Washington Football Valued Just North of $1 Billion by The Athletic

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Over the past few years, The Athletic has used a formula to place a financial valuation of each of the top 30 college football programs in the country.

Going into the 2026 season, the Washington Huskies came in tied with fellow Big Ten rival Nebraska at $1.06 billion, which put both 15th in the country and sixth in the conference behind Ohio State (No. 2/$2.3 billion), Michigan (No. 4/$2 billion), USC (T-7th/$1.6 billion), Penn State (No. 10/$1.4 billion) and Oregon (No. 13/$1.13 billion).

Last season, the Huskies received a $970 million valuation by the publication, which stated, "Our broad approach did not change: We used actual transactions in professional leagues to compare a team’s sale price with its average revenue. We treated the SEC and Big Ten like NFL and NBA franchises (which have higher ratios of revenue to sales price). The ACC and Big 12 were more like MLB and NHL clubs (which have lower ratios). In addition to using financial numbers reported by the schools themselves, we also considered factors such as brand power, demographics, and conference realignment to settle on our valuation. The full methodology is at the bottom."

That methodology also factors in revenue figures from a three-year average that schools make available, and sets the SEC and Big Ten multiplier range at 5-13x a program’s revenue. In contrast, the Big 12 and ACC have lower floors, less visibility and more uncertainty, so their multipliers were in the 4-10x range.

The long and short is the numbers indicate a good return on head football coach Jedd Fisch and what athletic director Pat Chun has built foundationally from a financial and resources perspective that allows the program to continue on an upward trajectory.

The $30-plus million increase in valuation also serves as one of the reasons why UW ultimately joined former Pac-12 schools Oregon, UCLA and USC in making the move to the Big Ten Conference instead of remaining part of the league.

It also speaks volumes to where the programs stand compared to other national college football powers, which has UW ahead of Texas A&M ($1.05 billion), Miami ($950 million), Indiana ($696 million) and Clemson ($674 million).

This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington Football Valued Just North of $1 Billion by The Athletic

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