Iconic influencer hints at $100 million move tied to college football

One of the biggest content creators in the world is flirting with the idea of donating $100 million to an unexpected college football program.

MrBeast celebrates during an activity during the 2025 NBA All Star Game at Chase Center. | Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

The 2025 college football season saw the Indiana Hoosiers go from the losingest program in the sport's history to winning a College Football Playoff National Championship and becoming just the third team ever to go 16-0.

While coaching and hitting on undervalued transfers were the main sources of the program's success, Indiana sustaining that level of play will be aided by the investment of billionaire and "Shark Tank" investor Mark Cuban. As we have seen across college football with the NCAA allowing athletes to profit off of their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) in 2021, new programs like Indiana or Texas Tech have emerged as contenders thanks to willing donors.

Something that could be in the cards for East Carolina, as popular YouTuber MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), who has 465 million subscribers, hinted on Instagram that he'd be open to donating $100 million to the program. The idea originated from an online suggestion, and it clearly made its way to the content creator, who has a $2.6 billion net worth.

YouTuber MrBeast suggests he may be willing to donate $100 million to ECU. | mrbeast/ig

"Should I do this?" wrote MrBeast.

While this seems like a bizarre experiment, Donaldson has never been shy about making content centered around large prizes. Some of his more recent videos saw contestants compete in a "real life" Squid Game for nearly $500,000, while another saw him give a contestant $10,000 for every day they spent in a grocery store.

It would be interesting to see if top talents would ditch Power 4 programs for a school that could offer them ten times the price, assuming they had that MrBeast money. Especially a program like ECU, which is a relatively decent football program, but has just two 10+ win seasons in its program history at the FBS level, with the most recent being in 2013.

To put $100 million in perspective for where that would place ECU in the hierarchy of college football spending, the Texas Longhorns are projected to have college football's first $40 million roster in 2026. Donaldson would essentially be funding 2.5 Texas-caliber rosters, which feature notable names such as Arch Manning, Cam Coleman and Colin Simmons.

Although ECU seems like a random program to tab for this experiment, Donaldson was raised in Greenville, North Carolina. He has also done prior work with the university, as they partnered in 2022 with hopes of "developing a credentialing program to help solve the creator industry’s growing demand for a skilled workforce pipeline."

“Genuinely, I hope this is as beneficial for you as it’s going to be for a lot of creators like us. I can see this completely changing the industry. I’m excited!” Donaldson said in a 2022 release about his partnership with ECU.

Now, while his reported net worth is reportedly in the billions range, Donaldson did tell the Wall Street Journal last month that he doesn't actually have any money.

"It's funny talking about my personal finances," Donaldson said. "Because no one ever believes anything I say because they're like 'You're a billionaire.' I'm like 'That's net worth.' I actually don't...I have negative money right now. I'm borrowing money. That's how little money I have."

There may be some college football traditionalists who cannot fathom a world where a Group of Five program wins a championship, as it hasn't happened since BYU in 1984 when they were in the WAC, but Donaldson has a chance to rewrite college football history if he does in fact carry out the experiment.