The barbecue was at Larry Ellison’s waterfront estate in Palm Beach County, for the University of Michigan’s top donors and leaders. Then came a smaller meeting, hosted by an intensely private alumna: Jolin Ellison, class of 2012, international studies, the Oracle (ORCL) co-founder’s sixth wife. She floated the idea of a semi-independent entity that would pay the university for assets such as premium seating to raise money for athletes. Regent Michael Behm, who was there, told the Journal how it landed: “We’re a public university. We don’t sell any assets of the university in that manner.”
The story of how a 35-year-old who grew up in China with little exposure to sports became one of the most influential voices in Michigan athletics is a story about money arriving faster than the rules for it. The Ellisons have given about $10 million to Michigan’s athlete-compensation system since late 2023, when Jolin sent an unsolicited email to a fundraising group as the team was on its way to a national title. Their pledge helped land Bryce Underwood, the top quarterback recruit in the country, on a deal worth roughly $3 million a year. They gave about $1 million to the basketball team, whose payroll was roughly $12 million; it went 37-3 and won the national championship in April.
The numbers under the stadium
The NIL market will reach an estimated $4.5 billion for the 2026-27 school year, per Opendorse. A 2025 settlement lets schools share about $20 million each with athletes. Football payrolls exceed $40 million at a handful of programs, Michigan among them. Across the country in Oxford, Miss., the Journal’s sports page reports Ole Miss boosters throwing an extra $20 million into the pot after coach Lane Kiffin left for LSU — taking roster spending from $20 to $25 million to about $43 million, with midnight negotiating sessions and an FBI sweep for bugs. “It was us against the world,” said the collective’s director. “Very few calls went unanswered.”
What the money buys, beyond players, is a seat at the table. Former staff say Jolin Ellison contacted football coaches more than any other booster last season and that the head coach told a colleague she would stop giving unless he was fired. She denies both; she says she texted him three times and told the athletic director he should not coach if rumors about him were true. He was fired in December for an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate and arrested the same day. “I’m a fan, not a coach,” she says.
Michigan, with a $22 billion endowment, would be the most prominent school to create a revenue entity; Kentucky, Utah and Michigan State already have. Its regents killed a Big Ten plan to spin off conference assets less than a year ago. The chair at the time called it “selling our soul to private capital.” The idea is stalled until a new president arrives Dec. 1 and a new athletic director next year.
Our read
Strip the pageantry and this is a governance story: an institution with a public mission, a $22 billion endowment and a $40 million payroll, and private money offering to fund the payroll in exchange for a say. Every family foundation, every closely held business and every nonprofit board this desk works with faces a version of it — the donor whose check comes with a coaching opinion, the investor whose capital comes with a seat. The Michigan regents’ answer was not “no money.” It was “no assets,” which is the distinction that keeps a mission intact.
For a portfolio there is nothing to buy here, and one thing to notice: college athletics is now a $4.5 billion market with 35-year-old boosters, quasi-independent entities and roster budgets that doubled in a year. That is the profile of every market that later needed a rulebook. The stock-market version of a rulebook is the one Jason Zweig describes elsewhere in this edition, and it was written in the 1930s for the same reason.