Institution A Athletics
Landscape Report

1 How to read this report

Sources. Warehouse figures come from the AD Vantage data warehouse (NCAA Financial Reporting System filings through reporting year 2025, contract records current to contract year 2026, staff directories collected within one day of 2026-08-05 at 16 of 18 schools, season statistics through 2026). Externally sourced facts are tagged web with a URL and retrieval date. Every exhibit states its source, its as-of or reporting year, its n, and any exclusion.

As-of dates. FRS financials: FY2025 (FY2024 is more complete league-wide; noted where used). Compensation: contract year 2026, capped at the current contract year — no future scheduled raises appear as current pay. Performance: complete through the 2025 football season and the 2025-26 winter/spring seasons. Academics: the NCAA publishes APR/GSR/FGR on a rolling basis; the 2024 release (covering the 2024-25 academic year) is the latest available. Reporting year 2021 is excluded from every trend (COVID rows are present and near-zero, not missing).

Two structural coverage facts frame the financial comparisons

1. Institution G and Institution AG are private. They file no FRS financials and have zero compensation records. Every financial and compensation comparison in this report is n=16, not n=18. The only fallback for their department totals is federal EADA data, which is a different source on an offset year basis and defines revenue ≡ expenses, so it is not blended into any exhibit here.
2. Institution O is exempt from its state's right-to-know law. Only 13 of its 469 active staff (2.8%) have any compensation record, and its FRS filings exist for 2024–2025 only. Multi-year financial trends and salary benchmarks exclude Institution O where noted — notably, that school's wrestling head coach's wrestling compensation is unavailable.

Sponsorship base. Schools sponsor very different numbers of programs — Institution K 31, Institution O and Institution T 27, down to Institution A and Institution AB at 18 (counts = distinct sports across the teams data union head-coach assignments). Department-wide totals (payroll, headcount, aid, participation) scale with that base, so exhibits built on them carry a per-sponsored-program view alongside the raw ranking; per-sport exhibits already compare like with like and are not reweighted, and market outcomes (revenue, ticket sales, %-capacity) are reported unweighted by design.

Other coverage limits stated up front: wrestling has no performance data anywhere in the warehouse (covered from public sources, tagged web); ten Olympic programs carry national-rank data but no win/loss records; Institution T's published staff directory is structurally incomplete and is asterisked in every headcount exhibit; conference standings for seasons before 2024 are computed against the 14 legacy the Conference members.

2 Department at a glance

3 Sport performance

3.1 The eighteen programs and their coaches

Worked example for the baseline term: Coach 10's 2026 score blends a p97.5 performance level with a p60.2 improvement percentile; in native units the program's mean NET rank improved from 18.6 (2018–22 baseline) to 9.2 (2023–26 tenure window) = +9.4 spots.

3.2 Five-year trajectories — revenue sports

Women's Basketball

Other scored sports — W. Volleyball, Baseball, Softball, W. Soccer

National-rank-only programs

Wrestling web. No performance data exists in the warehouse for wrestling (no teams row, no sport_stats, no coach effect, no academics). Public record: at the 2025 NCAA Championships Institution A placed 13th (34.5 pts) — its highest finish under Coach 12 (HC since 2014) and best since 1992 — with an Institution A wrestler NCAA runner-up at 157 and Coach 23 4th at 125; at the 2026 NCAA Championships Institution A placed 29th (10.5 pts, 9th among the Conference teams), with that wrestler 6th at 165, his second All-America honor. (a school site, 2025-03-23 and 2026-03-21, retrieved 2026-08-05.)

