What every conference paid member schools in the 2023-24 fiscal year

Membership has its privileges in college football and for the 12 oldest members of the Big Ten Conference, that privilege came with a nice, fat paycheck in the 2024 fiscal year. 

The conference paid approximately $63.35 million to its longest-standing members (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin). Right behind them were Rutgers and Maryland, each of which received slightly above $61.5 million.

All in all, the Big Ten accumulated $928 million in revenue for 2024, a 5.5% increase in total revenue, according to a report by Steve Berkowitz of USA Today. That conference leads the way in total revenue and payouts per school, with the SEC coming in a close second at around $840 million and $52.5 million payout for the 14 member schools. That was a slight increase of a little over a million from the 2023 fiscal year.

Both the SEC and Big Ten are heading for massive increases in revenue and member payouts for the 2025 fiscal year, when the new television deals are counted. The SEC signed a 10-year media rights deal with ESPN/ABC that reportedly pays the conference $300 million annually. 

The Big Ten signed media rights deals with CBS, NBC and FOX valued at $1.1 billion annually for the next seven years. 

While the SEC and Big Ten are moving into a deluxe apartment in the sky, the ACC and Big XII remain firmly established at the top of the 'middle class' in college sports.

The ACC reported $711.4 million in revenue, a slight increase from 2023's number is $706.7 accoring to a report from Yahoo Sports. The payout for member schools was $43.1 and $46.4 million. Notre Dame, a member in most sports outside of football, got $20.7 million of the pie. 

These numbers are far enough below what the SEC and Big 10 schools are making that Clemson and FSU had to file a lawsuit that resulted in changes for future payouts that coincide with television ratings. That should be a boon for Clemson and FSU. How the latter still got high ratings despite going 2-10 is beyond me, but I can't hate the game.

The Big 12 came in at $493.8 million with payouts between $37-42 million to member schools (including Texas & Oklahoma), with newcomers BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF all getting payouts of around $20 million in their first year with the conference. Bowl revenue was cited as a reason for a revenue decline for the conference.

If that $20 million number sounds low, well it is compared to everyone else in the power four, but it's still twice as much as those schools would have made in the American, which claimed $147.7 in revenue - the highest revenue number among G5 conferences - and paid out roughly $11 per school.