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About & methodology

Football Business Report (footballbusinessreport.com) is an independent, non-commercial archive of the debate over how to fix college football and the money behind it. Version 1, built as static files. No ads and no monetization. The only measurement is Cloudflare Web Analytics: anonymous, cookie-free visit counts (no cookies, no personal data, no cross-site tracking).

Sourcing rules

Every quote and figure on the site comes from the project’s research files and is shown with its source link. The site does not estimate or invent anything.
Quotes are verbatim as they appeared in the cited source; some are second-hand (an outlet quoting TV, podcasts or other outlets). Dates are only as precise as the source supports (year, month or day). 17 entries have no verbatim quote and show only a summary of the source.
Money figures carry a year and a source ID [S#] that links to the source. CONFLICT = sources disagree (both shown). UNAVAILABLE = could not be verified and was not estimated. (calc) = arithmetic on a downloaded dataset, with the dataset named. Some sources are advocacy documents, secondary summaries or anonymous-source reporting and are labeled as such.
Fiscal years vs. seasons: for most schools FY2025 = July 2024 to June 2025 (Texas and Texas A&M end Aug. 31). All dollars are nominal (not inflation-adjusted).
Conferences are assigned by 2026 membership for every year, so historical league sums reflect today’s leagues.
Outside proposals (Ideas › Outside proposals) are full reform plans from fans, writers and advocacy sites, not people directly involved in college football. They are stored separately (proposals.json), summarized from the original pages with links, and never mixed into the insider quotes.
Archive eras: BCS (2006-13), 4-team CFP (2014-20), NIL/portal (2021-23), 12-team/revenue-sharing (2024-26).

Definitions: EADA vs. NCAA/Knight-Newhouse vs. Form 990

The three budget sources sit in separate, labeled columns everywhere on the site and are never mixed.

Prefix in dataset	Source	What it is	Coverage here
`eada_*`	US Dept. of Education EADA, "All Data Combined" bulk files, ope.ed.gov/athletics	Title IX-oriented federal disclosure. Revenue and expenses are by team. Schools have wide latitude in what they count. Many schools report total revenue equal to total expenses (36 of 68 in FY2025), and 15 report football revenue equal to football expenses. So EADA "profit" is not meaningful for those schools. Head-coach salary fields are averages per head coach (for all men's teams or all women's teams), not a football coach's pay.	All 68 schools, FY2007–FY2025 (19 years; FY = academic year ending, e.g. FY2025 = 2024-25)
`kn_*`	Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database (NCAA Membership Financial Reporting System reports obtained from public schools)	NCAA reporting categories. "Total athletic revenues" = revenues minus transfers back to the institution. "Subsidy" = Institutional/Government Support + Student Fees (Knight's definition). Debt figures before FY2015 aren't comparable (NCAA changed the definition).	53 of 54 public schools, FY2005–FY2025. Pitt didn't provide data. Penn State is missing 4 early years. No private schools are covered.
`f990_*`	IRS Form 990 Part VII / Schedule J via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer	Compensation of the highest-paid employees, by calendar or fiscal tax year	13 of 14 private schools, latest filing = FY2025 (TY2024). No filing found for BYU.

Do not combine across prefixes. For example, Texas FY2025: EADA shows revenue of $343.1M against expenses of $277.4M (a $65.7M surplus). Knight-Newhouse/NCAA shows $352.5M revenue against $379.3M expenses (a $26.7M deficit). Fields ending in _calc are my own arithmetic on same-source fields in the same row. Blank = not reported / not found. All dollar figures are nominal (not inflation-adjusted).

Conference = 2026 membership for every year, so historical sums reflect today's leagues, not the leagues as they were. Notre Dame is shown as "Independent (football)"; its other sports are in the ACC.