3.3 Sport-specific spending, five years

3.4 Does spending track performance? The correlation, run honestly

How to read this table. Each row asks one question: across the 16 FRS filers, do schools that spend more on a sport perform better in it? n is the number of schools compared. Pearson r measures the straight-line relationship between FY2025 operating expense (the latest filed year) and the sport's national rank in the most recent completed season (rank is inverted first, so a positive r means more spending goes with better performance; 0 = no relationship, 1 = perfect). FY2025 closed before these seasons were played, so the pairing reads as the latest filed spending against the season that followed it. Spearman asks the same question using rank order only, which keeps one extreme budget from driving the result. The third column swaps the performance measure to conference win% in the same season. Institution A rank vs spend-predicted places a straight-line fit through all 16 schools and reads off where Institution A's budget alone would predict it to finish; the residual is actual minus predicted, in national-rank spots — negative means the on-field result sits below what the spending level predicts, positive means above it. The 3-yr robustness column re-runs the correlation on three-year averages (FY2023–25 expense vs the 3-season mean rank) to show whether the single-season relationship holds over a longer window.

Cost per unit of output, same window: Institution A MBB spent $825,908 per 2025-26 conference win against a 16-school median of $1,320,988; WBB $982,256 per conference win against a $693,283 median; football recorded 0 conference wins in 2025, so the ratio is undefined (median $16.1M per win). For Olympic sports the peer counts are smaller and the correlations are weak — no relationship is claimed.

3.5 Academics — latest NCAA release (2024-25)

4 Compensation and contract position

4.1 Head-coach contract inventory, contract year 2026

4.2 Where Institution A pays against the conference

Cost-of-living context. Institution A's COLA index is 93.43 — third-lowest in the conference (Institution AE 91.51, Institution V 91.58) against Institution Z 112.56, Institution AD/Institution AG 113.57, Institution M 111.13. Expressed in conference-average cost terms, Institution A's football $6,250,000 corresponds to $6,689,000 of purchasing power (6,250,000 ÷ 0.9343), which narrows — but does not close — the −15.8% nominal gap to the football median. This is a second lens, not a replacement for the nominal table. Source: university.cola_index.

4.3 Retention exposure — performance × expiry × buyout

4.4 Cost of living across the footprint

5 Staffing

5.1 Headcount

* Institution T's 244 is a directory-coverage artifact, not the leanest department in the the Conference. Its directory publishes coaches and almost no support staff (zero custodial/grounds/food rows; 55.7% coaching share against a 17–29% band elsewhere), and it carries 314 open appointments against 244 directory rows — implying a true department size near 380. Institution T is asterisked in every headcount exhibit and excluded from “last place” claims.

Institution A's own raw total is inflated by directory scope: 49 of 380 (12.9%) are custodial, grounds, turf and food-service staff — categories Institution AG (0.3%), Institution G (0.7%) and Institution T (0%) do not publish at all. The scope-normalized 306 is the figure used for peer ranking. Row-level directory freshness: Institution A 218 of 380 rows touched in the last 60 days (mid-pack); at Institution T, Institution AA, Institution M and Institution AG fewer than a quarter were, so recent departures may still read active there.

5.2 Where the people are

5.3 Total guaranteed compensation on file, by school

6 Revenue generation

6.1 Commercial agreements — sourcing split stated plainly

Institution A's commercial-document set in the warehouse comprises 35 game-guarantee contracts and two beverage agreements. The peer benchmark below is warehouse-extracted; the rest of Institution A's own deals are web-sourced and tagged.

• Multimedia rights web: Institution A's MMR are operated by Learfield through Institution A Sports Properties, a relationship dating to at least 2004; current term and financials are not public. (learfield.com partner page; a school site 2004-01-06; retrieved 2026-08-05.)
• Apparel web: Nike outfits Institution A athletics; terms are not public. (nike.com official Institution A collection, retrieved 2026-08-05.)
• Beverage (warehouse): Coca-Cola Consolidated (CCBCC Operations) holds campus-wide exclusive pouring rights, 2020-07-01→2027-06-30 — sponsorship fees fully redacted; non-cash consideration includes a $5,000/yr merchandising fund and up to 1,000 cases/yr of product. A Gatorade sideline agreement (players'-area exclusivity, $300,000 total over five years) ran 2021-07-01→2026-06-30 and its renewal status is not in the warehouse. Source: doc_structured_outputs (pouring_rights), extracted terms.

