You won't believe how much college football teams spend on balloons

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In this week’s newsletter, we have the ecstatic emails Iowa’s AD got after firing Brian Ferentz.

But first, everything you ever wanted to know about college football and balloons.

Given all the times Bill Belichick went viral in his inaugural college football season, it would be easy to forget about the balloons. 

You forgot about the balloons, right? 

There were so many indelible stories from his first year: Details of his GM’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the rundown of his canceled TV show, his girlfriend’s FOIA warfare against UNC.

And those are just the stories FOIAball broke.

Then, there were the balloons. 

Belichick’s debut against TCU got a primetime slot, the only Sunday night game on the slate. 

It came with breathless hype and great anticipation, and the Tar Heels got stomped. After the loss, Belichick took questions under an inflated garland of Carolina Blue balloons. 

The optics were, from FOIAball’s perspective, pretty fun. 

Not everyone liked it, though. Some fans found it rather embarrassing, directing their ire at an innocent victim. It was so incongruent, so unprofessional, so garish, they assumed it had to be the work of Jordon Hudson. 

But… come on. 

This is college football. It doesn’t need a 24-year-old May-Decemberist to produce accidental absurdist spectacle.

It’s been doing just fine on its own for years.

You want to know how much that cost.

Okay. We’ll tell you how much it cost. 

A 25-foot garland with the starburst add-ons (those pointy metallic pops of silver) runs $27 a foot from one of UNC’s preferred balloon vendors. Alongside a 20% installation and delivery fee, the after-game arch cost about $800. 

Which is a rounding error in UNC’s football balloon budget.  

Last season, UNC’s football team wrapped the columns of its athletic center in balloons. It festooned a mobile beverage truck with balloons. It surrounded a light-up marquee with balloons to announce “Hibachi Night.” 

Sorry, that wasn’t just last season. That was just one weekend of last season. Hibachi Night, to be precise. 

The total budget for UNC football balloons last year? $48,733.

Why, you might wonder, are we talking about balloons? 

A month ago, I published an article about expenses for official recruiting visits, where schools go overboard to wow potential players. 

It flopped on social media.

The next day, trying to gain some traction, I compared and contrasted figures I’d gotten on balloon spends for those weekends. It, well… it blew up. And as more totals came in, other posts I did… look, I’m sorry. There are only so many phrases to describe social posts doing well and they all carry balloon connotations. Whatever. I got a lot of likes.

And a little trick of journalism they don’t teach you in journalism school is that doing stories your readers like is a good thing. 

So y’all better share this. Or upgrade your subscription.

Because, for you, we requested balloon spending from a bunch of Division I football programs. Eighty-one to be precise. As of this post, we have figures from almost 40. Here’s the full list for you spreadsheet aficionados. 

Before you click—and we proceed—I have a couple caveats. These balloon budget figures are probably not completely accurate. Not because they’re… I hate myself here… inflated. These schools absolutely spent this much on balloons. But they almost certainly spent more. 

Many schools struggled to give precise figures, lacking a specific expense code for balloons. And not all vendors have “balloon” in their name to make them easily searchable.

Some provided totals for their entire athletics department, while others would only search for specific vendors, whom FOIAball went the extra mile to identify, combing through Yelp maps in college towns and the recesses of small business owner Facebook pages. 

Other sports-related balloon expenditures may not have been filed to the athletics department ledger, like decorations at a tailgate hosted by the university president. 

If you want to hear a particularly Kafka-esque tale of obtaining some of these records, might I suggest the podcast Phantom Island? They have a great episode up today with an independent journalist who spent a month battling schools over balloon totals. (Shout out to the FOIA officer who sent a very sincere apology because she couldn’t reasonably determine what percent of a helium tank the football team used.)

So that’s caveat one. The second is this: Almost all these contracts are with small, local businesses, who, by no fault of their own, find themselves benefiting from the balloon largesse of public universities. 

We do think some of the amounts are ridiculous, but we are not here to shame these burgeoning balloon barons. Yes, we’re gonna share some of our favorite images, but we’re not gonna link to their social feeds. I want the balloon makers of America to continue to be able to pay their balloon bills. 

