Penn State Athletics just dropped its annual financial report this week, and football alone took away nearly 72% of the university’s total NIL pool in 2024-25. You can only imagine the investment before the 2025 season. Despite that, James Franklin’s team failed to live up to the preseason hype.

As the 2024-25 financial figures, the program invested $13.3 million out of its $18.3 million NIL revenue on football. In comparison, Men’s basketball received just over $3 million, followed by Wrestling at $1.4 million. Baseball and women’s basketball received $300,000 and $100,000, respectively.

We don’t have similar figures for the 2025-26 period, but given how the Lions finished 13-3 and made it to the semifinals of the 12-team playoffs, the investments would have increased. That was reflected in how the star players turned down the draft to return in 2025 to get a national championship at Happy Valley.

With key pieces including defensive pillars Dani Dennis-Sutton and Zane Durant, RBs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton, and QB Drew Allar, Penn State brought back 63% of its total production. The team looked pretty balanced and ready for a national championship run. But as the season started, everything fell apart.

The Lions started 3-3, and back-to-back losses to unranked UCLA and Northwestern exposed issues that no amount of NIL money could fix.

“It’s 100 percent on me,” Franklin said later. “We got to get it fixed—and I will get it fixed.” The fallout was quick. James Franklin was fired after 12 seasons and a 104-45 record. At the time, it was rumored that the boosters were unhappy with the head coach’s performance against top 10 teams. He was let go despite his heavy buyout.

“I felt after sitting down Saturday and looking at everything, at where we were in terms of the best interest of the athletes and where the program was going that we had to make the hard decision,” AD Pat Kraft said. “Looking at where the program was, where it is, and where we want to be, I felt that there was no other course. I felt it was time.”

Terry Smith took on the interim role and managed to steady the ship to finish the season with bowl eligibility. Penn State’s coaching search went for longer than what its fans had in mind, but the program got its guy in Matt Campbell from Iowa State. PSU is now betting on Campbell to turn a talented roster into a winner on the field.

PSU’s lost season came with a $535 million price tag

If the on-field collapse wasn’t painful enough, the financial hit made it worse. Penn State overtook Florida State and tripled its own debt, reporting nearly $535 million in athletics-related debt for fiscal year 2025.

Most of it concerns the massive Beaver Stadium renovation project, which is far from complete. It will push the budget close to $700 million. The bigger vision makes sense. But right now, those premium upgrades and modern infrastructure don’t really feel like a reward or celebration.

“In the 2026 season, what our fans can expect to see is, you’ll actually begin to see the structure of the new West side or the visiting sideline,” PSU deputy athletics director for internal operations Vinnie James said. “You’ll see that structure come to form. Still won’t be completed, obviously, everything that’s behind it, but that structure will start to really be showing itself, and we can see the volume and the magnitude of what that west side will ultimately be. And then a lot of the work that’s going on is infrastructure work behind it.”

The scary part is that the numbers on paper might not be the final figures yet. The debt could increase over the next two years, according to former trustee Berry J. Fenchack, who noted that a large portion of the stadium-related funding had not yet been recorded.

“The stadium needs work, and we want to be supportive of athletics,” Fenchak said back in May 2024. “But if we take actions that are unwise, actions that lead to a debt load draining the lifeblood of athletics, to service that as opposed to being able to feed the growth of all of our sports, that’s not being supportive of athletics. That’s hindering athletics. Just spending money isn’t supportive, especially when it’s debt.”

And that’s where the pressure builds. Beaver Stadium was packed with fans for most games, but money didn’t follow the noise. Ticket revenue fell from $55.6 million to $44.3 million last season. Campbell now steps in to steady the whole operation. PSU will have to prove that the spending and all those promises weren’t just for nothing.