Story by Matt Brown at Extra Points, excerpts/highlights below:
Ohio State led the country in athletic department operating expenses in FY23, with $274,948,554. It also led the country in reported revenues ($279,549,337). The department sponsors a whopping 36 teams, plays in a football stadium that seats over 100,000 screaming fans, and expects to compete for national titles in multiple sports.
This quote from Carter, via the Columbus Dispatch, is illuminating:
Carter told The Dispatch in an interview last week that athletics has been self-sustaining for more than a decade and that the university does not want to use taxpayer dollars or tuition dollars to support all of the teams in the future.
"We'll still have scholarships, we'll still have programs," Carter said. "Some of those sports may start to look and act a little bit more like a club sport, but yet compete at the Division I level and still travel and still compete."
Carter's argument here lines up with what I've heard not just from other folks around Ohio State, but from ADs and senior leaders from the P4 to the low-majors. It's time to figure out how to tier your sports, and figure out where you want to go all in, and where you want to offer what is essentially a D-III experience with D-I brands and facilities.
I don't know what the downstream implications of some of these decisions will be
Let's take men's volleyball, for example. That's a relatively niche sport, only sponsored by 28 schools. Ohio State is one of those schools, and is regularly in national championship contention. Let's say, hypothetically, that Ohio State elects to significantly decrease their scholarship and annual budget for the sport, in order to better invest elsewhere in the department, and the school is no longer a title contender.
If you're say, Grand Canyon, or Irvine, or Northridge...do you take Ohio State's retreat as a sign that a national title in men's volleyball is more possible, and double your own investment? Would the retreat of programs like Ohio State or Penn State make a national title in men's volleyball less meaningful and worthy of investment? Would it even remain an NCAA sport?
These were the excerpts I found most interesting, but the piece also discusses how the House v NCAA ruling is driving this, and the Title IX impact. Brown also discusses how non-rev sports will likely leave major conferences and be more regionally focused.
Anyways, fascinating read.
Comments
This is the way that those sports/teams will survive. I've said it for years, there's no reason to go to Stanford for volleyball or soccer. Or that Syracuse, Miami, and Cal should be traveling that for for anything. Gone are the days of getting on a bus and being able to sleep in your own bed every night. And that's eating funds like crazy.
Sending ACC track and field teams to SoCal is the dumbest shit.
I really don't want VT to lose it's Olympic sports and I could get behind fracturing the conferences for these sports to make it more regional, but it would be a disservice to offer them a club or DIII experience as anOSU looks to be planning to do.
Reality is everyone is going to be prioritizing how and where they compete. That means some combination of:
If it's coming for OSU, it is 100% comIng for VT
OSU can cut it's "budget" to zero and their ballers will still be paid top NIL and their coaches will make 5x Pry's staff. This is all bullshit. That football machine will see zero cuts.
It's not about football - it's about allll the other sports
Speaking of money. VT's pandhandling event this week raised 450K, since we don't have money.
You can't, on one hand, ask/expect us to compete at high level, then also complain about that the school does fundraising. Thats just not reality.
Fundraising? sure.
And you cannot expect them to not do it when they are still getting money every time...
This is 100% about decreasing the athletic budget for other sports so that the athletic department can afford the football/basketball NIL money needed to compete at the top of the sport.
In other words, suck it, nonrevs. We're taking away your money to give it to the players who chose a more lucrative sport to play.
This really sucks for collegiate athletics.
Yes- Like 12-0 Florida State last year that beat LSU among others, OSU just can't "compete" in modern college football. Need more money.
It's not 'NIL' money - yea, it's for the athletic department to pay athletes, but the non-regionally of (football) conferences getare driving travel costs up, national recruiting and the admin bloat of football is driving staffing costs up, etc
It's also the sport that alumni and students prefer at large. Let's not act each school's football fandom doesn't contribute to this.
Even on TKP, there are many posters who have suggested we divest from other sports and 'put it all' into football.
