Earlier today, CNBC published its financial evaluations of several college athletics programs and ranked them on a list from 1 to 75. Their evaluations are supposed to calculate how much an athletics program is within its entirety, rather than just what their biggest programs are worth. The rankings exclude military academies like Army, Navy and Air Force and are limited to schools that participate in the NCAA’s FBS division.
Rutgers athletics landed at No.56 on this list, with its evaluation totalling
around $506 million, which was the lowest evaluation among all of the Big Ten teams. It came in three spots behind Maryland athletics, which was valued at $534 million. However, Rutgers has made progress since last year and moved up three spots on the list, as it was rated as the No.59 most valuable athletic program last year. Arizona, which landed at N0.55, had its program valued at $529 million, meaning that Rutgers has a $23 million gap to cover to jump up one spot.
In 2025, the value of Rutgers Athletics increased by 21 percent. It should be noted that few programs saw their program value decrease, meaning that it went up for most of them. However, most programs on the list that saw their value increase saw it increase by 10-19 percent. Rutgers was one of twenty athletic departments that saw its value increase by 20 percent or more.
The article also calculated how much revenue each athletic department generated in 2023-2024, and calculated how much their incoming revenue changed from 2022-2023. In 2023-2024, Rutgers Athletics brought in $137 million dollars, and was up 10 percent from 2022-2023. This jump was more on par with the revenue increase among the other college programs.
Rutgers revenue and value increase from last year reflects a trend that has been going on across college football. According to CNBC the total value of the top 75 college athletics programs in 2025 was $51.22 billion, which is an increase of 13% from the total value of the top 75 college althetics programs last year. The total revenue generated was up as well. In the fiscal 2024 year, the top 75 schools generated around $11.84 billion in revenue, up by eight percent from the previous fiscal year.
The most valuable program in college athletics also changed from last year, as the University of Texas has taken the No.1 spot from Ohio State, who dropped down to No.2. Texas’ athletic programs were valued at $1.48 billion, an increase of 16 percent from last year. Ohio state’s revenue dropped nine percent from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024, likely due to the fact that the Buckeyes had two less home football games that year. The biggest source of revenue for UT was donors, who totaled $137 million dollars donated.
The revenue figures in the article were obtained from the Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis and the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database for fiscal year 2024.
To figure out the value of each college athletics programs CNBC consulted AthleticDirectorU, which has an expansive database of each college athletic program financial figures.
Conference affiliation, estimated NIL spending, school subsidies, and number of school alumni were some of the variables mixed in because they play a role in catalyzing revenue growth and profitability.
Here is a link to the original article by CNBC.
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