To Find Out What Michigan Football Pays, Ask Ohio

Michigan Athletics announced two future football games on Friday, August 28. One of them you can price. The other you cannot, and the reason has almost nothing to do with Michigan.

The one with a price is Bowling Green, at Michigan Stadium on Saturday, August 25, 2029. Michigan will pay the Falcons a $1.6 million guarantee to make the trip. That figure has been public since August 19, nine days before Michigan mentioned the game, and it did not come out of Ann Arbor. Kevin Kelley of FBSchedules published it off a copy of the contract, and his story says exactly where the copy came from: "obtained from Bowling Green State University via a state open records request."

Bowling Green is a public university in Ohio. Somebody asked Ohio. Ohio answered.

There is no way to write that sentence in Ann Arbor without it stinging slightly, and it is still the sentence.

The control case arrived the same afternoon#

The other game announced Friday is Charlotte, at Michigan Stadium on Saturday, September 9, 2028, the first meeting between the two schools. Kelley wrote that one too, the same day, and it carries no dollar figure anywhere. His sourcing line is different: "according to an official announcement Friday."

Same outlet. Same writer. Same week, same stadium, same category of game. The story sourced to a contract has a number in it. The story sourced to Michigan does not.

Is $1.6 million a sensible number? The Bowling Green story prices the same Falcons' 2029 trip to Tennessee at $1.3 million, so Michigan is paying about 23 percent more than Tennessee is for the identical opponent in the identical season. Michigan Stadium seats 107,601, which puts the guarantee at a shade under fifteen dollars a seat, once, for a home date three years out (Michigan sells those seats whoever is standing across from it, so a guarantee is the cost of having an opponent rather than the cost of having a crowd). Nothing about it is an outlier, which is worth saying plainly, because the point here is not that the price is shocking. The point is that you can see it at all.

The same door, in a different state, for much more money#

The larger document came through a courthouse. On August 3 the University of Utah sued Freddie Whittingham, who coaches Michigan's tight ends and who is the head coach's brother, in Utah's Third District Court (he had the same job at Utah, which is most of what Utah is complaining about). It became public around August 20 and it is the most detailed public account of Michigan's coaching change that exists.

From the filing, reported the same day by ESPN, by Jason Batacao at The Salt Lake Tribune and by the Deseret News: Whittingham's Utah base salary was $525,000, his contract ran through January 2027, Utah seeks more than $300,000 on the breach-of-contract count and at least $1 million in general and special damages on a fiduciary-duty count.

The Tribune and Deseret both carry the liquidated-damages clause itself, which is 75 percent of compensation for each full year left on the term, prorated for a partial year. Run it. Seventy-five percent of $525,000 is $393,750, and one more month at the same rate is another $32,812.50, so the formula on a thirteen-month remainder produces roughly $426,563. That is arithmetic on a published formula and a published salary, not a number anybody has printed from the complaint, and it lands above the "more than $300,000" the Tribune reports, which is how a pleading floor usually behaves.

The filing does something else that no Michigan document does. It establishes that six Michigan assistants left Utah with liquidated-damages provisions in their contracts, that Whittingham is the one Utah says has not paid, and it names the other five, one of whom is Michigan's offensive coordinator. It also lists five current Michigan players who transferred in from Utah.

Utah's complaint alleges that Whittingham recruited Utah players and recruits to Michigan while still on Utah's payroll. That allegation is pleaded "on information and belief," which is the formula a party uses when it is not claiming first-hand knowledge of what it is alleging. Nothing has been found. Nothing has been tried. Utah declined to comment to the Tribune citing pending litigation, ESPN reported that officials at both schools did not immediately respond, and no NCAA proceeding has been reported by anybody. A lawsuit is a disclosure event and not a verdict, and it is the disclosure half that put the salary and the formula in front of anybody who wanted them.

What Michigan published about the same money#

One clause.

The athletic department presented a balanced budget for fiscal year 2027 to the Board of Regents on June 25, built on $297.3 million of operating revenues and expenses. Dave Ablauf's account of it in The University Record gives the coaching change this: "Salaries, wages and benefits are expected to increase by $2.53 million due in part to football staff transition costs and annual salary increases."

Football staff transition costs. Four words, sharing a line with everybody's raises (the sentence's other stated cause is "annual salary increases"), and the line is not broken out. The assistant buyouts, the search, the new head coach's arrival and the relocation of most of a staff from Salt Lake City all sit inside a figure that also contains the pay rise for a swimming coach. Michigan's own budget is the least informative public account of Michigan's coaching change anywhere.

That is not a secrecy story, and it would be a cheap one if it were. Michigan is a public university in a state with its own Freedom of Information Act, and nobody in any of this filed a request in Ann Arbor. What a department has is the ordinary advantage of the party that chooses when to speak, and that advantage lasts precisely as long as the other side of the transaction stays quiet.

Every deal has another side. Bowling Green has a records office. Utah has a courthouse. Learfield, which sells Michigan's stadium sponsorships, is a private company with no obligation to publish anything, which is why the price of putting Coca-Cola on the field pads is still not a public number ten days after Michigan announced the program.

Michigan will host Bowling Green on the last Saturday in August 2029, and Michigan has now told you that much. What it costs is on file in Ohio, where it has been since the nineteenth.

Sources: Kevin Kelley, FBSchedules.com, "Michigan adds Bowling Green to 2029 football schedule," August 19, 2026, for the date, the $1.6 million guarantee, the open-records provenance, the meeting history, Michigan's 2029 non-conference picture and Bowling Green's $1.3 million guarantee at Tennessee. Kevin Kelley, FBSchedules.com, "Michigan adds Charlotte to 2028 football schedule," August 28, 2026, for the September 9, 2028 date, the first-ever meeting and its sourcing to Michigan's announcement. Nick Durand, Maize n Brew, August 28, 2026, for Michigan's Friday announcement of the Bowling Green game and the 2000, 2010 and 2023 meetings. ESPN, "Utah sues Freddie Whittingham over alleged breach of contract," August 20, 2026, for the filing date, the court, the $525,000 salary, the January 2027 term, the damages figures, the quoted allegations and the absence of comment. Jason Batacao, The Salt Lake Tribune, and the Deseret News, both August 20, 2026, for the liquidated-damages formula, the six assistants and the naming of the other five, the five transferred players, the "on information and belief" language and Utah's decision not to comment. Dave Ablauf, The University Record, "Athletics projects balanced budget for FY '27," June 25, 2026, for the $297.3 million figure and the salaries, wages and benefits sentence. MGoBlue.com for Michigan Stadium's capacity of 107,601 and for the August 19, 2026 announcement of the Leaders and Best Champion Partners Program and Learfield's role in it.