ESPN actively killed the pac 12 and is trying to do the same to the ACC. THEY should pay for the increased travel costs- this is their made for TV baby afterall. The SEC and B1G only is their wet dream. Send ESPN an invoice for your travel to Oregon.
Categorically false. I don't have time to give a history lesson, but TLDR Larry Scott turned down help from ESPN and Fox over a decade ago which financially screwed the P12 indefinitely. George Kliafkoff then got beat to market by Brett Yormark. The P12 failing has very little to do with ESPN.
Edit: I suppose one could make the argument that ESPN paid so much for the SEC that it left the PAC 12 schools with no options but to seek greener pastures and other conferences.
That said, I think conference mismanagement played a far more significant factor in the PAC's demise.
The PAC 12 got a fair market value offer two years ago. They turned it down because they wanted P2 money. The problem is they were closer to a g5 conference. Then last year, they got an even lower offer.
Yeah we are going to forget about the absurd low ball offer ESPN made to the conference with the most national titles by far. They were treated like the AAC. But we will forget about that little point.
In 2022, ESPN offered the PAC $30m/school (about what the B12 now makes). The PAC countered with $50m/school. ESPN walked (source). AppleTV offered them $25m/school + $10 per school per subscriber (source). Fox made a deal with the B12 (instead of the PAC) for $31.7m/school (source).
Seems like everyone thought that 'lowball' offer was about right.
people on here justify the ACCs deal with ESPN too.
NIL and the new regulations that allow schools to directly fund NIL ventures has always signaled the death of non revenue sports.
If you are surprised to read this article today, you haven't been paying attention.
It's not a surprise that this happening. I think it is a surprise that it's happening at Ohio State
I don't think so. I don't think anyone is immune to this complete restructuring of college sports.
Some see the implications faster and are getting in front of it, others will whither and die.
Good news. VT Rugby club sports are waaaay out in front.
This was the inevitable consequence of NIL.
If you are a star FB player or Mens BB player, then NIL was a great thing for you.
You know until the NIL dollars dry up and you are left wondering what to do next because you transferred 4 times and never got anything resembling a real education.
For everyone else, NIL is going to be fundamentally detrimental. Non-rev sports are going to be massively downsized and there will be less opportunity overall for those young people who work equally as hard and are every bit as dedicated to their sports.
But that's not really what is important here, right? What's really important is that a 17 year-old in Georgia has the choice between a Lamborghini and a BMW when deciding where they want to commit to play football--knowing statistically that there is ~70% chance that they will never make an impact on the field.
Again, this has nothing to do with NIL/collectives. This about the House v NCAA case, which focuses on schools paying players with money from TV revenue. Completely unrelated.
This result was inevitable when schools started getting 8-9 figures annually to broadcast sports and coaches started getting 7 and 8 figure salaries and buyouts.
Again, completely untrue. Women's basketball is has had peak interest, and players are reaping the rewards. College Tennis is having a MOMENT right now, for the first time since Jon McEnroe was at Stanford - in large part due to NIL (I want to write a post that goes into this in detail, but haven't had time yet)
Yes, payer payment is changing things. There are winners and losers (and from a sheer quantity standpoint, there will be more losers than winners), but the inequity is nothing like you're describing. When the dust settles, college sports (as a whole) will be completely different, but I believe just as, if not more, compelling.
eh, what's a little autograph and jersey money for the poor kids? Why can't they be on a radio spot for hardees? What's it going to hurt? lololololololololololololololol. No more lacrosse and swim team suckers.
This is exactly the implication. It was as obvious as the horsefly on the whitewashed wall that it was not going to just be the local business paying a local U. sports hero for a 30 second spot.
The non revs were always going to suffer at the hands of football and basketball.
Even the largest universities were going to see all money funneling into those sports because that is what makes them money. And if any school should know what it feels like when you start to fall behind because you aren't willing to keep up with the Joneses, it's us over the last 10 years.
Non revs are all going to essentially be unfunded club sports in the near future. NIL has almost guaranteed that happening, and it's only a matter of time until Title XI gets struck down in order to speed it up.