Athletics continues to be a high-dollar enterprise for Texas colleges. The eight public Texas universities that play in the Football Bowl Subdivision — the top level of college football — spent more than $560 million on athletics in the 2015-16 school year. Football is consistently the top revenue-producing sport, followed by men’s basketball. This app, using data from NCAA financial reports, looks at the finances of those eight universities’ athletic departments. (Private universities also have to file the reports but don’t have to make them public under open records laws.)
Use this app to review where athletics department money is going and how much is being earned back. To learn more about this data, click here.
By Annie Daniel and Matthew Watkins
Top spenders
| University of Texas at Austin | $171,394,287 |
| Texas A&M University | $137,101,774 |
| Texas Tech University | $78,598,577 |
| University of Houston | $52,204,566 |
| University of North Texas | $34,155,537 |
| University of Texas at El Paso | $32,510,383 |
| Texas State University | $31,268,882 |
| University of Texas at San Antonio | $26,443,958 |
Top earners
| Texas A&M University | $194,388,450 |
| University of Texas at Austin | $187,981,158 |
| Texas Tech University | $77,182,090 |
| University of Houston | $26,313,812 |
| University of Texas at El Paso | $14,495,074 |
| University of North Texas | $13,020,674 |
| University of Texas at San Antonio | $12,172,569 |
| Texas State University | $9,646,208 |
Designed by Ben Hasson