11 out of the top 15 schools are in the Big Ten and none dominant at football since the 1990sβ¦yikes.
Which P4 schools got the highest percentage of their athletic revenue directly from conference distributions in FY25?
Using MFRS Total Revenue data for each public schools (EADA data for private schools) I subtracted away each school's reported conference distributions to get a clearer view into how much "self-generated" revenue each athletic department procured.
Obviously this is murky and impercise since each conference has certain brands/fanbases that drive the lion's share of the media value. Additionally, many schools receive significant portions of their revenue from subsidies such as student fees and direct/indirect institutional support.
Another "quirk" of this analysis is that schools from the bigger payout conferences (Big Ten/SEC) "look worse" since they have such a big payout (which not one of them is complaining about in the slightest).
Avg Payout per Conf for reference:
Big Ten: ~$78M
SEC: ~$72M
ACC: ~$45M
Big12: ~$40M
Pac-12: ~$29M
American: ~$9M
MWC: ~$9M
MAC: ~$2.5M
Sun Belt: ~$2M
CUSA: ~$2M
The 8 schools (OU, Texas, BYU, Cincy, UCF, Cal, Stanford, and SMU) with the lowest % all changed conferences recently and agreed to take a partial share for a period of time.
Big12 and ACC conf graphics in the comments