Facilities Spending: Football vs Non-Football Schools

Do institutions that don’t have football programs spend less on facilities? The presumptive answer is yes, of course, but let’s take a look to see exactly how much less they spend. We studied 46 different programs over the course of four years—2009-2012—focusing on two specific categories of their budget: Direct Facilities, Maintenance, and Rental, & Indirect facilities and Administrative Support. Here’s what we found:

First, not every school spent money in each category every year, in keeping with the reality that facilities maintenance and upgrades aren’t a priority every year. Of the 161 institution-years we studies, institutions only spent money in the Direct Facilities category in 115 of those years (71% of the time), and they only spent money in the Indirect Facilities category in 44 of those years (27% of the time). There was also a wide range of which schools spent money in which years, as seen below:

In the Direct Facilities category, the number of institutions that spent was pretty even – only 7 (15%) didn’t spend any money in the four years we studies, and 19 (41%) spent money every year. The other 43% spent some money, but not every year. These numbers were lower than in FCS and FBS, which was as expected: only 8% of FCS teams never spent money but 53% always did, and only 4% of FBS teams never spent money but 72% always did.

In the Indirect Facilities category, institutions either spend rarely or not at all (87% of them), or they spend every single year (13% of them) – there’s no real middle ground. This is also the case in the other divisions: in FCS, 80% of teams spent rarely or not at all, while 11% spent every single year, and in FBS 85% of teams spent rarely or not at all, while 9% spent every single year.

Of those 115 institution-years in which money was spent on Direct Facilities, the average amount spent by non-Football institutions was $263K. But this number is misleading because of the extremely wide variation in high and low spending by some institutions:

Highest Amount Spent

Lowest Amount Spent (non-zero)

The median amount spent was $127K. Of the 44 institution-years when Indirect Facilities funds were spent, the average amount spent by non-Football institutions was $737K, but again the variation is wide, in addition to being dominated by one institution on either end:

Highest Amount Spent

Lowest Amount Spent (non-zero)

The median amount spent here was $465K. Here’s how those numbers compare to FBS and FCS:

When we account for other spending, assessing how much these facilities funds represent of institutions’ Total Operating Expenses, we can see that Facilities overall don’t have much of an impact on the budget at non-Football institutions, except in unusual circumstances:

In all but 4 institution years, the % of Total Operating Expenses for non-Football institutions’ Direct Facilities spending was under 10%, and 87% of the time it was under 5%. Indirect spending was a bit higher and more consistently sloped, but 68% of the time it was under 10%, and 48% of the time it was under 5%.

Examining the schools where spending was over 10% of Total Operating Expenses, some patterns emerge. For the 4 institutions that spent more than 10% on Direct Facilities, those expenditures represented a one-time spike in their spending, which averaged less than 10% (in some cases way less) in the other three years studied. The 14 institution-years in which Indirect Facilities costs were more than 10% of Total Operating Expenses were compiled by just 5 insitutions. For 2 of them, the spending represented not just a spike in spending, but any spending at all – in the other three years, they didn’t spend any money on Indirect Facilities. For the other 3 institutions, in all four years studied their Indirect Facilities spending was over 10% and extremely consistent year to year.

Overall, most schools stay pretty close to a set percentage spent on Facilities year in and year out. The average % change of spending on Direct Facilities was just 1.8% across all non-Football teams, and the average % change of spending on Direct Facilities was just 3.3%.