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Filed athletics finances

Who spends the most on athletic student aid

Every figure is read from the school's own NCAA financial report — the annual filing each Division I athletics department submits to the NCAA. Ranked by reported dollars, not by results.
24Schools ranked
FY2020Fiscal year
$173.44MCombined athletic student aid
831Reports parsed

Scholarship dollars awarded to student-athletes.

Rank / schoolReported athletic student aidChange
01

Oklahoma

$15.96M · $15,958,027

no prior year
02

Missouri

$12.57M · $12,568,625

no prior year
03

Oregon State

$10.80M · $10,801,974

no prior year
04

Georgia

$10.80M · $10,797,866

−7% YoY
05

Boise State

$8.75M · $8,753,608

no prior year
06

Buffalo

$8.50M · $8,503,272

+2% YoY
07

New Mexico State

$8.28M · $8,277,399

no prior year
08

Western Michigan

$7.95M · $7,948,076

no prior year
09

Georgia State

$7.82M · $7,815,626

−1% YoY
10

Marshall

$7.76M · $7,761,184

no prior year
11

App State

$7.06M · $7,059,593

no prior year
12

Northern Illinois

$6.77M · $6,766,038

−4% YoY
13

Georgia Southern

$6.61M · $6,613,652

no prior year
14

Central Michigan

$6.16M · $6,158,275

−7% YoY
15

California Polytechnic State University

$6.04M · $6,043,844

no prior year
16

Southern Miss

$5.71M · $5,709,243

no prior year
17

Texas State

$5.64M · $5,640,364

no prior year
18

Murray State University

$5.61M · $5,612,337

no prior year
19

Kennesaw State

$5.07M · $5,073,512

no prior year
20

Idaho State

$4.98M · $4,977,636

no prior year
21

North Carolina A&T State University

$4.14M · $4,135,120

no prior year
22

Florida Gulf Coast University

$3.78M · $3,776,299

no prior year
23

Florida Atlantic

$3.50M · $3,502,589

no prior year
24

Eastern Illinois

$3.18M · $3,184,832

no prior year
How to read these rankings

These figures come from filed NCAA financial reports collected in our document corpus and parsed from the report text. 831 reports parsed cleanly; 56 could not be read and are absent from these rankings, so a school missing from a year has not necessarily reported nothing.

Football and basketball views come from the report's per-sport allocation tables. They cover recruiting and team travel, not aviation alone: commercial airfare, buses, hotels, meals, and other eligible costs share the same lines. A school can also leave some expenses unallocated.

Private universities have no public-disclosure obligation and generally do not appear. Fiscal years are not uniform — most close June 30, but some schools close on a different date, so a single “FY” column compares slightly different periods. Schools also categorize inconsistently between reports, so treat cross-school gaps of a few percent as noise rather than signal.