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Ohio State Football Cleared $33 Million. The Athletic Department Lost $38 Million. Both Are True.

Ohio State football made $33 million last year. The athletic department it sits inside lost $38 million. Both are true. It is the same money seen from two heights. And once you set it next to the whole school, the runaway spending turns out not to be in the stadium.

The Sports Page · The Columnist · a budget, read at the right altitude

The question: does college football make money or lose it? Both answers get quoted constantly, and both come with numbers.

The answer. In 2024 Ohio State football took in about $111.6 million and spent $78.6 million — a profit north of $33 million. The athletic department it belongs to took in $254.9 million and spent $292.3 million — a loss of $37.7 million. Same organisation, same year.

Why that is surprising. Both numbers are true. Which one you get depends entirely on where you draw the box.

What you get from it: a habit. Once we draw the box properly, the spending that has really lost the plot turns out not to be in the stadium at all.

Notice what changed between those two sentences: nothing about the money, only how far back we stood. The team that prints money and the department that bleeds it are the same outfit.

The “loss” is a subsidy wearing a disguise

So where did football’s profit go? Into the three dozen other sports that lose money by design.

Of all Ohio State’s teams, only two turned a profit last year. Football was one. Its surplus, plus basketball money and media checks, pays for the swimmers, the rowers, the fencers, and $26 million in scholarships.

So the athletic department did not fail at business; it never was one. It is a redistribution enginei, and it did exactly what it was built to do: take the football team’s winnings and spend them, on purpose, on everything that does not pay.

Which means both common claims are false.

“College football loses money” is false. At a place like Ohio State it is one of the biggest earners on campus.

“The athletic department is self-sustaining” is also false. As a whole it runs a planned deficit.

The truth only shows up when we say which box we drew around the money; the program, or the department. Draw it in the wrong place and you will “find” the answer you wanted. Hold onto that, because we are about to draw a much bigger box.

Now calibrate it against the campus

Now watch what happens when we widen it. The football money looks enormous only until you set it beside the school it belongs to.

The whole athletic department is about 6.5% of a university that runs on roughly $4.5 billion a year.

And football’s famous $112 million? Research spends about $1.68 billion a year. The Wexner Medical Center takes in more than $4 billion.

Set against the real school, the football program is not the big money. It is barely visible.

So where did the money actually lose the plot?

So if you have ever suspected that campus spending has lost the plot, you are right; the arithmetic simply tells us where to point.

It is not the athletic department, which is fairly lean and mostly pays its own way. The runaway is quieter and much bigger, and it is the front office.

It is not the athletic department, which is fairly lean and mostly pays its own way. The runaway is quieter and much bigger. It is the front office.

At Ohio State the ratio of full-time non-teaching staff to full-time faculty is more than six to one. The university employs roughly 1,700 administrators and about 21,000 non-teaching staff against some 48,000 students. That is close to one non-teaching employee for every two undergraduates.

Per thousand students, Ohio State carries about 482 non-instructional staff. Texas carries 281. Wisconsin 323. Nationally, over four decades, administrators grew 164% and professional staff 452%. Faculty grew 92%.

That number should bother you. Almost nobody watches it, because it is invisible and dull.

The coach’s salary is public, debated, printed in the paper. It is also paid by a program that turns a profit. The steady growth in associate vice provosts is none of those things.

So we scrutinise the dollar that pays its way and ignore the one quietly growing in the org chart.

What to take home: the lesson is older than the budget

None of this is really about football, or even about Ohio State. It is the oldest move in reading any number, and I still get it wrong myself whenever I forget to ask it.

Before you call something costly, say costly next to what; then name the box you drew around the money. Do those two things and most budget arguments answer themselves.

Football loses money or prints money depending only on where you put the walls. The athletic budget is a scandal or a rounding error depending only on what you set beside it.

And the department everyone loves to scold turns out to be the thrifty one. The cost that is genuinely out of control wears a suit and never takes the field.

So calibrate first; then decide who to be angry at.