The Big Ten gets a major payday and redistributes the funds to its member programs.
The landscape in college football continues to evolve, and on Friday, some of the most recent changes began to manifest themselves.
In the first year of the new media rights deal in the Big Ten, the teams were paid out for their contributions to the conference.
The numbers are staggering. The Big Ten generated $1.47 billion dollars in 2025. The conference distributed $1.37 billion of those dollars to the schools.
As a surprise to very few, Ohio State cashed the biggest check in the conference and had a payday of $91.55 million, followed closely, and surprisingly, by Penn State, which pocketed $88.9 million.
The third-highest-grossing school was, surprisingly, the National Champions, the Indiana Hoosiers. Indiana received $81 million, over $10 million less than what Ohio State received.
The final surprise here of this list of payouts is who was at the bottom. The school that got paid out the least was the Washington Huskies at $46 million, while the spot one before them is the Oregon Ducks, who received $48 million dollars.
According to the Big Ten's press release, the increase from the 2024 fiscal year and the 2025 fiscal year was an increase of $490 million between the two years. In 2024, the revenue for the conference was $883 million, and in 2025 was $1.47 billion.
A staggering growth from the conference.
This was attributed to the first full year of their new media rights agreement in the Big Ten, along with the conference's success in the expanded college football playoff models.
The Big Ten as a conference has been on quite a run over the past half-decade. The last three football National Championships have been won by a Big Ten school: Michigan, Ohio State, and Indiana.
2025 was the first time that one conference claimed the National Championship in each of the three major sports: football, men's basketball, and women's basketball. This was the trio of Indiana, Michigan, and UCLA.
The success that the conference has seen over the past decade has been spectacular. It is led in large part by what Ohio State has done at the top of the conference.
The moment that the other schools in the conference began pulling their weight on a national scale, the conference as a whole was elevated. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.
The Buckeyes have led the way, and now the entire conference is benefiting from the success.
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