The Athletic names top 25 college football programs in projected valuation, featuring 11 from SEC
By Andrew Olson
Published:
If college football programs were placed on the open market, which ones would come with the biggest price tags? The Athletic says Texas would cost the most.
Matt Baker authored a new article from The Athletic, published Monday, that projects the open market value of the top college football programs. Here’s what Baker wrote of the methodology to come up with the numbers:
We approached the hypothetical question with a methodology that was part art, part science. We used real-life pro transactions to gauge purchase prices relative to a team’s revenue over the past three available years of data. NFL and NBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and Big Ten, while the MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the ACC and Big 12. For each school in a Power 4 conference (plus Notre Dame), we factored in everything from prestige and championships to facility renovations, population trends and realignment scenarios. That means treating Notre Dame more like the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston College more like the Kansas City Royals.
As one would expect, the SEC is well-represented in the top 25, as the top conference with 11 teams. The Big Ten was right behind with 10 teams, while 3 ACC teams made the list and Notre Dame checks in at No. 4.
Using the above methodology, The Athletic put Texas’s price tag at $2.38 billion. Texas is the only program to crack $2 billion, but Georgia is right behind at $1.92 billion. Six other SEC programs top the billion-dollar mark: Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, LSU, Florida and Auburn.
How much would it (hypothetically) take to buy your favorite college football program?
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) July 21, 2025
If you're a Longhorns fan, it would cost the largest chunk of change (sorry @McConaughey and @glenpowell) pic.twitter.com/m0fEgmzRFu
The Athletic isn’t the first publication to try to put a dollar amount on the value of a college football program. The Wall Street Journal shared the enterprise value of top programs back in January, with Ohio State on top fresh off its national championship.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
