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It’s been a big year for the Big Ten.
When Indiana won the College Football Playoff in January, the conference celebrated its third consecutive national champion on the gridiron. Then, over the past week, Big Ten teams emerged as the last ones standing in this year’s March Madness, with Michigan winning the NCAA men’s tournament and UCLA claiming the crown in the NCAA women’s tournament.
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The Big Ten is the first conference since the SEC in 2007 to sweep national titles in those three sports. That year, Florida football and men’s basketball hung banners while Tennessee women’s basketball added to its growing trophy case under Pat Summitt.
But there’s more that comes with the Big Ten’s latest display of dominance than just pride. The conference’s success in the 2026 NCAA tournaments has earned it some big bucks. In fact, according to a Thursday report from The Associated Press’ Eric Olson, the Big Ten made at least $69.4 million in incentives during this year’s March Madness, including $63 million on the men’s side, the most among the conferences.
Nine Big Ten men’s teams made this year’s tournament, with Michigan and Illinois both advancing to the Final Four. And 12 Big Ten women’s teams got into the field of 68, as UCLA headlined that bunch.
Since 1991, in the men’s tourney that is, the NCAA has pulled from the money it makes from tournament broadcast deals to reward conferences for team appearances and performances, according to the AP, which reported that a similar, albeit less lucrative system was put in place for the women’s tourney last year.
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The NCAA pays the conferences directly. From there, the conferences follow their respective policies and dish out the money to the programs that earned incentives. Conferences won’t start to receive these payments for the 2026 tournaments until April 2027, per the AP.
The payments are reportedly paid out over six years on the men’s side and over three years on the women’s side.
How much money each participating tournament team reels in depends on how many “units” they rack up. The AP broke down the payout structure as such:
A unit is acquired for every tournament game a team plays in. An extra unit is granted to the championship team. So since Michigan men’s basketball played in six games, plus won the national title, it will end up with seven units. The same goes for UCLA women’s basketball.
While the value of a unit reportedly increases each year, units carry different weight in the men’s and women’s tournaments.
The AP, citing a NCAA spokeswoman, reported that estimated value of a unit for this year’s men’s tournament will be around $350,000 per year. In other words, over the six-year payment cycle, one unit will amount to at least $2.1 million. Quick math tells you that Michigan’s run should earn them $14.7 million or more in incentives.
The estimated value for a unit in this year’s women’s tournament, on the other hand, is $75,000. That value will reportedly dip next year to $63,000 while the NCAA fully funds the system. In its calculations, the AP used that $63,000 number as an estimated value for a unit in 2028. Following that projection, one unit would amount to at least $201,000 over the three-year payment cycle. Along the way, UCLA women’s basketball would rake in north of $1.4 million in incentives for its march to the top of the sport.
The Wolverines and Bruins titles were monumental.
UCLA women’s basketball had never won an NCAA championship, let alone played in an NCAA championship game. The program accounted for the Big Ten’s first women’s basketball national title since Purdue’s in 1999.
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Meanwhile, Michigan men’s basketball ended its streak of runner-up finishes with its first national championship since 1989. The Wolverines getting over the hump also meant that the Big Ten ended its two-plus-decade national title drought on the men’s side, too. That dry spell began after Tom Izzo’s Michigan State went the distance in 2000.
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