A story has been making the rounds this week that, at a surface level, misleads readers when it comes to IU basketball’s annual operating expenses.
On Sunday, Matt Brown, who publishes a website called “Extra Points,” teased on X an upcoming article with this tidbit about Indiana’s men’s basketball program:
working on some MBB #charts for tomorrow and it is very funny how much Indiana spent last year on MBB for such lousy results, especially given what would happen with IUFB a few months later
worst cost per win in the country last year outside of The Citadel (who had 1 win) pic.twitter.com/300kzG8VoE
— Matt Brown (@MattBrownEP) March 15, 2026
It seems fair to say, Brown certainly wanted to draw your attention to Indiana.
And if it crossed your radar, that post certainly left you wondering: What has our beloved program, which has missed 8 of 10 NCAA Tournaments, goofed now?
On Monday, Brown followed up on X with this text and the table below:
“good morning I FOIA’d the operational budget for more than 200 MBB programs
Here’s who spends the most, the least, who gets the most (wins) out of the least money, and what you need to spend to make it deep in March:
(full data in link below)”
In today’s short on attention span society, most focused on the Indiana (as prompted by Brown the day before) and the gap to No. 2 on the list.
And Brown’s Monday post on X went viral.
It was reposted 505 times and viewed 2.2M times (as of Wednesday morning). The headline, from the limited data presented in the post, was Indiana outspent every other men’s college basketball program by $9 million. And that headline was repeated on MSN, Newsweek, and countless social media posts, and comment sections here, there and everywhere. It was mentioned multiple times by commenters here at The Daily Hoosier, so we felt compelled to provide the proper context and clarity.
There was a link on X to an article by Brown on Extra Points that provides more context, but the link was in a comment by Brown that was only viewed 330K times. And even the article itself lacked full context.
Here’s what you really need to know:
- The $32.04 million of Indiana expenditures reported by Brown are accurate. Brown’s data presents July 1 2024-June 30 2025 operational budgets. Think: salaries, travel, scholarships, etc. That bucket DOES NOT include revenue sharing paid by the schools to players, or name image and likeness paid by outside parties to players.
- In the fiscal year at issue, Indiana paid Mike Woodson a lump sum buyout of $6.5 million according to the Bloomington Herald-Times. In the same year, Indiana also paid around $1.2 million in buyouts for assistant coaches, based on the school’s severance reporting.
- Also in the same year, Indiana paid West Virginia University a payment of around $6.15 million to buy out Darian DeVries contract. This detail was not included in Brown’s full report.
- Adding up unique, one-time payments to Woodson, his assistants, and West Virginia, Indiana had around $13.85 million of expenses that are not part of its normal operating budget for men’s basketball.
- If you subtract $13.85M from the reported $32.04M, you get $18.19M. This figure is in-line with Indiana’s average men’s basketball operating budget for the three prior years. And it is a more accurate representation of IU basketball’s annual operating budget when compared to other schools. $18.19M would rank Indiana 13th in the nation — a figure that would have been in line with expectations and attracted exactly zero attention.
There’s a separate point to be made, that Indiana is not getting a lot of bang for its buck when it comes to men’s basketball. Even that is an incomplete data point, as Indiana is also routinely among the men’s college basketball programs that generate the most operating revenue. The program is profitable, and highly profitable in most years.
But the viral response to Brown’s reporting makes it abundantly clear — he should have provided proper context in his original post on X. “Indiana had approximately $13.85M of one-time expenses” would have done the trick. He owed that to his followers and everyone else on social media after teasing IU as an outlier, and then presenting his table on X without the most pertinent facts.
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