Big Sky Brigit is back, just like she said she’d be back.

Today we’re going to get into the nuts and bolts of who’s paying out the most for their buy games in FBS. The answers may surprise you! (they probably won’t surprise you)

Again with the foreshadowing. You can pretty much get an idea of who is going to be where in the rankings, but let’s dive in to who actually is where.

No big shocker that the Big 10 are paying out the most for buy games, followed somewhat closely by the Big 12. I did sort of expect that the SEC would be second given the massive payout LSU is sending to McNeese but on the whole, the SEC payments are let’s just say more reasonable. But we’ll get into how the conferences break down in terms of payments in a minute. Just like we saw last time with the Southland overall, one large payment can bring up the total and the average a conference gets for a buy game but it isn’t necessarily indicative of what the conference as a whole is getting. 

Everyone is hovering pretty much in the same range; nothing feels statistically significant in terms of difference.

We’ve seen the FCS side of who’s playing who, so now let’s look at the FBS side and see if we can divine anything for how conferences choose their opponents and how they pay them.

We’ve got a larger spread of conferences for opponents here (nine for the Big XII versus just five for the B1G) for the same total number of games (13 for both conferences). And while we start at the same highest payout (here with Colorado paying Weber State in the Big Sky $700,000), we have a lower lowest payout (Texas Tech paying Abilene Christian from the UAC only $375,000). 

Also, really, Texas Tech? Only $375,000 for this buy game? I thought y’all had money. 

With those lower payouts, we’re looking at an average of $515,385. Not significantly lower than the Big Ten (only a difference of $44,231) but enough to bring down the average as a whole. 

Also while that Weber State payout ranks fifth on our spreadsheet and there are three Big XII payouts in the top 10, that Texas Tech payout is all the way down in 63rd. 

Our highest payout ranks third on our spreadsheet (Northern Iowa of the MVFC vs. Iowa at $700,000) and our lowest is Maryland playing Hampton from the CAA ($475,000). That Maryland payout ranks 39th on our spreadsheet. We have two payments from the B1G in the top 10 but, significantly, six in the top 20 and nine in the top 25.

What are teams getting as an average payout from the B1G? $541,667. That feels pretty, well, large. Let’s see where other conferences stack up. 

The SEC here ranks pretty squarely between the Big Ten and Big XII in terms of what they’re paying out overall. Their top payment to McNeese is only $50,000 more than the next highest payout (which we’ll cover next in the ACC) so nothing earth-shatteringly significant there.

Interestingly, though, the lowest payment of Vanderbilt to Austin Peay in the UAC ranks 60th on our spreadsheet, just barely above our current lowest payout of Texas Tech to Abilene Christian at 63rd. Not massively different (again, just $25,000) but enough that our average is higher at $544,091. 

We’ve got a similar spread between our highest and lowest payouts (again, only $10,000 separates them) but a much larger gap between first and second payments as a conference. Whereas the SEC’s gap between first and second is six (McNeese-LSU at 1, Tennessee State-Georgia at 7), we have a much wider gap from Florida A&M-Miami (second) to New Hampshire-Syracuse (17th), a total of 15 places. That gap between first and second payments also brings down the average as a whole to $492,727. 

Those gaps and lower payouts are also why we see that big gap between the SEC and the ACC. 

On the whole, we’re going to start seeing lower payouts as a whole from conferences along with lower highest and lower lowest payouts. But you probably guessed that already.

The MAC is our highest-paying conference of the lower-paying conferences (real “large boulder the size of a small boulder”-ass sentence there). They first show up on our spreadsheet ranking 54th with their top payment and that $250,000 payment to Sacred Heart puts them in 97th, just one from the bottom in the entire spreadsheet.

No surprise, then, that their average payout comes out to $332,083.

We’re not going to encounter much in the way of surprises going forward, but do stick with me until the end. I mean, you have already made it this far, might as well finish the blog post, right?

One thing that is interesting about them in our spreadsheet is that they’re all grouped pretty close together. They first show up just below Vanderbilt at 61st and the range between top and bottom payments is only 37 (61-98). Their lowest payment is the lowest on our spreadsheet ($225,000 to North Carolina A&T), but it’s not so much less than that of the lowest MAC payment.

Their average, as you might gather, is essentially the same as that of the MAC: $320,455, a difference of only $11,628.

With fewer teams now in the conference (something we’ll get into when we also dive into the Pac-12), we’ve got fewer games as a whole.

The MWC shows up first at 40th on our spreadsheet and last at 76th with a similar spread to the Sun Belt (36 for the Mountain West, 37 for the Sun Belt). We are, however, working with a higher average overall because of that top higher payout: $403,571.

There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering here, especially when compared with the previous two conferences. We’re looking at a similar range of payments overall and a similar average of $366,250 for eight total games. 

I promise it’ll get interesting again when we get to the Pac-12, stick with me. 

Again, similar to our previous conferences. Significant for us here is that lowest payment of $250,000 from FIU to LIU is our third-lowest overall. Our range here is also pretty similar to the previous conferences (57th to 96th places, or 39 places between top and bottom) and gives us an average payout of $333,571.

OK, we made it, we’re to the Pac-12. Let’s see how this year is shaping up in terms of payouts. 

Before we begin, let’s just caveat everything because look at this chart: 

Four games. Three are against Big Sky schools. That’s it. At least in terms of what we have for payouts. Wazzu is playing Duquesne in the NEC but we don’t have numbers for that at present. 

Which means our data basically is what it is. Your average payout here, because that first one is so high and we have such a small range, they’re up with the B1G and Big XII at $512,500. 

Speaking of range, these games come in at 5th, 37th, 39th, and 51st in our spreadsheet meaning we have a much larger range of 46 places between one and four.

We can make guesses and inferences. We can assume that the Pac-12 as a whole will be making similar payouts to schools in the ACC and MAC. They have enough money to hang with the top dogs in the top 10 by paying Montana $675,000. Their other games land about in the middle with the middle schools in the ACC, Big Ten, and SEC, and the higher-ranking schools in the Mountain West, American, and CUSA.

Now the real question with the Pac-12 is: how different are the 2026 numbers with increased membership versus 2025’s when we just had the Pac-2? And what of the other conferences? Have there been any significant changes with more schools moving up between FCS and FBS?

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