Data years

Dataset	Years	Coverage
Quotes & ideas archive	2006-2026	192 entries, 107 people, 18 proposals (compiled Sept. 29, 2026)
EADA (U.S. Dept. of Education)	FY2007-FY2025	All 68 schools
Knight-Newhouse (NCAA reports)	FY2005-FY2025	53 of 54 public schools (Pitt did not provide data; Penn State missing FY2006-FY2009)
IRS Form 990 (ProPublica)	FY2025 (tax year 2024)	13 of 14 private schools (no filing found for BYU)
Markets, endowments, giving	Census Vintage 2025; Nielsen 2024-25 (some 2025-26 ranks); NACUBO FY2025; giving mostly FY2025	67 Power 4 conference members, plus Notre Dame added from the same primary sources (giving not available)
Money hub	2006-2026, each figure labeled	79 cited sources (compiled Sept. 29, 2026)

How to read the market, endowment and giving data

City population: U.S. Census Vintage 2025 estimates (July 1, 2025). Stanford is an unincorporated place (CDP), so it uses the 2020 Census count.
Metro population: Census Vintage 2025 estimates for the metro or micro area (MSA/μSA), using 2023 OMB definitions. Starkville, Oxford (MS) and Stillwater are micropolitan areas.
TV market (DMA): Nielsen 2024-25 rank and TV homes come from the Nielsen 2024-25 market estimates file. That is the latest season for which a full list with TV-home counts is publicly available. Where we found a 2025-26 rank, it is shown as '25-26 #'. Those ranks come from Nexstar's 10-K, plus SBJ reporting for the top 25. The Wikipedia/methodshop '2025-26' lists turned out to largely repeat the 2024-25 ranks, so we didn't use them. Nielsen released 2026-27 rankings in Sept 2026, but no full public list was found.
Endowment: FY2025 (June 30, 2025) values from NACUBO-Commonfund unless noted. (S) means a system-wide figure, (F) a foundation-only figure and (C) a combined university + foundation figure.
Annual giving: each school's own reported FY2025 fundraising total (gifts + new pledges/commitments unless noted). Schools measure this differently, so figures are not strictly comparable. CASE does not publish institution-level VSE data. We found no alumni-only totals on a consistent basis, so every figure is total fundraising. Accounting figures (GAAP or Form 990 contributions) are listed separately as proxies and never used as the fundraising total.

Known gaps and caveats

Budgets

Knight-Newhouse: Pitt has no data ("Data was not provided by this institution"; Pennsylvania state-related schools are exempt from open-records laws). Penn State is missing FY2006–FY2009. Private schools (14, including Notre Dame) are not covered by Knight-Newhouse at all.
Knight-Newhouse bulk-data request form (knightnewhousedata.org/form/data-download) was not submitted. It requires name, email, organization, usage and acceptance of terms (non-commercial; copyright). It would add the full MFRS line-item detail and Custom Reporting exports. I scraped every public chart instead: 8 revenue and 12–14 expense categories per year FY2005–FY2025, plus total revenue, total expenses, football spending, football coaching salaries, debt service and outstanding debt. It would not add private schools.
Knight academic-spending chart (university-wide E&G spending, through FY2022) didn't return in the multi-year request and isn't in the dataset.
EADA FY2006 (2005-06) was downloaded (raw/eada/EADA 2005-2006.zip) but not parsed. It uses coded column names (A4…d114) with only a Word codebook, so EADA coverage starts at FY2007. FY2001–FY2005 files exist on the federal list but weren't downloaded.
EADA Penn State FY2021–FY2022 were filed under the consolidated UNITID 495767, not 214777. Both are recorded (reported_unitid).
EADA definitions: revenue = expenses for 36 of 68 schools, and football revenue = football expenses for 15, so EADA margins aren't meaningful for those schools. Head-coach salary fields are averages across all men's (or women's) team head coaches. eada_head_coach_salary_total_*_calc = average × count is my own calculation.
Form 990: the latest filings are FY2025 (TY2024); FY2026 returns aren't filed yet. Prior-year 990s weren't pulled. Athletic directors at USC, Duke and Syracuse and basketball coaches at Wake Forest and Stanford weren't among the listed employees. Audited financial statements for private schools weren't pulled; EADA is the only revenue/expense source for private schools here.
Not inflation-adjusted. Conferences are assigned by 2026 membership for all years.
NCAA MFRS reports are self-reported and some schools interpret categories differently (Knight's own caveat). Category relabels in FY2025 (scholarships; new NIL revenue-share line) may break trends.

