Good morning and thanks for opening up this week’s NILnomics. Last week I looked at the relationship between football and men's basketball resource allocation within the Arkansas athletic department. It went mildly viral and I got a lot of feedback, which I wanted to respond to. This week I am going to focus more on the raw dollars being spent, where that ranks in the SEC, and what that says about Arkansas.
Percentage shares can hide how large or small the budget behind them is. Arkansas gave men's basketball a larger share of its budget than any other SEC school in FY2025, and it did so from one of the smallest budgets in the conference. Every figure in this piece is therefore in dollars, every ranking is against the 15 SEC schools that file financial reports with the NCAA, and every line chart shows its value at each year. The data run from FY2018 through FY2025, the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025.
The analysis follows the money in the order it moves through the department: how much Arkansas has to spend, where that money comes from, how the department divides it, what the division buys in men’s basketball and in football, what remains for the other 13 teams, and what it costs when the department decides to change course.
It arrives during a month of intense scrutiny. An online petition calling for athletics director Hunter Yurachek's removal gathered more than 2,500 signatures in its first days. The Board of Trustees voted unanimously to order a review of the department's competitiveness, with an emphasis on football, to be led by University of Arkansas System President Jay Silveria. Yurachek told Sports Illustrated that, looking back, he "would have established a general manager-type position earlier." Saturday's 34–6 win over Tulsa ended a school-record 12-game losing streak against FBS opponents. The financial questions behind the scrutiny remain open, and the filings speak directly to them.
How much Arkansas has to spend
Arkansas spent $184.1 million on athletics in FY2025. That ranked 13th among the 15 SEC schools that file; only Ole Miss ($183.8 million) and Mississippi State ($164.5 million) spent less. The median SEC school spent $203.8 million. Texas spent $375.8 million, a little more than twice Arkansas' total.
This is a long-standing position. Arkansas has ranked between 11th and 13th in every year of the data. The distance to the middle of the conference has grown, though not in a straight line. In FY2018 Arkansas trailed the SEC median by $10.1 million. The gap peaked at $27.0 million in FY2024 and stood at $19.8 million in FY2025, even though Arkansas' own budget grew by $56.7 million over those seven years. (Just a note: the comparison set throughout is today's SEC, so Texas and Oklahoma are included in the years before they joined.)
A department can only spend what it takes in, and Arkansas took in $199.9 million in FY2025, 11th in the conference. Breaking that revenue into its three sources, the fans, the donors and the university, shows why the budget is small.