Fire Your Football Coach

The Cost of a Win, By Sport

The EADA requires every D1 school to report total operating expenses per sport: coaching salaries, scholarships, recruiting, travel, facilities, equipment — everything it costs to field a team. Divide that by wins, and you get the all-in price of a victory.

Across FBS schools we matched to EADA records:

Football is 20 times more expensive per win than women's basketball. It is 33 times more expensive per win than volleyball, and 76 times more expensive than softball.

Those are averages. The extremes are worse. At the same school, in the same athletic department, here's what football and women's basketball cost per win:

Vanderbilt's women's basketball team went 23-10 for $364,000 per win. The football team went 2-10 for $22 million per win. Same campus. Same athletic director. One program cost 60 times more per win than the other and won at a fraction of the rate. Football is inherently more expensive to operate — 85 scholarships, 100-plus-person rosters, larger coaching staffs, stadium overhead, equipment — but a 60x gap in cost per win goes well beyond structural overhead.

The Coaching Arms Race

Where does all that football money go? A huge chunk goes to coaching salaries — and the gap between what Big Ten bottom-half programs pay and what smaller schools pay for comparable results is staggering.

Purdue paid its football coaching staff $12 million in 2025 — nearly $1 million per regular-season game. Head coach Barry Odom makes $6 million. The offensive coordinator makes $1.1 million. The defensive coordinator makes $1 million.

Rutgers is the same story: Greg Schiano makes $6.25 million, with a $5.75 million assistant pool — $12 million total for a team that went 7-6.

Now look at what MAC schools pay:

Rutgers pays its football coaching staff more than Toledo spends on its entire football program— coaching, scholarships, recruiting, travel, facilities, everything. Purdue's offensive coordinator alone out-earns Toledo's head coach. Every single Purdue coordinator makes more than Toledo's head coach.

The pattern holds in basketball. Rutgers spends $22.7 million on basketball. Toledo spends $5.6 million. Steve Pikiell makes $3.75 million per year to coach a program that hasn't won an NCAA tournament game since 1983. Pikiell's salary alone would cover two-thirds of Toledo's entire basketball operating budget.

This isn't a performance premium. Rutgers and Purdue aren't paying more because they win more. They're paying more because that's what the Big Ten coaching market demands — and nobody has asked whether the market makes sense for schools that have never competed for a conference title.

What Actually Makes Money?

Purdue is one of the few schools in our FBS sample that reports transparent sport-level profit and loss in EADA data. Most schools equalize revenue to expenses in their reporting. Purdue doesn't. Here's what their books look like:

Four sports make money: football, men's basketball, women's basketball, and volleyball. Everything else loses. Football's $30.2 million profit subsidizes the entire department.

But here's the part no one says out loud: Purdue went 4-8 in football and still generated $61.6 million in revenue. They won four games and made thirty million dollars. The revenue isn't coming from winning. It's coming from the Big Ten's $1.13 billion annual media deal, which distributes roughly $75-80 million per year to each member school across all sports. The bulk of that gets allocated to football in EADA reporting — which is why football appears universally profitable. Purdue's conference check is the same size as Ohio State's. The money is real, but it arrives whether you win one game or thirteen.

And Purdue volleyball — a women's sport — made $4.8 million in profit. More profit than baseball, swimming, track, golf, tennis, soccer, softball, and wrestling combined. On a budget of $2.8 million. Going 26-8.

This is the key insight: football revenue doesn't change based on spending. The Big Ten check still clears whether you pay your coaching staff $12 million or $5 million. Which means every dollar you cut from football expenses flows straight to the bottom line.

The Trade

Here's the math that should get someone fired.

Offer a proven MAC coach double their current salary to come to the Big Ten. That's not a hypothetical — G5-to-P4 coaching hires happen every cycle. The pitch writes itself: double the pay, better facilities, a conference media platform, and a recruiting budget they've never had access to. They take that call every time.

Double Toledo's entire football coaching staff cost and you get a $4.6 million coaching budget. That's $7.4 million less than what Purdue pays, and $7.4 million less than what Rutgers pays. For coaches who have actually won conference championships at their current jobs.

That's $10.9 million per year in coaching savings alone — from just two sports, without touching scholarships, facilities, or operations. And it's not a fantasy number. These are real coaching salaries at real schools, doubled as a premium for the Big Ten platform.

What does $10.9 million buy? According to EADA data, Rutgers spends $34 million per year on all women's athletics combined — 12 sports, 473 athletes. The coaching savings alone would be a 32% increaseto women's athletics spending. Enough to add two fully funded women's sports, or double the budgets of three existing ones.

And what does Rutgers lose? The Big Ten media check doesn't change. Football still profits — at lower coaching costs against the same conference revenue, it profits morethan it does now. And as Indiana showed with the Cignetti hire, a coach from a smaller school doesn't necessarily mean fewer wins.

