Posted on 05/18/2025 9:41:07 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Over the past three months, a growing number of universities have added or dropped entire sports programs on the eve of dramatic changes coming to college athletics under the $2.8 billion NCAA settlement.
UTEP dropped women’s tennis, Cal Poly discontinued swimming and diving, Marquette added women’s swimming and Grand Canyon shuttered a historically dominant men’s volleyball program. It was a dizzying set of decisions that appears to offer no pattern except one: Every school is facing a choice on which programs to carry forward once the money really starts flowing.
While top-tier athletes in high-revenue sports like football and basketball can look forward to robust compensation from their university for the use of their name, image and likeness, there is widespread uncertainty for athletes in the so-called non-revenue sports where tens of thousands of athletes compete largely under the radar.
For them, harsh cuts are a terrifying new reality as athletic departments weigh more than ever before which sports make the most sense to support financially; each school will be able to share as much as $20.5 million with athletes next year but top performers and revenue draws in the big sports will demand the most to keep them out of the transfer portal.
Under-the-radar sports programs are expected to take the back seat at many schools.
Patrick Rishe, executive director of the sports business program at Washington University, said college athletics is only at the beginning of a slew of decisions schools will have to make as a result of the settlement.
“There is going to be more competitive pressure on all universities to step up or else they’ll fall behind,” Rishe said. “So when you’re faced with that challenge, especially at the mid-majors or smaller Division I schools, then you’ve got to ask yourself, does it make sense to continue...”
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Reading, writing, and math. Most of the rest is a waste of money.
I predict you will see a bunch of smaller schools dropping football. One day you might only have about 30-40 schools that can afford a competitive football program.
here’s an idea- get rid of the NCAA which is the root cause of most of the problems in college sports...
I see they are cutting sports programs but looking to keep those that are solvent like football and basketball. I’d be interested to know what theoretical or conceptual classes they are dropping. There are way too many classes of instructional that have no real future in their students advancement.
wy69
Tuitions are at all-time highs, “higher education” inflation rates have been double the average inflation rate for two or three decades, big university endowment funds are in the tens of billions of dollars, and these schools can’t find $2.8 billion to keep these programs.
Cry me a river. Maybe if they kicked the virulent anti-Semitic protesters off campus, got serious about law and order on campus, ended the tens of billions wasted on useless DEI crap, fired all the “Studies Professors,” got rid of all the useless “Studies” degrees, and stopped gold-plating all of their facilities they could find $2.8 billion.
I have less than zero sympathy for them.
They are dropping minor sports because it has suddenly become more expensive to run football and basketball programs and because changing college demographics and title 9 require more female student athletes with scholarships. If the minor sports want to survive they either need to figure out how to generate some revenue or club and DIII will be all that are left. That is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing might happen in DI where the first chair in the orchestra called a university might fall to the athletic department based on revenue rather than inherent worth.
I know that college sports bring lots of people pleasure, and some people a lot of money, but hasn’t it gotten to the point that at major sports colleges, the tail is now wagging the dog?
The NIL will kill football for most of the schools. And the way the NIL rules are written players will have more freedom to move on to a new school than pro players have to move to a new team. Fans and alums will need to learn a new roster every year. Lower level schools and conferences will be the farm teams of the Power 5 until the presidents and trustees realize the folly of staying in the NCAA and either drop sports or organize a new governing body.
Yep, it’s all just cheering for laundry now.
What he said!
Yeah can’t agree more.
Saban is right. The NCAA is dead dead due to the NIL. FWIW, the NIL had to happen. The players weren't getting paid while the Universities were making $$$.
Anyway, I predict that the fans will eventually lose interest. Perhaps it'll still be around but it wont be as big as what it was.
The NBA is still around but it's not as big as it was in the '80s and the '90s.
Same here.
Finally, let's talk about sports. The cost of “good” seats to a good college football team rival the cost to a professional sports NFL team. Some college sports like men's football and basketball (D1) are really just farm teams for professional teams. So the payment of those “semi-professional” farm club athletes needs to come from somewhere. The compromise is to not have the professional teams pay the costs of the farm team salaries like in baseball.
Once upon a time like 70 years ago, the concept of the “student athlete” and well rounded university student was a national image. The NCAA has looked the other way for decades on “banned payment schemes for student athletes.” My wife, knows of a particular situation at a D1 basketball program, where a skilled basketball player was recruited from a junior college and given a scholarship, even though he could not read at the grade school level. She was required to find him tutors and the athletic department found him courses taught by friends of the athletic department so that his grades would allow him to play. Even with all that, he lost his eligibility because he had no interest in studying......his life goal was to be in the NBA, but that was never going to happen.
There are going to be three real losers to NCAA settlement. The ordinary non-athlete college student, to whom sports games were a “cheap” social event to attend. Then the second is the student athlete of a not financially significant sport, say golf, swimming, water polo, wrestling, gymnastics, crew, track & field, etc. These students will not have an opportunity to compete or bond closely with their universities. Finally, the Olympic programs will loose many of the college coaching programs that helped train athletes. Expect USA Olympic performance to suffer.
“Reading, writing, and math.” That’s K through 8!
In high school and university, one can take more advanced subjects based on those three, and even do research and enter the professions!
Athletics—sound body, sound mind! I was never a good athlete, so I took up running, which was very good for me. But if you can excel in a sport, good for you!
There is a lot of blah blah blah in this thread. Bottom line - all of this is a great case for removing the non-taxable status of colleges, especially in regards to athletic programs. Other than a lower risk that Harvard will relocate if the local town doesn’t finance a new stadium, there seems to be little difference between colleges and NFL teams.
That is not K to 8 now. Baby sitting. How many students play volleyball, rugby, baseball after they graduate. Be good if colleges taught Logic, reasoning instead of indoctrination.
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