How much does it cost to lose a national championship?

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On Monday night, the Indiana Hoosiers became college football’s unlikeliest national champion ever.  

Prior to 2024, calling them a program mired in mediocrity would have been a compliment. They were worse than bad, the losingest team in college football. 

The Hoosiers' swift, meteoric turnaround was buoyed by … well, money. A national title doesn't come cheap. The school's football budget swelled by $30 million in the past five years. This season, Indiana extended head coach Curt Cignetti to the tune of $93 million. NIL numbers are murky at best, but estimates put the program’s spending somewhere between $14 and $20 million. 

And playing in three postseason games isn’t free. To make its run to the top of the sport, the school probably spent at least $8 million. 

The Miami Hurricanes, whom the Hoosiers outlasted for a title, ironically, might have spent even more. 

Indiana staffers probably still haven’t closed out their tabs in Miami, so we don’t actually know how much its month marauding through blue blood programs cost. And Miami is a private school, so we’ll never find out. 

But we can look at other runs in past years that give us a pretty good idea. 

Indiana, by virtue of its undefeated season, earned a first-round bye. Miami did not, heading to College Station to play Texas A&M. 

Last year, for its opening round road game, Clemson embarked on a similar journey. It spent $1.8 million to play Texas. 

The Hurricanes then went back to Texas for the Cotton Bowl, where the Longhorns also played in 2024. Texas didn’t have nearly the same distance to travel, but the school still spent $1.9 million for its couple days in Dallas.  

The Hoosiers started their postseason run in the quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl, which last season hosted Oregon. The Ducks lost in Pasadena to eventual national champion Ohio State, an appearance that cost $1.3 million. 

Texas made it to the semifinals at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, the same venue where Indiana played this year. Including a pilgrimage to the original Chick-fil-A location, the school dropped $2.4 million. Miami, for its semi, had to travel to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl.

Which brings us to the national championship game. Data from the past two winners, well, we don’t have. The two most recent winners, Michigan and Ohio State, are a bit slow when it comes to providing records.

But we do have numbers from the 2023-24 runner-up, the University of Washington, for its expenses.

The school spent somewhere between $4 and $5 million in Houston that week. Which means Miami, even though it didn’t have to travel for its last game, could have racked up close to $10 million in credit card charges and invoices during this year’s postseason.

And if the Huskies data is instructive, they’ll still be paying off the costs come June.  

These numbers, we should state, are estimates. 

In the 2023 season’s postseason (which happened in 2024), the Huskies played their semifinal at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, defeating Texas. Just a week later (if only the season were still that compact), they lost to Michigan in the National Championship game at NRG Stadium. 

The Huskies provided FOIAball with a spreadsheet of expenses for those two games, which totaled $6.1 million. 

We went through the over 2,000 entries and eliminated any explicitly tied to the Sugar Bowl. Then we removed any expenses the school incurred before Jan. 2, 2024, when they left Louisiana. 

It’s not perfect. Some entries, like $300,000 in marketing costs, are pegged to both, but the remaining total easily ran over $4 million. 

Unlike bowl games, though, where schools can take a financial hit, both Miami and Indiana assuredly made money off their journeys. 

According to Front Office Sports, the ACC announced the Hurricanes will take home the entirety of their playoff cut, which likely will be around $14 million.

The Big Ten splits the revenue Indiana is bringing in with every team in the conference, but covers travel expenses for the school. 

Like flights, which more than double in cost from a semifinal to a title game. To attend the Sugar Bowl, Washington chartered two Boeing 737s and a smaller, 30-person jet for $750,000. 

Going to Houston, they swapped the tiny plane for a Boeing 777, which added almost a million dollars more to the total.

Lodging wasn’t included in the ledger, but there were about $1.2 million in lump sum, out-of-state per diem expenses, which tracks with what schools can spend on hotels at these games. (We asked Washington to clarify all these numbers, but did not hear back.) 

With all those people coming in, there’s bound to be kids. The Huskies helped out, paying over $21,000 in childcare for the trip. That seems to beat what other schools did at their bowl games, which often consisted of purchasing a Disney Plus subscription for hospitality rooms where children were stashed away. 

Which is good, because there’s serious partying to do. The national title game isn’t just some other bowl. It’s an event. Whereas Iowa State spent $5,000 on a fan mixer before last year’s Pop-Tarts Bowl, the Huskies dropped at least $300,000 on brunches and alumni parties, which included rentals for event spaces, caterers, bartending services, lighting, and flowers. 

The two events FOIABall could find online were both put on by the Tyee Club, the athletic department's fundraising arm. There was “Cheers to the Championship,” a mixer that featured a toast with the school's president. The day of the game, they hosted the "Big W Club's Breakfast of Champions,” which honored players from the 2016 team, the last time the school made the College Football Playoff.

Big-time donors were rewarded with little treats while in Houston. The school handed out gift bags with prosecco and an unidentified “Texas snack,” packed in gold tissue and purple crinkle paper. Yep, crinkle paper isn’t free ($79.29), and all told, those cost nearly $6,000 to put together. 

But the biggest donors get the best benefits. Mark Cuban, Indiana’s most prominent financial backer, was in attendance in Miami this week. We don’t know if the Hoosiers hosted a private meal for him, but the Huskies sure did for theirs. The school paid $4,400 for a dinner with one of its most prominent boosters, a Nordstrom heiress who has donated at least $10 million.

We didn’t address this in our big bowl games story because there was just way too much to cover, but schools typically pay for their band to come to these games. As much as we support that—and are happy those students get a free trip—that doesn’t come cheap, either.

Feeding clarinet and flute players ran $39,000 in individual meal per diems. Another $20,000 was listed for airport transfers (which we assume were buses to the hotel). And to keep them hydrated during the game, the school spent $2,600 on bottled water.

Unfortunately, a lot of the costs weren’t delineated in the spreadsheet FOIAball obtained. A charge of $31,000 for “National Game hospitality” likely refers to the hotel hospitality suite the Huskies would have partied at had they won. 

Other miscellaneous expenses included: $7,000 in catering for former coach Kalen DeBoer and former AD Troy Dannen's suite, $3,900 in Pom Poms for the game, and $2,000 to Rice University to do the team’s laundry.

That’s also something Miami, playing at home, probably saved on as well. Call that a small victory for the Hurricanes.

We’ll see you tomorrow with an all-new FOIAbites. That column is for paid subscribers only, so if you haven’t upgraded yet, you should now.

Mario Cristobal via YouTube