Part of the money drain is the (unconstitutional) Title IX requirement that colleges do their best to screw up their sports programs--eliminating men's teams and replacing them with women's teams no one will pay to watch--especially not women.
And colleges got over-priced and over-extended, thinking they could cut real scholarship in favor of selling Communism by the drink, and no one would catch on.
To be honest, that’s kind of in the past right now. The fact is that only football and basketball can generate net profit for a college. The real problem with Title IX these days is that it was designed with a 55-45 male-female ratio but now that’s flipped to 55 female. The inability to change the formula is what hurts to account for those schools where women’s sports are not a big participation rate.
Lacrosse would have a lot more D1 programs if that formula changes, as there are more Women’s D1 programs. Cutting the programs for Title IX compliance was pretty much done 15 years ago. Now it’s about how to add programs while keeping compliant.
A great example is UF in Gainesville, which started a Women’s program that became a Top 10 program in a few years but the AD (Jeremy Foley), who played lacrosse in college, couldn’t figure out how to add the Men’s program. The women actually built their own lacrosse-only stadium (which is becoming more common on D1 college campuses - Notre Dame, Michigan, Denver . . .).