What can a national title do for Indiana football? Here’s how much its value has changed

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CHICAGO — Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti closed out Big Ten media days last week with swagger, touting the conference his national champion Hoosiers won as the nation’s best. Two hours later, a reporter asked Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson what that championship is worth to his state’s flagship institution.

Intangibly, Dolson said, it’s priceless. As for the hard numbers, he brought over IU senior associate athletic director Kevin Van Rooy for specifics about athletic donations and the year-over-year value.

“Double,” Van Rooy said.

“Double?” Dolson asked again.

Van Rooy nodded.

“That’s from a long-established program, too,” Dolson said. “It’s not like we just started. We’ve got a long history of really great contributors. A lot of success. But I didn’t realize that it actually doubled.”

A 16-0 football season pushed Indiana’s athletic department donations up $25 million to $50 million in fiscal 2026, which ended June 30. Indiana was already the Big Ten powerhouse in men’s basketball ticket sales, and every football ticket for the upcoming season was sold within one day back in February. The residual effect throughout campus contains a similar boost with record-high interest among applicants, though a capped number of incoming students prevents that number from soaring, too.

A university-high 48,626 undergrad students entered Indiana University last fall, while overall applications increased by a record 9.3 percent. Entering the upcoming year, those applications grew another 10 percent. It’s part of a surge that started with President Pamela Whitten’s hiring in 2021 and was bolstered by the football program’s championship.

“The success that we’ve seen on the field really reflects larger momentum at Indiana University,” Whitten said. “Football didn’t necessarily start a lot of these trends, but it provided a spotlight on tremendous progress that’s already underway across Indiana University, and so we’ve seen progress on a number of really important metrics. That includes increases in applications and donations and media reach.”

Football’s success allows other parts of the university to shine in its afterglow, Dolson said, like IU’s business, medical and music schools. Last fall, IU and its satellite campuses vaulted to the top slot as the nation’s largest alumni base for the first time, and it coincides with football’s prowess. The collective strength of all entities has given Indiana football staying power and allowed it to soar up The Athletic’s list of college football valuations in an exercise that asks: How much would college football teams be worth if they were sold like pro franchises?

In 2025, The Athletic ranked Indiana football as the Big Ten’s 14th most valuable program and 38th overall with a price of $386 million. With two consecutive College Football Playoff appearances, on-field sustainability with Cignetti locked up long-term, and a promising financial outlook, Indiana took the greatest jump among Power 4 programs this year with a $696 million valuation. That comes in at No. 22 overall, just behind Iowa and ninth among Big Ten programs.

The leap also rewards the risks — both in personnel and financial — that Indiana took to reach its goals. Before last November, the football program had the most losses in Division I history, and its stadium was often less than half full in the shadow of its more popular men’s basketball program. Dolson, a former Indiana men’s basketball student manager under Bob Knight, felt IU needed to significantly invest in football. As the program languished through a 3-24 Big Ten record from 2021-23, Dolson sought a $26 million university loan from Whitten to move on from coach Tom Allen rather than hold on another year for a reduced buyout. Whitten endorsed the change.

“Quite frankly, with the ambition that we had, which was to win a national championship, we needed to make investment in key areas, and so I made the decision that it was a smart, prudent and wise investment,” Whitten said. “This is going to more than pay for itself.

“The strategy that you saw applied to football is also being applied to other areas of the university as well. That’s what I’m hired to do. I’m hired to get us to the top of things and make the decisions about what it takes to get there.”

Cignetti has a 27-2 record in two seasons, and the crowd sizes reflect it. Last year, the Hoosiers averaged 53,190 in attendance — up from 44,589 two years ago — and three crowds exceeded capacity, including a modern stadium record 56,088 against Illinois. The final revenue numbers from the 2026 fiscal year are incomplete, but it should show a substantial increase from any previous season.

The value of a championship is greater for Indiana than more established programs like LSU, Michigan and Clemson. Their football revenue rose between $3 million and $9 million during their recent national title runs (including both at Clemson), according to figures reported to the NCAA or U.S. Department of Education. That’s a nice bump but not a massive spike.

The same idea would hold true for professional franchises with large, loyal followings. The Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks can only capitalize so much on their recent Super Bowls if they were already selling out the stadium.

“There’s only so many seats,” said Jacqueline Garner, the principal lecturer and faculty director for Georgia Tech’s minor in the business of sports and entertainment.

Although Garner’s own valuation analysis is more rigorous than The Athletic’s approach and has different goals, it also showed enormous growth for IU. Last year, she pegged the Hoosiers’ value at about $350 million. After the championship run, it’s in the $450 million to $540 million range, excluding the broader impact on academics (because financial growth in enrollment or tuition goes to the school, not the football program).

The success also comes with a cost, said Kevin Kaiser, an adjunct full professor of finance at Penn’s Wharton School of Business. Cignetti and the staff earned raises, and higher expectations generally lead schools to spend more to meet them. But the buzz and bump in attendance, donations and everything else have created something that isn’t a one-off financial event.

“It is the new base,” Kaiser said. “It goes up, and it stays there.”

Dolson concedes no one wants to hear about rising costs associated with winning, but they are factors in Indiana’s future success. Cignetti commands a $13.2 million per year salary, which is more than double what Indiana paid in fiscal 2024, plus staff retention. But that’s a small price to pay for a consistent high-level football program.

“We look at that as investments in making certain that we continue to provide the resources to our program to win,” Dolson said. “We want to sustain growth every year. We don’t want to just be a one-hit wonder.”

— Matt Baker contributed to this report.