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Method

How the college sports figures are made

How the pages of the Sports hub read what their publishers put out, and what that record can and cannot say. The method every topic shares — where a figure comes from, snapshots, freshness and corrections — is on the site’s methodology page.

What the Equity in Athletics files are

Every co-educational college that takes federal student aid and has an intercollegiate athletics program reports its athletics to the Department of Education each year under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. The Office of Postsecondary Education publishes the reports as two files per survey year, which this hub reads as the Department publishes them: an institution file with each college’s totals, and a sport file with each of its teams. A survey year runs from September 1 to August 31; the newest is 2024–25, when 2,037 colleges reported.

The files are the colleges’ own figures as submitted. The Department does not audit them, and a year’s file is made when its collection closes, so it carries no correction made afterward.

Revenue is not profit

The Department’s revenue is every dollar attributable to intercollegiate athletics, and in its own words that includes “state or other government support” and “student activity fees”. A college that covers its athletics budget from its own funds reports that money as revenue, so revenue and expenses often match exactly: in 2024–25, 1,288 of the 2,037 colleges, 63.2%, reported the two as equal.

So this hub prints reported revenue and reported expenses, each labeled as reported, and never subtracts one from the other to call the difference a profit or a loss. Where a page counts the colleges that reported the two as equal, it prints that count beside the figures.

Coaches’ pay is an average per head coach

The institution file gives a college’s head-coach salary for its men’s teams and for its women’s teams as an average over all of those head coaches, with the number of coaches it is over. It is “all wages and bonuses the institution pays a coach as compensation attributable to coaching”, and it is not any one coach’s pay: no coach is named in the files. Wherever this site prints it, it is labeled as an average per head coach. Pay from a booster club, an apparel contract or a media deal is not in it.

Athletes and students, side by side

A participant is a student on a varsity roster on the day of the first scheduled contest, or one receiving athletically related aid or practicing with the team. The institution file counts each once however many teams they play on, and the hub’s counts of athletes are that unduplicated count. The sport file counts them on each team, so its figures by sport add up to more.

Women’s share of athletes is set beside women’s share of the same colleges’ students, each over men and women together. The two are published side by side, and neither is a finding about whether a college complies with Title IX, which the files cannot show. In 2008–09 some colleges left their participant counts blank, so that year’s shares are over the colleges that reported them.

Divisions are the Department’s classifications

Each college reports one athletic classification, a numeric code whose names have changed over the years (“NCAA Division I-A” became “NCAA Division I-FBS”) while the code has not. The hub groups by the code and prints the name the Department gave it in the year shown. The files carry no conference, so none is shown.

The trends, and what they leave out

The series run from 2008–09, the first year the files take their current layout, to 2024–25. Dollars are each year’s own and are not adjusted for inflation. The colleges are those that reported that year, so the set changes a little from year to year, and fewer reported in the pandemic year.

What is not used

The NCAA’s own tables of finances, participation and graduation rates are not used, because its terms forbid republishing them. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA bond data is never a source here; its terms confine it to a user’s own internal purposes. No athlete is named, and no page rates a college or its compliance with any law.

What this data cannot show

  • Revenue is not profit. The Department's revenue includes state or other government support and student activity fees, so a college that covers its athletics budget from its own funds reports that money as revenue, and most colleges report revenue exactly equal to their expenses.
  • Coaches' salaries are averages per head coach, over all of a college's head coaches of men's or of women's teams. No coach is named, no figure is one person's pay, and pay from a booster club, an apparel contract or a media deal is not in it.
  • The figures are the colleges' own, as submitted, and are not audited by the Department. A year's file is made when its collection closes and carries no later correction.
  • Only co-educational colleges that take federal student aid and have an intercollegiate athletics program report. A college outside that is absent, and the Air Force, Military, Naval and Coast Guard academies are not in the files.
  • Dollars are each survey year's own and are not adjusted for inflation. A survey year runs from September to August.
  • The NCAA's own tables are not used, because its terms forbid republishing them, and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's EMMA bond data is never a source here.

Sources

Data retrieved