How does D-II differ from D-I? Let's look at the contracts

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

A huge part of my job here at Extra Points involves poring over contracts and spreadsheets.

I’m in the process of making larger updates to the Extra Points Library, which now has close to 7,000 documents just for Division I schools. Those documents include things like itemized annual athletic department budget reports, coach contracts, game contracts, apparel partnerships, multimedia rights deals and more.

But I don’t just look for documents among D-I institutions. I also file requests for Division II schools. As of this morning, we have roughly 800 documents in our Library for D-II institutions, with more added about every week.

Some of those documents are pretty similar between D-I and D-II. A smaller D-I school is likely to use an athletic apparel wholesaler like BSN or Game One for its apparel contract, just like a D-II school — and the template (and frankly, terms) aren’t too far apart between a Southland school and a Lone Star school. Some vendor agreements, like travel agencies and ticketing providers, look similar as well.

But there are some meaningful differences, too.

Here’s some of the stuff I’ve noticed from digging through the FOIA archives over the past few months:

Athletic budgets look very different

Just like D-I schools, institutions in D-II also file FRS reports (itemized athletic department budgets) with the NCAA, following the same procedures and format as D-I. D-III schools, I’ve learned, do not file this report, but since they are almost all private schools, I’d have no way of obtaining most of them anyway.

Though the largest schools in FBS report athletic revenues well north of $200 million a year, that’s hardly the typical figure across all of D-I. A low-major in D-I is likely to report athletic revenues under $25 million a year, with a handful of schools reporting under $16 million. The smallest revenue number we have in our records in FY24 is Coppin State, which reported athletic revenues of $3,517,090.

What about D-II?

Want to read the rest of the newsletter? Subscribe today!