Remember when the Big 12 was all doom and gloom about surviving as a conference? You’d never know that by looking at their balance sheet.
Following league-wide meetings in the Dallas area on Friday, the Big 12 announced a record $364.87 million in total revenue for the 2017-18 fiscal year. That includes an impressive $36.5 million per school distribution that doesn’t include so-called “third tier rights” such as money from the Longhorn Network given to Texas (~$15 million) or regional deals with Fox Sports that several other schools like Oklahoma have.
Those figures are firmly middle of the pack for the Power Five, ranking behind the SEC and Big Ten but the distribution per school is several million more than what the Pac-12 and ACC dole out. It helps there’s only 10 members in the conference, which is one reason why the number is so high per school despite taking in far less total revenue than, for example, the Pac-12’s $509 million last year.
All told though, it’s a 6.4 percent increase from last year and would have been even higher had the Sugar Bowl not been a semifinal game in the College Football Playoff -- which, according to commissioner Bob Bowlsby, resulted in a roughly $40 million loss that was partially offset by revenue from the first ever Big 12 Championship Game.
Between getting back that bowl money next season and increases in television money coming their way, it goes without saying that another nice increase will be headed toward the schools during the upcoming year. Life, it appears, isn’t so bad as the smallest Power Five league after all as long as those checks keep coming in.