Markets, endowments and giving

University of Alabama: FY2025 giving (substituted FY2024)
University of Florida: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Kentucky: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Louisiana State University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Mississippi State University: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Missouri: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of South Carolina: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Texas at Austin: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Iowa: FY2025 giving (substituted most recent FY per 2026 article (FY2025 or FY2026 - not stated)); 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Maryland, College Park: FY2025 giving (substituted FY2026)
University of Nebraska-Lincoln: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Northwestern University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Oregon: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Purdue University: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Southern California: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Florida State University: FY2025 giving (substituted FY2026); 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Louisville: annual giving (FY2025 total); 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Miami: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Pittsburgh: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Southern Methodist University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Stanford University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Syracuse University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Virginia: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Wake Forest University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Arizona: annual giving (FY2025 total); 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
Brigham Young University: endowment; annual giving (FY2025 total)
University of Cincinnati: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)
University of Houston: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Iowa State University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
Texas Christian University: annual giving (FY2025 total)
West Virginia University: 2025-26 DMA rank (2024-25 shown)

Across all schools: 2025-26 (and 2026-27) TV-home counts by market are not publicly available (Nielsen proprietary), so 2024-25 TV homes are used. Alumni-only giving totals were not found on a consistent basis.

Conflicts and scope caveats: Iowa's endowment is $3.77B (NACUBO, combined) vs $1.77B (UICA-only report). Texas A&M's $22.2B and UT System's $27.2B include Permanent University Fund shares. UCLA and Berkeley figures are foundation-only, excluding Regents-held funds. Tennessee: the UTK campus figure is $1.18B vs the system's $1.915B, and UTFI shows an unexplained drop from $1.54B in 2024. Clemson giving was $226.8M in an early committee document vs $230.5M final. Oregon: $283M vs $282.8M. K-State: $296.8M vs $296.7M. Some DMA ranks differ between the 2024-25 list and Nexstar's 2025-26 ranks (e.g., Knoxville 60 vs 61, OKC 47 vs 45, Austin 34 vs 32). Wikipedia's '2025-26' list conflicts with Nexstar's and was not used.

Money

Individual payrolls: essentially all anonymous-source estimates. Verified school payroll data exists only for a handful of public schools [S25][S26].
Collective finances after 2024: for-profit collectives don't file 990s. No reliable ranking by dollars raised was available.
Knight-Newhouse 20-year series and FY2025 school rankings: available on the site, but only through interactive AJAX or a request form, which I did not submit. The raw folder holds only the FY2025 FBS aggregate and conference totals.
USA Today finances database: the public page still shows FY2022 data. Historical coach-salary years are not addressable by URL.
Phil Knight's athletics-only giving total: unverified.
CASE/VSE athletics giving: behind a paywall.
Seat-license donation totals: no national dataset.
Endowment-to-athletics transfers: not separately reported anywhere nationally.
EADA (Equity in Athletics): I did not pull EADA files. It is a free Department of Education download (ope.ed.gov/athletics) and a good next step for sport-by-sport, gender-split data.
Minor conflicts are flagged inline: 2026-27 cap ($21.3M vs $21.35M), Fisher ($76.8M vs $77.6M), Malzahn ($21.4M vs $21.7M), Big Ten TV total ($7B vs $8.05B), On3 vs CSC deal counts, and the Senate vote day.
Pending events: the Ninth Circuit argument (~Nov 2026) and House action on the Protect College Sports Act.

Data cleanups applied in this build

Ideas #9 cited Swofford for 2008, but his only archive entry is from December 2011 (john-swofford-2011-12-1), in which he recalls co-proposing the 2008 plus-one with Mike Slive. Citation corrected to the real entry and year.
Knight-Newhouse FBS FY2025 total: standardized on the documented S48 headline ($13.08B revenue / $13.03B expenses = category chart sums $13,078,390,099 / $13,028,399,897). The conference table's FBS TOTAL row ($13,015,662,156 revenue / $13,064,196,067 expenses) is kept but labeled as an unreconciled alternate presentation.
Notre Dame: city (Notre Dame CDP, 7,234, 2020 Census), metro (South Bend-Mishawaka, 324,538, Census V2025), TV market (South Bend-Elkhart, #100, 331,800 TV homes, Nielsen 2024-25) and endowment ($20.09B, NACUBO FY2025) filled from primary sources; annual giving: not available (no fundraising total found).
Ideas index: proposal-to-entry links now use a reviewed mapping of exact entry IDs (src/overrides/ideas_entry_ids.json) instead of name+year matching. Over-broad multi-entry matches (e.g. Greg Sankey 2026, Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, Lane Kiffin) were pruned to the entries that support the stated position, and mentions the old matcher missed (Kirk Herbstreit #2, Tim Tebow #4, Kevin Warren #9, Cody Campbell #6, John Swofford #9) now link to their entries.

