What I'm learning from the latest athletic department budget reports

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

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been planning for something we call FOIAPALOOZA here at Extra Points HQ. On January 15 of each year, we send out hundreds of requests across D-I and D-II, with dozens of follow-up requests shortly thereafter.

..Okay, by we, I really mean me. I call it that. But I also founded the company, so everybody else around here has to humor me.

We ask for a lot of stuff around this time of year, from updated coach contracts to new vendor agreements to conference bylaws. But the single document that I care about the most is each school’s updated MFRS report.

The MFRS report, or Membership Financial Reporting System report, is an annual, itemized athletic department budget report that every D-I and D-II school has to file with the NCAA. While I wouldn’t describe it as a perfect apples-to-apples comparative tool, it is the closest thing we have.

This is the data that is used to make the Knight-Newhouse Database, the Sportico database, the Extra Points Library, and just about every other comprehensive college sports financial dataset out there. It’s also used to shape the “salary cap” numbers from the CSC and House settlement.

If you’re curious, this is what the report looks like:

In our library, we have annual data going back to FY16 for most FBS institutions, FY21 for most D1 schools, and FY23 and FY24 for many D-II institutions. My goal is to get every single FY25 report as soon as I possibly can.

Right now? I don’t have them. I only have about 35 or so in the Extra Points Library as of this morning, although more are being added every single day. But that’s enough data to notice a few potentially important trends.

The reports are slightly different this year. For one, there’s that big question about sharing data with the CSC

Right before the actual data starts, at the top of the report, you can see two questions in bold:

We agree to release the institution's data to the conference: (Yes/No)

We agree to allow the NCAA to release our school's MFRS institutional Program Revenue data to the College Sports Commission (CSC) for a limited purpose consistent with the House settlement terms (Yes/No)

Now, in the example that I showed you, Sam Houston State appeared to say that it would not be okay to share this financial information with the CSC.

But here’s the thing, as my colleagues over at Sportico pointed out a few days ago. Sam Houston is a public school, making this MFRS report a public document. So if reporter dorks like us can obtain a copy of the report, why couldn’t the CSC?

I’m no snitch, so I’m not going to hand over the PDF directly to the suits with the College Sports Commission or anything…but it’s not like this document is a state secret, you know?