licensing legal cases between the University of Alabama and a) famous painter Daniel Moore and b) small Northport baker Mary Cesar. The latter was scrawling the script Alabama “A” on cookies and cakes. Saban’s wife, Terry, has even placed orders. But then Cesar got a cease-and-desist order from the university’s athletic department, leading to a high-profile protest and an investigative report by the Tuscaloosa News.

“Billion-Dollar Ball” is loaded with other SEC anecdotes and facts. Those are just a few.

What do you think? Has college football, as the book’s marketing states, “been transformed into a money-making spectacle that is hurting higher education?” Or do the two co-exist?

The book is on sale as of Aug. 25 for $27.95, if you care to read more and form your own opinion.

Disclaimer: Saturday Down South’s Chief Executive Officer, Drew Roberts, is quoted in “Billion-Dollar Ball” in the context of rabid fan interest in SEC football. SDS did not profit from the book in any form, and was not paid to review the publication.