Matt Brown at Extra Points released the FRS reporting numbers for Fiscal Year 2025, giving us a better look at spending tied to the 2024 football season.
An FRS report, sometimes referred to as an MFRS report, is the annual financial submission required from NCAA member institutions through the Membership Financial Reporting System. It details athletic department operating revenues, expenses, capital expenditures, and other data, including student aid and sports sponsorship, to promote transparency and compliance with NCAA rules. Division I schools also pair the report with independent Agreed-Upon Procedures.
It is not a perfect data set. It can be skewed in certain areas by institutional reporting, accounting structure, facility expenses, or how costs are categorized. But it is still the best comparative tool we have across college athletics.
We are compiling the numbers and building them into what the new look MAC will look like on July 1, 2026, offering a glimpse at where schools currently sit and where some may need to make adjustments.
Major hat tip to Brown and Extra Points Library for doing the legwork on requests to schools and compiling the information. These are expenses reported to the NCAA, due in January each year, and required of every Division I school. Private schools and some public schools are not required to disclose this information through FOIA or open records requests.
MAC Football Budgets
| Rank | School | FY25 Football Budget |
| 1 | UMass | $15,945,233 |
| 2 | Buffalo | $15,031,152 |
| 3 | Toledo | $13,024,382 |
| 4 | Bowling Green | $11,872,056 |
| 5 | Western Michigan | $11,795,493 |
| 6 | Ohio | $11,777,856 |
| 7 | Central Michigan | $11,608,429 |
| 8 | Eastern Michigan | $11,077,016 |
| 9 | Miami (Ohio) | $11,017,434 |
| 10 | Sacramento State | $10,126,064 |
| 11 | Kent State | $9,724,373 |
| 12 | Ball State | $9,485,095 |
| 13 | Akron | $8,206,772 |
The 2024 MAC football season is a good reminder that football spending can tell part of the story, but it rarely tells the whole story. Ohio ranked sixth in this group at $11.8 million and still won the league, finishing 7-1 in conference play before beating Miami in the MAC Championship Game. Miami, meanwhile, ranked ninth in spend and still got to Detroit, while Buffalo ranked second and turned that investment into a solid 9-4 season.
There were some cleaner connections near the bottom, with Kent State, Ball State, and Akron all ranking in the bottom three in spending and finishing near the bottom of the standings. But the middle of the league was a little messier, with Toledo, Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Central Michigan, and Eastern Michigan all clustered within a few million dollars of each other and producing very different results.
UMass is one of the bigger outliers in this exercise. As a then-independent, the Minutemen had to pay to play, leading this group with a $15.9 million football budget while finishing 2-10. Year over year, UMass made a 37.8% jump from FY24 to FY25, an increase of a little north of $4 million, which led the MAC in football budget growth.
Sacramento State is another fascinating storyline to watch this year. The Hornets went 3-9 overall and 1-7 in the FCS Big Sky in 2024, but their FBS push has been well documented, from the reported $23 million investment to zero broadcast revenue, covering travel costs for visiting MAC teams, and an eyebrow-raising athletics economic impact report said to generate close to a billion dollars. Still, what cannot be taken away from Sacramento State is that it has a president and athletic director willing to be aggressive, make moves, and put athletics on the front porch of the university. They do invest, and it will be fascinating to watch their budgets unfold over the next few years. For comparison purposes, the Hornets ranked second in the Big Sky in FY25 football budget, behind only Montana State.
The MAC is also losing Northern Illinois to the Mountain West as a football-only member, which means the league and its MACtion brand lose one of their more consistent football brands. Since 2011, NIU has won five MAC championships and made an Orange Bowl appearance, and in this FY25 reporting, the Huskies also carried the third-highest football budget in the league at $13.3 million. So, yes, money matters, but in the 2024 MAC picture, it still needed the right coach, roster, quarterback, and a little bit of November magic to turn budget into wins.
Overall, even with the departure of Northern Illinois and the FY 26 additions of UMass and Sacramento State, the MAC should still remain a strong league based on this year’s financial reporting. If anything, the numbers show a conference that is losing a consistent football brand in NIU, but adding two programs that are clearly willing to invest will help push the MAC forward.
