The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics released new statistics Monday morning to demonstrate changes in spending in college athletics.
The release shows statistically significant increases in athletics spending per athlete — and, to a lesser extent, academic spending per student — from 2005 to 2009. According to the Knight Commission, athletics spending per athlete increased 49.9 percent from a mean of $60,727 to $91,053 during that period.
Institutional funding for athletics per athlete increased by a similar percentage. Funding spiked from an average of $12,000 in 2005 to $18,389 in 2009 — a 53.1 percent increase.
Meanwhile, academic spending per student increased 21.6 percent from $11,079 to $13,471 during the same period.
Click here to view the Knight Commission's graph of the changes in funding.
The commission also released the media contracts for major college athletic conferences. Five major conferences — the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Pac-12 and Big 12 — collect more than $3 billion from contracts with ESPN, CBS, Fox and conference networks.
Click here to view the Knight Commission's chart of conference media contracts.
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