Gophers receive record $25 million from Big Ten

The Minnesota Golden Gophers will be receiving $24.6 million this year for their part in the Big Ten Conference shared revenue.

Revenue sharing is at an all-time high, as the Big Ten Network alone generated profits of $79.2 million in 2011. That money is combined with the profits generated by the NCAA and Big Ten, which is then evenly distributed to each team in the conference.

With the rising popularity of the Big Ten Network, television deals helped each school in the conference receive an all-time high in revenue sharing, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The payouts include $7.2 million per school from the Big Ten Network as well as $10 million per school from the conference's contracts ESPN/ABC and CBS.

The Big Ten Network has played a crucial part in the increased revenue of the conference since its creation in 2007.

With the Gophers budget ringing in around $79 million, the nearly $25 million received from the conference is much more important to Minnesota than a school like Ohio State, which has an annual budget of $131 million, according to the Department of Higher Education.