And, honestly, I want these schools to keep making these dumb, wasteful purchases.

Because people really do love balloons. I love balloons. Just look at balloon Bevo.

I would die for him.

What are college football programs using balloons for? 

For everything. There are balloons for recruiting visits, balloons for press conferences, balloons for home games, balloons to send teams off for away games, balloons for official signing days, balloons for anniversaries of Rose Bowl victories ten years ago (Michigan State).   

Here’s Houston’s handy list of all its balloon invoices from 2024.  

(Don’t ask me what Expense Distribution is. I don’t know. Houston sent these to me at 9 p.m. last night.)

That all adds up $16,000 in balloons_, which is downright penurious in the Texas inflatable landscape.

This season, Texas A&M had balloons everywhere. They had an installation for Opening Week. The Aggies put up a balloon wall the next week. For its Black Out game against Mississippi State, they had a giant marquee with chain link balloons. 

Thanks to balloon vendor Facebook, an internet subniche I’ve spent way too much time on, we know the school had very similar installations throughout last season. 

That year, the team spent $55,000. They also finished 8-4.

We have to ask? Is balloon correlation balloon causation? 

No. 

At Arkansas, the Razorbacks spent $36,000 on balloons, but puttered to a 6-6 record. In Lexington, at least the losses came cheaper. For the 2024 season, Kentucky spent a mere $9,000 on installations.

Sometimes, though, an overwhelming advantage matters.

The University of Texas sent us balloon spending for its entire department. In 2024, that was $170,000.

The Longhorns played Clemson in the College Football Playoff. The Tigers’ balloon budget for their entire athletics department was just $6,668. 

The vibes around Virginia Tech are great right now. You might even say the Hokies are floating on air.

To welcome James Franklin to Blacksburg, they opted for $5,000 worth of balloons.

Can you say that Franklin would have hit the recruiting trail with the same enthusiasm as he did had he not been greeted by balloons?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Prior to hiring the former Penn State coach, there had been fears that Virginia Tech was being lapped by its competition in football. Especially when it came to spending.

Not, though, when it comes to balloons. We got this year and last year for VT. In 2025, $28,000. In 2024, $27,000. 

For balloon.

That’s near the top of the ACC. We mentioned UNC’s big line item, which was the highest we saw in the conference. NC State, though, wasn’t far behind at $43,854.

Clemson’s extremely low total put it at the bottom, below even some Group of Five schools, like Marshall at $12,000 and ECU at $8,000. 

Ahead of the Tigers were Cal, who spent $18,000, Louisville at $8,900, and FSU with $8,350.  

The situation in the Big 12 mirrors reality. Texas Tech rode a wave of NIL money to a superlative season. Was it powered by balloon? Well, last year, the Red Raiders spent almost the same as their SEC brethren, A&M, with $56,369. 

At Colorado, the Buffs' total was less than a third, at $18,000, just above Houston. Cincinnati and Iowa State lagged further behind, both around $12,000. At the bottom of the conference were WVU and Oklahoma State, which spent a little over $5,000 each. 

In the Big Ten, Illinois spent $16,000. If you want to use balloons as a microcosm for all college sports, well, the rest of the department got just $10,000 for its balloons. 

Which is coincidentally the total for Michigan State and Minnesota’s football teams. They both rang up $9,000 tabs last season.  

And while much has been made about UMass’ inability to compete in FBS football, they still spent $4,700 on balloons last year. That's above Western Kentucky and Western Michigan, Utah State and UTEP, Northern Illinois and Bowling Green, and even Hawaii.

Okay, let’s talk motivational slogans. Alongside balloons, you need an LED marquee that lets people know what you stand for. Think actionable phrases replaced with some letters to reflect the current calendar year, like HU2TL5. 

Thanks to all these vendors posting their creations on Meta-owned properties, we can see just what nonsense teams concocted. 

Here’s an Imgur link to some of our favorites.