There is nothing in the House v. NCAA settlement that requires schools to spend conference revenue on football coaching. The settlement caps revenue-sharing at $20.5 million but is silent on which sports receive it. There is no Big Ten rule mandating coaching spending levels. The money goes to football because that's where it's always gone.

Why This Doesn't Happen

The obvious question: if the math works, why doesn't any school do this?

Start with the market. Schools don't hire unknown coaches — they hire the hot name from a G5 school who just won 10 games, and that coach has multiple suitors. Recent G5-to-Power 4 hires show what that bidding war produces:

Cignetti went from $677,000 to $4.5 million — a 6.6x raise — before coaching a single game at Indiana. That's the market for a coach everyone wants. Agents create competitive tension across every open P4 job, and the salary reflects the bidding war, not the coach's previous earnings.

But that's only the market for hotnames. There are roughly 260 FBS and FCS head coaches. In any given cycle, maybe 5–8 are being pursued by multiple Power 4 schools. The other 250 would take the call. If Purdue went to the coach at Ohio University or Eastern Michigan — someone with no competing P4 offers — and said “I'll double your salary,” the agent has no leverage. There's no competing bid to play against. A $1.6 million offer to a coach making $800,000 is life-changing money, and nobody else is calling.

So why doesn't this happen? The barrier isn't economics. It's career self-preservation.

An AD who hires a $6 million coach and goes 4-8 made a “market-rate” decision. They survive. An AD who hires a $1.6 million coach and goes 4-8 “cheaped out.” They get fired. The on-field result is identical, but the narrative is completely different. The expensive hire buys the AD an insurance policy — not against losing, but against being blamed for losing.

The booster class reinforces this. The biggest donors to athletic departments are football people. They don't evaluate the AD on department-wide profit or volleyball wins. They evaluate on perceived commitment to football. A $2 million coaching hire — regardless of results — signals that football isn't the priority. Donations drop. Not because the decision was wrong, but because it was read as disloyal.

The irony is that the economics point entirely the other direction. Football revenue at Big Ten schools is fixed — the conference media check arrives whether you win one game or thirteen. Purdue went 4-8 and still booked $61.6 million. Cheaper coaching against the same revenue means morefootball profit, not less. An AD who cut coaching costs by $5 million, redirected it to three women's sports, and won conference titles in volleyball and softball would have better financials, more department-wide wins, and a stronger Title IX position. By every measurable outcome, they'd be doing a better job. They'd also be unemployed, because the power structure around college athletics treats football spending as a loyalty test rather than a business decision.

That loyalty test is the actual barrier. Not coaching scarcity, not market economics, not competitive necessity. The numbers say this is obvious. The culture says it's unthinkable. And that gap between the numbers and the culture is what starves every other sport in the department.

The Pitch

If you're Purdue, or Rutgers, or Vanderbilt, or Michigan State — what exactly are you buying with a $12 million coaching staff? You're not buying championships. You're not buying playoff appearances. You're buying a 4-8 season from coaches who cost 5x what MAC coaches cost and produce comparable results against comparable opponents.

Hire a coach from Toledo, or South Dakota State, or Appalachian State. Pay them twice what they made — they'll take the call. Staff the program with assistants at double MAC rates — still a fraction of what you're paying now. Accept the 6-7 season that was coming anyway. The Big Ten check still clears. Football still profits — it profits more, because you cut $7 million in coaching costs against revenue that doesn't change.

This isn't hypothetical. Indiana is in our ratio table above at 3-9, spending $20.4 million per win in 2023-24. They hired Curt Cignetti from James Madison, where he'd gone 26-3 over two seasons making under $700,000 a year. Two years later, Indiana won the national championship. The lesson isn't that Cignetti stayed cheap — his post-title deal pays $11.6 million. The lesson is that the talent pipeline at smaller schools is deeper than the market reflects, and $12 million coaching staffs at Purdue and Rutgers aren't producing $12 million results.

Take the savings and do two things:

Fund women's sports.The cheapest WBB wins in the country cost $60,000-$80,000 at MAC and Sun Belt schools. If a Big Ten school showed up with a serious recruiting pitch that says “we prioritize women's athletics,” they could be transformative. The same applies to volleyball, softball, soccer, gymnastics. Purdue volleyball already proves the model — $4.8 million in profit on $2.8 million in expenses. Women's sports aren't a cost center. They're an underinvested opportunity.

Invest in the transfer portal. The House settlement caps revenue-sharing at $20.5 million per school. That cap applies to all sports combined. If you're spending $13 million of that cap on football players who produce a 5-7 record, you're leaving $7.5 million on the table for sports where it would be transformational. Reallocate to women's basketball and volleyball transfers. At current market rates, $2 million in WBB NIL buys a competitive roster. $500,000 in volleyball NIL makes you a top-5 spender nationally.

Nobody expects Purdue to beat Ohio State. Nobody expects Vanderbilt to win the SEC. The expectation is already 4-8. The question is whether you pay $12 million in coaching to get there or $5 million, and what you do with the difference.