6.2 Game guarantees

6.3 Ticket revenue, attendance, and yield

6.4 Facilities, debt and capital position

There is no venues table in the warehouse — no seat counts outside per-season attendance rows, no suite counts, no naming-rights linkage. Capital context from public records web: Institution A trustees approved ~$52.1M of donor-funded athletics work on 2022-04-08 — $45.4M Institution A's football stadium Phase One (south-end-zone concourse adding 3,000–5,000 seats, tunnel to the football performance complex, athlete dining; built through Aug 2023) and $6.7M at Institution A's arena (a donor club, locker rooms; completed Sept 2023). The trustees' current 10-year capital plan (Aug 2024) lists no Institution A's city athletics projects — athletics capital work has been approved separately and donor-funded. (a school site 2022-04-08; Institution A Exponent 2022-04; a school site Ten-Year Capital Plan, 2024-08-02; all retrieved 2026-08-05.) Athletics capital expenditures, latest filing per school: Institution V $165.1M (FY2025) · Institution T $15.7M (FY2025) · Institution R $14.3M (FY2024) · Institution AE $12.5M (FY2024) · Institution K $10.5M (FY2025) · Institution A $1.29M (FY2025); n=14 with a filing, vintages vary.

7 Investment in women's and men's programs

Four lenses on the same question, each with its own source and coverage: gender-allocated operating expense (FRS), head-coaching salaries (FRS filed aggregates and the contract-level view from §4), athletic student aid and allocated scholarship equivalencies (FRS), and participation (EADA). Because schools sponsor very different numbers of programs, each exhibit carries a per-sponsored-program column beside the raw totals — the raw ranking answers “how much,” the weighted one answers “how much per program sponsored.” Title IX's regulatory tests compare participation to undergraduate enrollment and aid to participation rates; enrollment data is not in the warehouse, so the shares below are reported side by side without a compliance characterization.

7.1 The sponsorship base

7.2 Operating expense by gender

7.3 Head-coach pay by gender

The contract-level view points the same direction with per-sport texture: against conference medians (§4.2), Institution A's men's-sport head coaches sit above the median in 3 of 8 benchmarked sports (MBB +7.6%, M. tennis +6.1%, M. golf +2.6%) and its women's-sport head coaches in 3 of 9 (W. volleyball +42.3%, W. tennis +3.6%, W. golf at the median), with the deepest women's-side gaps in WBB (−31.2%), softball (−31.1%) and W. swimming (−22.8%). Per-sport comparisons need no sponsorship weighting — they already compare like with like.

7.4 Scholarships — aid dollars and allocated equivalencies

7.5 Participation

8 Pattern recognition

This section synthesizes the preceding sections for the three sports where n=16 comparisons are dense enough to support pattern claims.

8.1 What the assembled data shows

• Football's gap to the conference is on the expense side, not the revenue side. Expense ranks 15th of 16 ($37.2M vs $50.8M median) while revenue ranks 12th ($83.1M); the resulting revenue-to-expense ratio of 2.24 is 3rd of 16, behind Institution T (2.84) and Institution Q (2.74). In the most recent season (2025), performance sits ~18 national-rank spots below what the conference spend-performance fit predicts at Institution A's expense level (r=+0.52, n=16, one season).
• Men's basketball carries a different profile from the rest of the department. It is the one program where coach compensation is above the conference median (+7.6%), the coach-effect position is p98, spending is at the median (11th of 16, 3% below), NET has been top-16 for five straight seasons, and the building has been at 100% of capacity in every measured season. Its cost per 2025-26 conference win ($0.83M) is below the conference median ($1.32M), and its NET rank runs ~47 spots better than spend predicts.
• Women's basketball shows the widest cluster of gaps in the revenue sports: last of 16 in expense, 7th percentile in coach comp (−31.2% vs median), 34.5% of capacity, $400,801 in ticket revenue against Institution AE's $2,366,160, and a 2025-26 NET ~12 spots below what spending predicts (r=+0.26, n=16). Institution AE — a school with a comparable COLA index (91.51 vs Institution A's 93.43) — demonstrates a within-conference case of a different outcome: $8.5M expense (3rd), $2.52M coach comp (max), 100% capacity, $2.37M tickets.
• Several department-wide rankings compress or reverse once sponsorship base is weighted. Institution A runs the conference's smallest base — 18 programs (T-17 with Institution AB), including the fewest women's programs (9). Per sponsored program, its scope-normalized staffing is 2nd of 18 (17.0; unweighted 12th), its guaranteed payroll is T-6 of 15 ($2.41M; unweighted 14th), and its women's aid equivalencies move from last of 16 (38.7% share) to 13th of 16 (10.6 per women's program). Women's head-coach pay does not move: $287,012 per women's program is 15th of 16 either way.
• Max-bonus exposure is high relative to guaranteed payroll: $12.49M against $43.46M (28.7%), the second-highest ratio among the 15 schools with data (Institution Z 31.1%; median 15.7%).
• Per-attendee football yield, not attendance, is where Institution A trails same-demand peers: $38.26 per attendee at 98.9–104.6% of capacity, against Institution AE $50.62 (100.0%), Institution V $51.09 (99.4%), Institution M $64.67 (97.3%). At Institution A's realized 2025 attendance, those peers' yields correspond to $18.2M / $18.4M / $23.2M of football ticket revenue against Institution A's $13.7M — arithmetic, not a projection.

