Michigan vs. Ohio State, Bama vs. Auburn, Army vs. Navy — these are a few of the big college football rivalries played annually across the US. These matches, which are also streamed online and shown on live television, often feature sold-out stadiums of a massive magnitude. How big? Take Michigan’s football stadium, for example: it’s the biggest stadium in the Western Hemisphere and the third-largest stadium in the world, with an official capacity of 107,601. Calculate the number of seats by the average cost of a Michigan Wolverines football game ticket, $74, and you’re looking at nearly eight million dollars in revenue per home game. Of course, that’s only a rough estimate. So, how much do colleges actually earn from sports programs?
This past June, news outlet USA Today released a database of NCAA finances for college athletics programs. 22 programs surpassed a whopping $150 million in revenue for the 2022-2023 academic year. Leading the pack was Ohio State, with a total revenue of $251,615,345, but in total, the Big Ten league’s 13 public schools had a combined revenue of $2.04 billion dollars. That profit is not strictly from tickets; ticket sales only make up a small portion of revenue. Other revenue streams include media rights, bowl revenues, royalties and licensing, donor contributions, and other sources. The majority of these revenues come from two sports, men’s football and men’s basketball, but less than 2% of college football and men’s basketball players will go on to play a single game in either the NFL or the NBA. In terms of monetary benefit, of the $15.8 billion in revenues generated in 2019, only 18.2% of that revenue was used as athletics scholarships, and a mere 1% was spent on medical treatments. Nearly double, 35%, was spent on compensation for coaches and administration, and 18% went towards new facilities and facilities updates.
In addition to being massive money-making enterprises, university athletics programs are also seen as a source of pride for students, alumni, and the local community of a given university. And that’s not the only benefit — great college sports teams with high-profile games can even increase a school’s number of admissions, making for more competitive academic programs moving forward. This phenomenon, known as the “Flutie Effect,” is named after Doug Flutie, a quarterback for Boston College who threw a Hail Mary to beat Miami in a nationally televised game in 1984. Applications to Boston College surged the following application cycle, and the Flutie Effect continues to be seen in public institutions, such as Alabama and Clemson, as well as private institutions, such as Notre Dame.
The result of colleges investing in their athletics programs is simple: They get both revenue and recognition for their athletic programs. Do athletes benefit from this system? Not all of them, if the benefit is being measured by graduation rates. 52% of all NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball and 38% of Division 1 men’s football players who were on a full scholarship and required to be full-time students did not graduate, based on an estimation using the Federal Graduation Rate and the NCAA Division 1 Graduation Rates Database. Graduation rates seem much higher from the NCAA’s graduation rate statistics, but these statistics hide the truth by aggregating graduation rates across all NCAA sports, hiding the fact that the highest revenue generating sports have some of the lowest graduation rates.
A shifting landscape for college athletes accepting benefits and earning money for their name, image, and likeness has brought about a new generation of revenue-generating athletes. Even with a few athletes, like Louisiana State University—Baton Rouge’s Olivia Dunne, a junior gymnast, making seven figures, current earnings from college athletes are nowhere near that of their academic institutions. So, who is really winning in the high-revenue realm of college sports?