Data problems found while building v1

17 quote entries have no verbatim quote (summary only): steve-spurrier-2011-06-01-1, john-swofford-2011-12-1, christian-mccaffrey-2016-12-19-1, johnny-manziel-2018-03-07-1, jim-phillips-2022-02-25-1, charlie-baker-2023-12-05-1, charlie-baker-2023-12-19-1, ramogi-huma-2024-08-29-2, reggie-bush-2024-09-23-1, lane-kiffin-2024-12-2, dabo-swinney-2025-1, greg-sankey-2025-07-14-1, jason-stahl-2026-1, clay-travis-2026-02-1, greg-sankey-2026-07-1, greg-sankey-2026-07-20-3, tony-petitti-2026-07-28-1.
Knight-Newhouse FBS FY2025 aggregate: the category chart data sum to revenue $13,078,390,099 and expenses $13,028,399,897; the money findings report $13.08B / $13.03B; the conference-totals table gives FBS TOTAL revenue $13,015,662,156 and expenses $13,064,196,067 (expenses above revenue). Resolved for this build: the site uses the documented S48 headline (the money findings and the S48 source record: $13.08B revenue / $13.03B expenses), which is the rounded sum of the category chart data. The conference table's FBS TOTAL row is a different presentation on the same page that we could not reconcile (the ten conference rows also do not add up to it); it is labeled as such where shown.
The money findings' gap list says EADA files were not pulled; the later budgets research did pull EADA FY2007-FY2025 for all 68 schools (shown on school pages).
The money findings say there is no 20-year Knight-Newhouse series, but the budgets dataset includes per-school Knight-Newhouse data for FY2005-FY2025 (scraped from public charts). The money text predates the budgets work.
Texas FY2025: Sportico (Money hub, S50) reports record expenses of $375.9M; the Knight-Newhouse row shows $379.3M expenses and $352.5M revenue. Different reporting bases; each is shown in its own section.
Notre Dame is in the budgets dataset (68 schools) but not in the conference/market research dataset (67 schools). For this build its city, metro, TV market and endowment were added from the same primary sources the dataset uses (Census 2020 / Vintage 2025, Nielsen 2024-25 via National Media Spots, NACUBO FY2025); see src/overrides/notre_dame_market.json. No fundraising total was found, so annual giving shows as not available (a GAAP contributions figure is shown as a non-comparable proxy). The 2025-26 DMA rank was not found.
17 schools have no annual giving total in the conference dataset: University of Kentucky; Louisiana State University; University of Texas at Austin; Northwestern University; Rutgers University-New Brunswick; University of Southern California; University of Louisville; University of Miami; Southern Methodist University; Stanford University; Syracuse University; Wake Forest University; University of Arizona; Brigham Young University; University of Houston; Iowa State University; Texas Christian University. They show “not available” on school, conference and money pages (with the searched source and any non-comparable accounting proxy); nothing is estimated.
No endowment figure in the conference dataset: Brigham Young University.
16 schools lack a 2025-26 DMA rank (the 2024-25 rank is shown).
EADA FY2025: 36 of 68 schools report total revenue exactly equal to total expenses, so EADA margins are not meaningful for them.
Knight-Newhouse rows with blank (not reported) fields: kn_exp_institutional_nil_revenue_share (1056 rows), kn_athletics_related_debt_outstanding (49 rows), kn_annual_debt_service_leases_facilities (44 rows), kn_exp_coaching_severance (29 rows), kn_football_spending (7 rows), kn_football_coaching_salaries (6 rows).
Private schools with no Form 990 figures: Brigham Young University (BYU files no 990; the CBS ~$4M Sitake figure is reporting only and is not shown as data).
15 people appear with different role strings across entries (expected as careers change; person pages list every role), e.g. Kirk Herbstreit, Gordon Gee, Lance Holtzclaw, Nick Saban, Ross Bjork, Cody Campbell, Cam Newton, Desmond Howard.
The Ideas index refers to people by name and year rather than entry IDs; this build links proposals to entries through a reviewed list of exact entry IDs. Group references (the CFBPA, the #WeAreUnited players, “the BCS-era presidents”) cannot be matched to a single entry.

