When Texas and Ohio State first agreed to play Saturday’s game back in 2012, Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning was 8 years old. Star Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith was 6.
College football was also less mature. Texas was still entrenched in the Big 12. OSU’s Big Ten hadn’t yet ballooned to 18 teams. Marquee transfers were rare, and paying players was verboten. The Pac-12 had three ranked teams, one of which was Stanford.
One thing hasn’t changed. In 2012, Texas and Ohio State had the biggest athletic budgets in the country. In 2025, they remain the NCAA’s unchallenged financial behemoths.
According to records viewed by Sportico, Texas led all public schools with $325 million in athletics spending in 2023-24. Ohio State was second with $293 million, $30 million above third-place Alabama.
The two schools have traded places atop the budget podium since before the COVID pandemic, and they’ve continued to lead the arms race in a new era of NCAA rules marked by NIL deals and revenue sharing.
The Longhorns and Buckeyes make their dough in different ways. Texas leads the nation with $134 million in athletics donations. It also netted a high of $68.8 million in licensing and ad deals in 2023-24—double what any other school with publicly available numbers pulled in.
Ohio State, on the other hand, saw the most revenue come from ticket sales ($58.8 million) and media rights ($52.8 million). It also operated at a reported $38 million deficit for 2023-24. Outgoing athletic director Gene Smith admitted at the time that he “just went berserk” with the budget, hoping to net a football title. Football coaching staff compensation alone jumped 30% from 2022-23, with Ohio State’s overall budget growing 34% since 2019.
Of course, the Buckeyes got exactly what they paid for in January, beating Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff title game after dispatching the Longhorns in the semifinal. Part of new AD Ross Bjork’s job is finding alternative revenue sources so the school can continue to spend.
In January, Bjork said he was putting together a $300 million athletic department budget for Ohio State this year, something only Texas has ever mustered. A month later, Longhorns AD Chris Del Conte projected a $30 million increase in costs that could push his final number past $350 million.
The two schools’ projected sports spending goes past $650 million combined, which exceeds the 2024 revenue drawn in by either of Ohio’s NFL teams in 2024. There are 10 island countries/territories whose GDPs are outclassed by the financial might being poured into the programs.
When the two most expensive athletic departments in history go head-to-head on Saturday in Columbus (can you say “ticket revenue?”), they’ll also stand alone.
