For all the fear-mongering and scare tactics, the radical changes to college sports do not appear to have impacted the riches enjoyed by Power 5 athletic departments.
Led by Ohio State ($252 million), a whopping 49 public schools in D-I reported at least $100 million in the 2022 fiscal year, according to data compiled by USA Today and The Knight-Newhouse Data project at Syracuse. Every single one of these schools hails from a Power 5 conference.
- In addition to Ohio State, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, and Alabama also reported earnings above $200 million.
- In all, nine of the top 20 schools come from the SEC — 22 if you include incoming members Texas and Oklahoma.
- The first non-Power 5 program on the list is UConn — though $55 million of this revenue came from external allocations, like student fees and government assistance.
Of this group, a few schools reported more expenses than revenue: Rutgers, Arizona, Arizona State, Virginia Tech, Washington, Tennessee, Ole Miss, and South Carolina.
However, comparing revenue directly to expenses can be deceiving, as some athletic department “revenue” comes from subsidies — as is the case with UConn.
But if there was any overall doubt that the Power 5 had rebounded from COVID-19-related financial losses, this data proves the pandemic budget cuts are long in the past.
