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The money behind the Madness: Wide disparities in funding for NCAA athletic departments

25 March 2021
 Dan Ackermann
Data: Department of Education; Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios

The beauty of March Madness is in the diversity of its participants, evidenced by the remaining schools' total athletic department expenses.

By the numbers: The Sweet 16 runs the gamut from behemoths like FSU ($198.4 million in fiscal year 2019) to this year's Cinderella, Oral Roberts ($12.1 million).

  • There's an even split of schools that spend over and under $100 million on athletics.
  • Four teams spend at least 25% of their athletics budget on men's basketball: Gonzaga (35%), Creighton (32%), Villanova (28%) and Loyola Chicago (25%).

Wild stat: Five schools (FSU, UCLA, Alabama, Villanova and Syracuse) spend more on men's hoops than Oral Roberts spends on its entire athletic department.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.