Quote:The SEC’s per-school payout leveled off at approximately $41 million apiece this year after years of considerable increases that accompanied the founding of the SEC Network. Last year, SEC schools each received approximately $40.4 million, compared with a $32.7 million payout in 2016. Still, the league’s distribution average has nearly doubled from the $20.9 million each school raked in at the spring meetings in 2014.

The SEC schools’ current distributions would beat conference rivals by at least a couple of million apiece. Jon Wilner of The San Jose Mercury News reported last month that Big Ten schools project a distribution of approximately $38.5 million for Fiscal Year 2017, with revenue set to skyrocket over the next year.

Thanks to the Big Ten’s TV deals with ABC/ESPN and Fox that launched last year, Michigan projected that it will receive a Big Ten distribution of at least $51 million in Fiscal Year 2018.

Nebraska projects a similar figure, allowing the Cornhuskers to enjoy the revenue bounce as much as anybody. Nebraska gets approximately $26 million for 2016-17, but that figure will nearly double in Fiscal Year 2018 when it receives its first full share as a Big Ten member after joining the league in 2011.

The Omaha World-Herald reported last year on the spending initiatives Nebraska has instituted as a result of this financial windfall, ranging from facilities upgrades, a scholarship program for non-athletes and additional perks for athletes like “allowances for personal expenses, laptop computers, beefed-up food offerings and postgraduate fellowships.”

According to Wilner’s projections for 2018, distributions of more than $50 million would give the Big Ten a sizable revenue advantage over schools from the SEC (approximately $43 million each), the Big 12 ($36.5 million), the Pac-12 ($32 million) and the ACC ($28 million).

Multiple factors like postseason results and supplemental rights deals can cause variances – for instance, the Big 12’s distribution totals do not include third-tier broadcast rights, which member schools negotiate individually – but these numbers should come fairly close to the eventual distributions.

And that could mean a further widening of the financial gap that exists between the richest schools and conferences and the rest of the field. That was largely an issue between Power Five conferences and everybody else in the cable television era, but now a rift has started to develop between prominent leagues as well.