Money trail, Sponsors & advertisers, Media & how to watch

These three sections are built from two research tracks compiled Oct. 1, 2026: sponsors/advertisers/money flow (sources SP1-SP124, plus money-track IDs M-S#) and media/watch guide (sources MD1-MD43). The build reads the research JSON files directly, so a weekly refresh of prices and TV picks followed by a rebuild updates every page; the watch pages show “Prices and TV assignments as of 2026-10-01”.

Citations: every figure carries a bracketed source ID that links straight to the source (hover for outlet, title and date). Each section has a sources page: Money trail, Sponsors, Media.
Labels: calc = computed from a cited dataset; est. = the source calls it an estimate (iSpot, EDO, Navigate, anonymous-source reporting); every figure shows its year or an “as of” date. CONFLICT = sources disagree (both shown). UNAVAILABLE = no verified public figure; nothing was estimated to fill gaps.
Revenue by source uses Knight-Newhouse categories for public schools (private schools and Pitt have none). Aggregate bars exclude Texas from both years because its FY2025 categories are left out.
Flow chart: the research's money links have mixed years and units, so they are drawn in panels that share a basis and every band shows its year; all links are listed with citations.
Apparel brands come from a user-generated r/CFB list (secondary source, spot-check before relying on it). Stadium rows from a 2014 list are historical and unverified. Bowl title values are 2017 estimates.
Watch guide: TV assignments from ESPN schedule data; TBD games are priced worst case (every network in the host conference pool). Season = 5 billing windows Aug. 29 - Jan. 28. A free antenna is assumed for ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC/CW. Month-by-month assumes perfect subscribe/cancel timing. Free trials and student discounts are listed separately and never used in the math. Taxes and fees excluded. Notre Dame at Navy's network pool is an assumption; the Holiday Bowl is not modeled; DirecTV MySports uses $69.99 (CONFLICT with a $64.99 snippet).
Disclosure: RedBird Capital (Big 12 partner) is Front Office Sports' main investor; FOS is cited for Big 12/RedBird facts.

Data left out of these sections

Decision makers without sources: Cody Campbell; Network executives (ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro, Fox Sports' Eric Shanks, etc.)
Texas FY2025 revenue categories: Texas FY2025 revenue categories are left out: Knight-Newhouse shows Texas at a 10% media share and 49% donor share, far out of line with peers, and the research flags the category coding as likely wrong (for example SEC-entry money or foundation transfers). Texas FY2005 and FY2015 are shown.
Learfield sale midpoint: The JSON's $1.9B midpoint is a placeholder; pages show SBJ's reported $1.8B-$2B range (official price not disclosed).
Private schools and Pitt: no Knight-Newhouse revenue categories (UNAVAILABLE).
Regular-season 30-second ad prices and brand-level ad spend after 2021: not published (UNAVAILABLE).
Network executives (ESPN, Fox) and Learfield/Playfly leaders: not sourced, so not listed as decision makers.

Attribution

Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, a joint project of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. Knight-Newhouse figures appear on the school, conference, schools-index, home and money pages. Use is subject to Knight-Newhouse terms.
EADA: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (ope.ed.gov/athletics).
Form 990 data: IRS filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
Population: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 estimates. TV markets: Nielsen DMA rankings via the sources linked on each school page. Endowments: NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments FY2025 (and the secondary sources noted).
Coach pay: USA TODAY Sports coach salary database. Other money figures: the outlets listed on the Money sources page.
Quotes belong to the people quoted and the outlets that published them; each entry links to the original.

Coming later: fan & media discussion (phase 2)

Placeholder. A future phase may add a place for fans and media to discuss proposals. Version 1 has no accounts, comments, forms or backend, and collects no personal data (only the anonymous visit counts described above).

Data credit: Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, a joint project of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.