Michigan's $30m Fine, Visualized

On the eve of the start of the 2025 college football season, the NCAA decided to release the results of its investigation into the University of Michigan’s sign stealing scandal. There was alot of numbers ($30 million fine!) - but what’s that number mean? I’m diving in, head first. Thus we’ll be covering:

• Michigan Wolverines - I’m going to cover this fine from a few angles. Hopefully you can make sense of it as I did?

Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.

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Michigan gets a…. slap on the wrist? Death sentence?

If you hadn’t heard, Michigan got the business from the NCAA. CBS has a good breakdown that’s worth reading, but I’ll give some high level points:

• Punishments for former HC Jim Harbaugh, current HC Sherrone Moore, Connor Stallions, and Denard Robinson

• 4 years of probation

• Financial penalties

  • $50k fine + 10% of football budget

  • “A fine equivalent to the anticipated loss of all postseason competition revenue sharing associated with the 2025 and 2026 football seasons.”

  • “A fine equivalent to the cost of 10% of the scholarships awarded in Michigan's football program for the 2025-26 academic year.”

• Other minor bureaucratic penalties (zzzzz)

While ESPN and many others have reported this to be a fine that is upwards of $30 million, I thought I’d break down where that number comes from.

• Michigan’s FY2024 operating budget is $72m. 10% would be a $7.2m fine.

• The ‘postseason competition revenue sharing’ for football is line 13A of the annual MFRS report, Conference Distributions of Football Bowl Generated Revenue. This is described officially as “conference distributions of revenue generated by a post-season football bowl to conference members. (Football Only).” This number was $7.8m in FY2024 and is reportedly around $6m in FY2025. That number is expected to grow significantly this year given the Big 10/CFP media rights deal. It’s reported to be around $21m in FY2026.

• Michigan’s football team spent $8.2m on athletic student aid in FY2024. 10% would be $820k.

That totals $35 million with several asterisks considering the amount of bowl distributions and many other figures are only estimated at this point. Regardless, it’s clearly a significant penalty! Or is it? Most people have focused on Michigan not receiving a post season ban, relinquishing any wins, or having their 2023 national title rescinded. I’m not here to debate any of that. What I want to do is look at what a $30 million fine, in the context of higher education and college sports means. Let’s start.

Student perspective

My first thought went straight to the student perspective. What does the typical student think of all this? Better yet, what could $30 million spent on fines do for those students? To answer that, first I looked up how many students Michigan has (34,454 undergraduates, 18,073 of which are in-state) and how much it costs to attend ($18,346 for in-state students). What could $30 million do for them?

Quick Takeaways:

• Each dot on the chart represents one of the 18k in-state undergraduate students.

• Each blue dot is a student who could get their entire $18k in tuition/fees paid for next year under the $30 million fine.

• That amounts to 1 out of every 10 in-state undergraduate students, or 1659 in total. Do we want more students going to school for free or more football?

Analyst’s Desk

This analysis just required me taking the number of in-state undergraduates, found from the Michigan website, and seeing how many could get paid their full tuition and fees (also found from the website!) for $30m.

Quick Takeaways:

• Literally every school outside the P4 (Colorado State is awfully close) has an operating budget for their football program below $30.5m.

• Interesting to see that many of the Big 12’s institutions fall below the Red Line of death (trademark pending).

• Yes, of the schools I have reports for, FSU does have the highest football operating budget. No, I don’t have Alabama.

• I recognize a fine like this isn’t being paid out of the football operating budget, but it is an interesting way to look at the finances of these football programs and what a hefty fine looks like in comparison.

Analyst’s Desk

For this analysis, I switched from Knight-Newhouse data to my own data (that you’re free to use!) that I’ve scraped from NCAA MFRS annual financial reports. The usual caveats - I can’t get reports from many southern schools or ones that charge high prices. I used FY2023 as I have a more complete dataset for that year (many haven’t responded yet to my FY2024 requests!)

🔉 What I’m Listening To 🔉 

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

• College Football Enquirer - this was my favorite college football podcast for awhile. Two of the three hosts have left in the offseason. It’s a bit early to judge on the new cast. I’ll be listening more.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue.

Michigan certainly stole the thunder from the last week before the season. Suddenly preseason polls, too-early Heisman talk, and other topics on the precipice of the season got pushed to the side. I hope I was able to give a bit more context than you find elsewhere. Thanks again for your time. Now finish your beverage 😀 

Until next time,

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

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