8.2 Non-spending levers the data speaks to

• Yield rather than volume. Football is at 98.9% of capacity and MBB at 100.0%; incremental gate revenue at current capacity is a pricing-and-mix quantity, sized above. WBB is the inverse case: 65.5% of Mackey's capacity is unsold at each date.
• Distribution, not only deficits. Institution A is above the conference median in W. volleyball comp (+42.3%, paired with a p96 coach and three straight RPI top-15 seasons), M. tennis (+6.1%), MBB (+7.6%), W. tennis (+3.6%), M. golf (+2.6%); it is below in 11 of 17 sports, most deeply in baseball, WBB, softball and swimming. Softball's expense rank (3rd of 16 in FY2025 growth terms — $2.28M) sits alongside a 0th-percentile coach salary — the two facts coexist in the same program.
• Commercial-rights timing. The conference MMR maturity calendar: Institution U resets 2027-06-30, Institution T holds a market-check right inside a 2031 term, Institution S / Institution E / Institution AE reset in 2032, Institution Z 2034, Institution K 2036, Institution R / Institution M 2037. Institution A's own Learfield agreement is not in the warehouse and its term is not public web. Institution A's Coca-Cola Consolidated pouring agreement runs to 2027-06-30, and the Gatorade sideline agreement's stated term ended 2026-06-30.
• Game-guarantee economics. Institution A's FBS football buy games cost $1.2M–$1.4M per home date (Institution L 2025, Institution N 2027) versus $450k–$550k for FCS dates; MBB non-conference home dates cluster at $90k–$95k, with zero-guarantee home-and-homes (Institution W, Institution H, Institution P) as the existing alternative structure on file. Guarantees received: $200,000 filed in FY2025; the Institution J series returns $500k–$1.5M per Institution A road/neutral date.

8.3 What the data cannot tell you

Knowing the boundary of the evidence is part of the picture. The warehouse cannot speak to: NIL and revenue-share economics beyond the single filed line (Institution A filed $0 of institutional NIL revenue share for FY2025; collective activity is invisible here); Institution A's own commercial agreements — MMR, apparel, licensing, ticketing, concessions terms (only two beverage documents exist, one with fully redacted financials); wrestling performance in any form; anything financial about Institution G and Institution AG; Institution O compensation (2.8% coverage — including that school's wrestling head coach's); multi-year academic trends (only the latest NCAA release is loaded); donor and collective capacity (contributions totals exist; donor pipelines do not); and venue detail beyond per-season seat counts — no suites, premium inventory, or naming-rights linkage. Institution T's staffing data is structurally unreliable, and four schools' directories refresh slowly enough that individual rows may be stale.

9 Appendix — full peer tables

All appendix exhibits: AD Vantage warehouse, queried 2026-08-05. The complete head-coach contract inventory appears in §4.1; complete staffing tables in §5; complete ticket/attendance tables in §6.