The Ohio State University is the biggest school in the Big Ten from a football standpoint, along with their arch rivals at the University of Michigan. And for the first time, there is a hint that they want to be paid like it.
The Big Ten has long been built on an equal revenue share between conference partners. For 2024, each school with a full revenue share received $75 million, largely buttressed by television revenue from the league’s billion dollar TV deal with Fox, NBC, and CBS. New members Oregon and Washington received less for their entry into the league after the dissolution of the Pac-12.
The equity of the Big Ten’s revenue sharing model mean that titans like Ohio State and Michigan receive the same payment as programs like Purdue and Northwestern that are very obviously not on the same level, either historically or presently. But those Big Ten teams may not want to get too comfortable with the current setup, because the times are changing.
Ohio State president Ted Carter addressed the revenue sharing model in an interview this week with USA Today. When asked specifically about a future model that could see unequal payments like the ACC instituted to keep hold of its biggest football programs in Florida State and Clemson, Carter first answered diplomatically.
“I don’t want to get into the type of conversations that are happening inside the Big Ten,” said Carter, who began at Ohio State on Jan. 1, 2024, after four years as president of the University of Nebraska System. “I would just tell you that we’re a proud member of the Big Ten, and that’s where we’re going to stay. We have … our own bylaws for how we do the distributions. When new members join the conference, they don’t always come in at the same share, as you know. So … that’s the way our media rights deals are set up. That’s how we’re set up for now.”
But the ACC model is built to distribute television revenue based on a formula of five years of rolling television ratings metrics. And Carter just so happened to have the recent viewership numbers for the season-opening clash with Texas that shattered college football Week 1 ratings records.
“We don’t have any answers,” he replied. “I will say that there’s only a couple of schools that really represent the biggest brands in the Big Ten, and you can see that by the TV viewership. I mean, look what we just went through with the Texas game (Ohio State’s football season opener). … You know, 16.(6) million people watching that game over the whole game. And it peaked at 18.6 million. It’s the most watched opening game in history, third-largest game ever watched in a regular season (on Fox). So, that’s what happens when you put the Ohio State brand out there.”
Asked whether that should translate into something different in terms of revenue share, Carter said:
“It doesn’t matter what Ted Carter thinks. I think that’s going to be a conversation that will be had over time.”
We already know that nobody at Ohio State is really happy with the way that the program has had to carry the flag at Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff to a disproportionate amount compared to their Big Ten cohorts. After several consecutive noon games to end the last regular season, Ohio State kicked off the 2025 campaign with a noon game against top-ranked Texas.
But there’s nothing the Buckeyes can do about it now except ask Fox nicely to consider their desire for more big primetime games. They signed the contract. And Fox is committed to a (largely successful) strategy of making noon their premier window to avoid going head-to-head with major SEC games in the late afternoon and evening hours. And everyone knows that Buckeye Nation consistently produces the highest viewership numbers.
So what can Ohio State do about it? They can certainly throw their considerable weight around and demand more money from the Big Ten’s mammoth television revenue for the next contract. Ted Carter and everyone else at OSU knows the ratings power that they, and to a somewhat similar extent, Michigan have. And the fact that the Buckeyes draw equal revenue as teams that can’t compete with them is probably not going to stand for very long in the new world of college athletics.
If the Big Ten balks at the suggestion, who knows, maybe Ohio State and Michigan would be fine getting the payday they feel they deserve in the SEC or even going independent. Stranger things have certainly happened in the world of college football realignment.
About Matt Yoder