Like Colorado, which you need to see to fully appreciate. 

CU (CU)
LTURE

But that was before Deion, who replaced their slogans with his own. Now, they all just read PRIME TIME. 

Over in Ohio, the Bearcats went with N2TI BOY5. It took me way longer to suss out what that meant than I care to admit. If you’re still confused, that’s okay. 

At FSU, its tagline for several years has been KEEP CLIMBING. Meanwhile, Texas Tech is all about THE BRAND.

ECU employed the most slogans we encountered, with WELCOME TO THE #252, HARRELL YEAH, WE THE EAST, TO THE 252, and ROWDY IN DOWDY.

NC State rallied around HARD, TOUGH, TOGETHER. On game days, Kentucky paid for signage that read CATURDAY.

They’re all good. None of them can top Arkansas, which made me yelp in joy when I first saw it. 

One must EMBRACE THE HOG,

And while all these have some degree of sameness, we did find some cute things along the way. Like this inflatable goalpost. And this giant logo.

But what we loved the most was balloon Ralphie. 

I don’t care how much that costs. That’s great. 

We here at FOIAball love the nepotism beat. We obtained the letter of recommendation Texas Tech wrote to justify Joey McGuire hiring his son, which included some very dubious statements about Garret’s time with the Carolina Panthers.

We’ll admit when we are wrong. Texas Tech is very good this year. With Garret McGuire as its running backs coach, it finished 27th in the nation in rushing. Last season, they were 61st. 

One of the first posts we ever did (way back in August, congrats to the ones who’ve been here this whole time) was on the nepotism disclosure forms Bill Belichick had to sign to hire his sons. Those revealed that he wasn’t allowed to manage or supervise Steve, who is his defensive coordinator. 

We’re certain he ignored those. But we couldn’t ignore the sport's biggest nepotism case, even if it happened before this publication existed.

In February 2023, Brian Ferentz, Iowa offensive coordinator and son of Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, agreed to a pay cut and was put on the football version of a Performance Improvement Plan. It required him to field a functional offense for the Hawkeyes.

Eight games into that season, averaging 19.5 points per game, Iowa’s AD announced Ferentz wouldn’t be retained at the end of the season. 

Here was her inbox that day. 

Many emails to Goetz breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Just wanted to say thank you and commend you on your efforts. Hopefully, Kirk will select someone that will innovate the offense.”

“Thank you for moving on from Brian!”

“I know not everyone in the organization agreed with his removal (AKA his parents) but I applaud you both.”

But not everyone was on board with the move. Though a few were cranks, one person objected to the firing strictly on due process grounds. 

“I disagree strongly with firing Brian Ferentz … he is fired and didn't even have a chance to reach the goals in that contract … It never said that he could be fired, especially half way through the season. So I'd like to know, how will Iowa handle the egg on their face if he meets the demands in that contract but is now out of a job at year’s end? You should have at least given him to the end of the season to fulfill the contract.”

At the time of the announcement, Ferentz needed to average 33 points in the final five games to meet the goals. 

He averaged 12. 

If you are all the way down here, you’re a true FOIAball head. You’re also probably my mom. And you might be wondering: Where is my FOIAball Food? 

Well, it’s not here today. That’s because we’re planning some changes as we head into the new year. 

The reason is two-fold. One, I really enjoy writing my little musings from the kitchen. But I don’t like how they are buried at the bottom of a big newsletter. 

The other is that I have tons of snippets from my reporting that I want to share. These might not merit whole posts. Or they are updates from stories we’ve already run. Or they are fun tales of America’s patchwork, byzantine records system.

We’re going to weave both those into a new weekly offering called FOIAbites, which will be just for paid subscribers. Maybe it will run on Tuesdays. I don’t know yet.

I do know we’ll make the first one free, so you can get a feel for it. 

We’re still figuring out the cadence, style, etc. Plus, there’s this whole winter holiday coming up. So it won’t go live until the beginning of the new year.

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Bill Belichick via Josh Graham Show, Brian Ferentz via Hawk Fanatic.