Why USC athletics received most ‘direct institutional support’ of any SEC school
A caveat before we begin discussing the finances of South Carolina athletics: This stuff is not just complicated, but sensitive.
Athletic departments around the country — especially in the revenue-sharing era — get queasy talking about their funding sources and how those revenue streams correlate to the money being doled out to student-athletes.
The numbers themselves are ripe for misinterpretation and confusion. Not always helping: The answers given to explain those numbers are often vague, leading to responses that both make sense and don’t.
This became quite pertinent in February, as a bill to shield revenue-sharing payments from open records law that seemed to be fast-tracking its way through the South Carolina legislature hit a snag in the state Senate.
The bill seeks to keep secret the amount of money South Carolina universities pay student-athletes and each sport program, which didn’t seem to worry legislators until they read a story outlining how Clemson provided its athletic department with over $20 million in “direct institutional support” last year.
That led to a hearing in the statehouse, where Senators asked South Carolina AD Jeremiah Donati, Clemson AD Graham Neff and Coastal Carolina AD Chance Miller to explain where that “direct institutional support” was coming from.
The senators feared universities were funneling public dollars into their athletics programs, which could then go toward revenue-sharing agreements. Each athletic director, in their own way, explained the guardrails their departments had in place to ensure taxpayer money wasn’t funding rev-sharing payments.
While valid, those explanations didn’t satisfy a number of senators, who argued the money is fungible and felt schools were simply taking money from Buckets A, B and C, putting it into Bucket D and claiming all the money came from Bucket D.
“It is a reshuffling of money, in a way,” said Sen. Michael Johnson, R-York. “You are losing X amount of revenue that’s going out here to NIL (name, image and likeness). You have less money here. So you have to have the institution give you more in order to operate.”
That is, perhaps, the simplest way to explain why portions of South Carolina athletics’ finances have seen monumental change over the past few years.
What is direct institutional support?
OK, so let’s take a step back. First off, the term “direct institutional support” exists because it is a line item in the NCAA’s Agreed-Upon Procedures report, or AUP report — a standardized financial audit that every athletic department submits annually to the NCAA.
The line item “direct institutional support” includes funds allocated to the athletic department by the university, which is necessary to know before digesting that in Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25), which ran from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, South Carolina athletics reported a profit of over $1.3 million — its highest yield in years.
But that surplus was only possible because the University of South Carolina provided its athletic department with over $42 million in “direct institutional support” — a number USC officials say needs more context.
A South Carolina spokesman said the true operational support loaned to the athletics department was only $29.3 million, noting the AUP report also took into account scholarship reimbursement ($4.9 million), tuition abatement ($5.5 million) and the building of a broadcast and video production control room ($2.9 million).
While the accounting entries in the AUP report can vary from school to school, it’s unclear if other athletic departments included scholarship reimbursement and tuition abatement in their “direct institutional support” bucket.
It should also be noted that this exchange of funds is not a one-way street. South Carolina athletics — like almost every Division I athletic department — provides direct compensation back to its university. In FY25, that included funds for tuition ($5.8 million), meal plans ($1.4 million), summer school ($1.8 million), housing ($3.2 million) and academic/band/other university support ($5 million).
Still, going by the AUP reports submitted to the NCAA, South Carolina is an outlier.
The State reviewed the AUP reports for 15 of 16 SEC schools (Vanderbilt is a private institution and does not have to disclose its report) and Clemson. Here’s how much each contributed in “direct institutional support” in fiscal year 25:
- 1. South Carolina: $42.6 million
- 2. Alabama: $26.7 million
- 3. Missouri: $25.7 million
- 4. Clemson: $20.2 million
- 5. Tennessee: $7.1 million
- 6. Ole Miss: $5.7 million
- 7. Florida: $5 million
- 8. Texas A&M: $5 million
- 9. Auburn: $4.4 million
- 10. Kentucky: $200,000
- T-11. Arkansas: $0
- T-11. Georgia: $0
- T-11. LSU: $0
- T-11. Mississippi State: $0
- T-11. Oklahoma: $0
- T-11. Texas: $0
Even if you go by South Carolina’s internal number ($29.3 million), the Gamecocks would still be providing more institutional support to its athletic department than the SEC’s 14 other public schools and rival Clemson.
While there isn’t a clear correlation between overall budgets and direct institutional support — Texas spent almost $200 million more than Mississippi State in FY25 and both programs didn’t earn any institutional support — it’s possible that the athletic departments that took no money from their universities and had ample reserves to withstand the increased cost of doing business.
To stay competitive, athletic departments, especially in the SEC, were forced to spend money on NIL and revenue-sharing. The schools that had plenty of cash in their reserves were able to spend millions of extra dollars without institutional support. South Carolina was not one of those.
A big reason why: As the Gamecock Club — the USC athletic department’s fundraising arm — privatized in 2024, it was understood that the athletic department would need extra direct institutional support in FY24 and FY25 as the Gamecock Club made its transition.
What is NIL’s role in the need for institutional support?
Over the past five years, the cost of running a college department has shot through the roof. That is abundantly clear in a post-House settlement world, where schools are able to provide their student-athletes with up to $20.5 million annually.
But even before athletic departments were sharing revenue, there was still the matter of NIL payments, which were legalized in 2021. While schools weren’t directly giving money to student-athletes, fans and boosters were being encouraged to push their donations to support NIL — often to NIL collectives, which pooled money and distributed it to student-athletes.
Money that was typically going directly to the athletic department was now flowing toward the student-athletes. Naturally, that forced athletic departments to collect money from different or new buckets, such as direct institutional support.
When pressed by a senator during the February’s hearing, Donati agreed that this “reshuffling of money” was a direct result of NIL.
“I think it is one of the biggest factors, for sure,” said Donati, who was previously AD at TCU and succeeded Ray Tanner at South Carolina in 2024.
That hypothesis becomes quite clear when looking at how South Carolina has increased its direct institutional support to its athletic department since the introduction of NIL. According to past AUP reports, the amount of institutional support toward USC athletics has increased by more than 660% in four fiscal years:
- Fiscal year 2022: $5.6 million in direct institutional support.
- Fiscal year 2023: $9.5 million
- Fiscal year 2024: $26.6 million
- Fiscal year 2025: $42.6 million
South Carolina athletics declined to make Donati available for an interview for this story.
The State asked USC how long the university planned to provide direct institutional support to its athletic department.
South Carolina provided the following statement: “Alongside both SEC and our university leadership, USC is working to bring greater stability and clarity to how university athletics operates in the future while pursuing novel ways to generate revenue and increase efficiency.
“In the meantime,” the statement continued, “we cannot afford to lose the significant and positive impact of Athletics to the state and region.”
The athletic department should have no trouble generating more revenue in the future, especially after Williams-Brice Stadium is fully renovated, an upgrade that will allow South Carolina to earn millions of additional dollars through new suite and premium space tickets. More new-age revenue streams — like possibly finding a jersey patch sponsorship — could also be in the works.
When asked during the Senate hearing how much direct institutional support he anticipated the university would provide the athletic department in FY26, Donati said he believes it “will be less than this year.” In a follow-up statement to The State, South Carolina said it budgeted $27.2 million in “operational support” for FY26, down from the $29.3 million it provided in FY25.
“We anticipated a rise this year,” Donati said. “But we believe it will be less next year. It will be difficult to forecast, but we feel very strong about that.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 7:35 AM.
