How much is Deshaun Watson really worth?

An enormous marketing plum on a national stage, Deshaun Watson could prove to be one of Clemson University’s best investments with a virtually incalculable return.

Anointed as this season’s “face of college football,” Watson might finish as the greatest player in school history and arguably as one of Clemson’s most bankable commodities.

How much is that worth?

To Watson, the cost of an education, which he intends to complete in December, fulfilling the requirements for a bachelor’s degree inside three calendar years rather than four or five like most student-athletes.

The return for Clemson includes records for season tickets sales, athletics fundraising and total revenue this year as well as record applications and enrollment.

Nobody at Clemson was willing to speculate what Watson brings back to the school as a consensus All-American quarterback and Heisman Trophy finalist, honors student and Habitat for Humanity volunteer who was raised in government housing by a single mother who battled and beat cancer while her son was setting records for his high school team.

Colleges in Power 5 conferences generate millions in an industry worth billions, and coaches’ salaries are typically among the single largest expense. Earlier this year, Clemson’s Board of Trustees agreed to pay coach Dabo Swinney roughly $5 million annually, making him one of the 10 highest-paid college football coaches in America.

Over the last five years, the Clemson athletics budget has grown by nearly 50 percent, yet football players at schools such as Clemson receive essentially the same slice of compensation they did when ABC and CBS cut the first major TV agreement in 1966.

Like all scholarship athletes at Clemson, Watson received a negligible bump in benefits this year to cover increases in tuition and room and board, which, as an out-of-state student, could reach $50,000 annually.

Clemson budgeted a record $89 million for 2015-16, a figure which didn’t include revenue from two postseason games. Last week, the athletics department announced $56.6 million in donations this year. Clemson is in the midst of a $100 million capital project improving athletics facilities, including the construction of a new football facility adjacent to the practice fields, built with the expressed purpose to attract the next Deshaun Watson or C.J. Spiller. And last year the athletics department received permission to purchase an eight-passenger jet costing up to $4.5 million.

So in cold, hard numbers, what was Watson’s value to Clemson last season, and what’s he likely to project this season?

A debate over whether athletes should receive a larger piece of the revenue has morphed into lawsuits and threats of unionization. Despite the apprehension to venture further down that road, studies have been conducted to determine fair compensation for athletes who generate the biggest share of most athletic revenue.

Last year, the Power 5 conferences agreed to give athletes a cost-of-attendance stipend to supplement the boiler plate scholarship. Clemson athletes received $3,950. This year, they’ll receive $64 less because of a reduction in mileage reimbursement from 57.5 cents to 54 cents.

Football’s 85 scholarships comprise fewer than 25 percent of the total scholarship athletes, yet are directly responsible for 55 percent of athletic revenue. Numbers from the athletics department reflected a strong year financially in 2015-16, with Clemson reporting nearly $9 million in profit on approximately $50 million in football revenue, an 18 percent margin that comparable to the return for an average commercial bank.

Last year, the BusinessInsider.com calculated the Fair Market Value of scholarship football players at the 15 wealthiest schools. “Using the NFL's most recent collective bargaining agreement in which the players receive a minimum of 47 percent of all revenue, each school's football revenue was split between the school and the athletes with the players' share divided evenly among the 85 scholarship players.”

The BusinessInsider.com determined that during 2014-2015 the average market value for an FBS scholarship player was $149,569. Based on revenue figures published by USA Today, Clemson was 39^th nationally with $83,534,371, making the average football player on scholarship worth $461,896.

Nobody would argue Watson was average. And while he would not be the sole reason for Clemson’s season, many would agree that he is the one player the team can least afford in a quest to win the national championship that eluded them in January.

Two years ago, Seth Gitter, an associate professor of economics at Towson University, and Peter Hunsberger, who holds a master’s in economics from Johns Hopkins University, attempted to calculate the value of a star college quarterback. The results were published by FiveThirtyEight.com. Now owned by ESPN, the site crunches numbers in politics and sports. It was created by statistician Nate Silver, who predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential election in 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Building a model by drawing on data from 6,884 games, eight years (2006-2013) of school financial data and applying ESPN’s weighing on quarterbacks’ performances largely as passers, Gitter and Hunsberger were able to identify those who generated the most revenue in college football those seasons.

Andrew Luck, Sam Bradford, Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston, Pat White and Johnny Manziel were the top six, each generating at least $3 million more than an average quarterback in a 13-game season.

According to the article: “We found that, across all types of schools, the value of one additional win is close to three-quarters of a million dollars. We ran the model separately for small- and large-revenue schools, and found this figure to be consistent. A truly elite college quarterback can add more than four wins and over $3 million to his school’s annual football revenue.”

Based on their numbers for quarterbacks during the 2013 season, the top producers were Winston ($3 million), Teddy Bridgewater ($2.8 million) and Marcus Mariota ($2.6 million).

Hunsberger, now a consultant in the healthcare industry, told The State in an exchange of online messages that he estimated Watson’s value to Clemson last season at roughly $2.5 million more than an average player.

“Remember these are marginal value estimates,” he wrote, “i.e., value over an (average quarterback), not factoring in base value.” This year would depend on the team’s success and his productivity, Hunsberger said.

Based on the $89.1 million Clemson budgeted for 2015-16, the average player’s value last season was $492,118 which, applying Hunsberger’s estimate, would mean Watson’s calculable value as a quarterback last season would approach $3 million. That doesn’t account for the favorable publicity Clemson received each time Watson appeared on television or the covers of magazines like Sports Illustrated, granted interviews to the Bleacher Report, USA Today and ESPN or appeared at camps in California, Oregon and Louisiana.

ESPN wrote last week that Watson alone was worth the price of admission to a Clemson game this season, which might account for the nearly 59,000 season tickets and the record $29.1 million to IPTAY whose donors, though they fund all athletics scholarships, receive options for priority seating and parking during football season.

“What you’re talking about is what most economists and researchers call ‘publicity value,’” said Kristi A. Dosh, a sports business analyst, author and editor. “So, every time Deshaun Watson has been mentioned in the media … think about what it would cost to buy that time/space as an advertisement for the university.”

In her book “Saturday’s Millionaires,” she wrote that no university could afford a national advertising campaign. “Malcolm Turner of Wasserman Media Group estimated it to be in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Highly visible college football teams frequently see a significant uptick in applications following a successful season. Clemson reported more than 25,000 applications this year, with a freshman class of 3,450 averaging 1,245 average on the SAT.

Dosh said one study found that success in football could result in a seven to eight percent increase in applications.

“In order to achieve the same results by creasing tuition or increasing financial aid,” she wrote, “you’d need anywhere from a two to 24 percent adjustment.”

Clemson could have double the opportunity, Dosh said, with the value of having a Heisman finalist “similar to making a deep run in the NCAA (basketball) tournament or appearing in the College Football Playoff.”

TV analyst Kirk Herbstreit predicted Clemson will return to the national championship with Watson having another big year. “I hate to put it all on him,” Herbstreit said during an ESPN show last week, “but Deshaun Watson, to me, is just a freak.”

Jim Clements, in his third year as Clemson president, has been visible and vocal in his support of the football program. After one game last season he traded chest bumps with Swinney.

Requests through the public affairs office for a comment from him about Watson were deflected and referred to the athletic department.

This story was originally published August 27, 2016 at 7:48 PM.