1. DOES THE DATABASE CONTAIN DATA FOR HOW MUCH INSTITUTIONS SPEND ON DIRECT NIL COMPENSATION TO ATHLETES?

Beginning with FY 2025, the NCAA's Membership Financial Reporting System (MFRS) reports included a dedicated category for "Institutional NIL Revenue Share" (Item 44). This database provides an aggregate amount for this category for individual institutions reporting data. Institutional MFRS reports may report amounts by sport and gender for this category but would not reflect direct payments from an institution to an individual athlete. Because FY 2025 concluded before the implementation of the House settlement on July 1, 2025, permitting institutions to directly compensate athletes, only a small number of institutions submitted reports that included such payments for FY 2025, generally where state law allowed.

2. DOES THE DATABASE CONTAIN INFORMATION ON THE THIRD-PARTY NIL SPENDING?

This database includes ONLY institutional athletic expenses, and thus, does not include NIL compensation that a college athlete may receive from a third-party. Third-party NIL compensation to college athletes is not reported on the NCAA's MFRS reports and is not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request, which is the mechanism used to acquire the institutional data in this database.

3. HOW ARE EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS OR "ALSTON AWARDS" ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE DATABASE?

Beginning with the FY 2025 MFRS report, the NCAA created a new category - "Enhanced Educational Benefits" (Item 43) - to capture "Alston Awards," which are cash awards provided to athletes for academic or graduation achievements. This database incorporates this new category in an updated grouping titled "Athlete Scholarships and Cost of Living Benefits." This updated category incorporates what were previously separate line items — "Athletic Student Aid" and "Student-Athlete Meals."

4. DID THE COVID PANDEMIC IMPACT THE DATA?

Please note there may be a significant variance when including FY 2021 data (and to a lesser extent, FY 2020). The COVID pandemic’s impact varied by school and state, but revenues were especially hard hit at schools where state law limited events so fewer games were played; some schools in the Pac-12, for example, had a 50% drop in revenues associated with media contracts and ticket sales. Expenses may also have been impacted by less travel and off-campus recruiting, or increases in COVID-mitigation efforts, for example.

5. WHY IS THERE A CHANGE IN HOW THE DATA IS REPORTED IN THE DATABASE?

In 2017-2018, the Knight Commission decided to make an enhancement to its financial database in order to better tell the story about revenues and expenses in college athletics.  The data comes from the same sources as previously, which are NCAA Financial Report forms, but instead is presented in profiles in this database as one year snapshots of institutional revenue and expense budgets.  The data provided is self-reported by institutions to the NCAA annually.  The data are presented in commonly referred to areas of institutional athletics budgets.  Users have the ability to review annual budgets, by category, dating back to 2005.  Academic spending data over time is also available.  Comparisons of data categories are available by institutions, conferences, subdivisions, and NCAA Division I-FBS spending quartiles, as well as by self-selected peer groups. Users also have the ability to generate trends in the data over time.

6. WHAT IS USED TO DEFINE ACADEMIC SPENDING AND WHY?

Academic spending in the database reflects the Education and General (E&G) spending reported by the institution on IPEDS. E&G is commonly considered as the total cost of education, and is the most common and understood metric for identifying the cost of an institution to fulfill its educational mission.

7. WHERE DOES THE DATA USED IN THE KNIGHT COMMISSION’S DATABASE COME FROM?

All of the data in the database are self-reported by institutions.

The academic spending estimates come from a special tabulation of the Delta Cost Project Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Database, which was constructed from publicly available data that higher education institutions are required to report to the U.S. Department of Education through annual IPEDS surveys.

The athletic financial data were taken from NCAA financial reports filed by each institution with the NCAA.  For most schools in the database, athletic participation counts were drawn from data filed by each institution with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education Equity in Athletics database.

8. WHY CAN'T I FIND DATA FOR ALL DIVISION I INSTITUTIONS IN THE DATABASE?

Data are included only for the NCAA Division I institutions that provided athletic data in response to USA TODAY’s public records requests. Private institutions are exempt from disclosure requests as are several public institutions in the state of Pennsylvania. Military academies that operate their athletics programs through a private operating structure also are not subject to disclosure. Over the fiscal years covered in this database, the operating structures for the U.S. Military Academy (Army) and the U.S. Air Force Academy changed.

9. ARE THE DATA ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION?

Data shown on the profile pages are shown in current dollars and are not adjusted for inflation. However, data can be adjusted for inflation by checking the box "Adjust for Cost Inflation" on each web page. Data can also be adjusted for inflation using the custom reporting tool. Inflation adjustments use the Consumer Price Index (CPI).