Alabama football. Duke basketball. Quinnipiac hockey. These are just a few big-time programs in the country that take a lot of money to run. College athletics is bigger than ever these days thanks to things like television, social media and the advertising that you see almost everywhere you look. But where does this money come from to run such an operation? The answer may lie in the university’s tuition bill that the students pay.

What people call in college athletics call this is student fees and they vary from institution to institution. It also varies on many different things like the size of the school, the number of teams playing for the school and the level the teams compete at in the NCAA.

For instance, James Madison has a football team at its school and the team has seen great success recently. JMU is in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) of Division I college football, unlike the power five conferences that are in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).

Factors like these lead to varying levels of student fees, but not for James Madison who has the highest student fees in the country. About 77% of the total JMU athletic budget in 2017 came from student fees according to the College Athletics Financial Information (CAFI) Database.  

Other schools might not have to take as many student fees as other schools due to other sources of revenue. For the Big Ten, the conference has its own television network that puts money in the pockets of its member universities. 

The Big Ten was the first power five conferences to start its own television network and other conferences followed suit and started their own. These conference networks now account for millions of dollars that are made each year in college athletics.   

It is also interesting to point out that only four out of the 12 total Big Ten teams use student fees as revenue. The schools are Rutgers, Illinois, Iowa, and Maryland. This could be because the revenue from media rights and conference distributions for the entire conference is north of half a billion dollars.

But not every school has football. College athletics departments fall into one of three categories: FBS and FCS if the school has a football team and Division I – no football (NFS). And the data shows that student fees at these schools are higher than fees at schools that have football.

Football is the most popular sport in the country and it attracts that most eyes so, in theory, it stands to make the most money. This rings true for the Big Ten and the money those schools get with their media rights. So, the schools without football struggle to see money like that.

Also, most schools without football are smaller schools that have smaller budgets than what you might find in the Big Ten. 

When it comes to college sports and where the money comes from to operate the athletic departments, you might not need to look any further than the bill the students have to pay to attend the school because they might be also helping foot the bill for their school’s athletic teams.