Previous installments in this series:
Part 1: When Rutgers had over 30 varsity sports
Part 2: Playing sports while finding a cure for cancer
Part 3: Who “earns” more, the coach or the professor?
It’s been almost two years since the House Settlement was announced. In the year following that landmark case, around 41 Olympic sports programs were cut across Division I, affecting at least 1,000 student-athletes after the settlement was announced by the NCAA in May 2024. A lot of people predict that trend
will continue.
If I were to ask you which D1 school sponsors the most sports, I’m sure a lot of you would point at the usual suspects: Ohio State, Texas, Penn State. If you did, you’d be partially right.
The answer is Harvard. Yeah, I know, I didn’t specify FCS or FBS. Work with me.
Harvard sponsors 42 teams, from the expected football, basketball, and track, to the more unique rugby, sailing, squash, and skiing. You would have been on target with Ohio State, with 38 by my count. But if you left out Stanford (38 teams), you lost!
But those lofty numbers are actually pretty rare. If you had said Texas was a top sports school, try again. The Longhorns 21 sports are less than Rutgers’ total.
“The pressures are real, and you feel it,” Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips said back in May at the conference’s annual spring meetings in Florida. “And what you don’t want to have happen is the loss of opportunities.” Yet opportunities are being lost, though not in basketball or football. The pressure that schools are feeling is being directed at the Olympic or non-revenue sports. There are very few schools considering dropping football. But track & field, swimming, soccer, or men’s volleyball are all on the table for elimination or contraction in their scope. And it pretty much all circles back to the House settlement.
Finances overall and budget deficits are being seen at states’ flagship universities. [the link has a paywall, but is linked for reference] And if it is a matter of saving football versus a French major or the cross country team, where do you think the cuts are going to come?
As we discussed previously, the last time Rutgers eliminated any sports was two decades ago. Currently, Rutgers operates 24 sports (track is counted four times, indoor and outdoor for men and women; that is how all counts here are considered). Among Big Ten schools, Rutgers has the sixth most number of sports, tied with Indiana and Nebraska. I will point out that among Nebraska’s 24 are rifle and bowling.
From that perspective, Rutgers is pretty “on task” as a Big Ten member. What surprised me was Oregon; with all of Phil Knight’s money, the Ducks have just 20 sports. At Oregon, there’s no men’s soccer, wrestling, lacrosse or swimming. On the women’s side, no swimming (and the women have 12 sports – my error – including acrobatics & tumbling, for a total of 20). But such are the issues that college administrators are facing in these very uncertain and quickly changing times.
The B1G sponsors 28 championships: 14 for men and 14 for women. And all of Rutgers’ sports are Big Ten sponsored; neither Nebraska’s rifle or bowling teams compete in the Big Ten. Nor does its beach volleyball squad! It probably means that Rutgers is unlikely to be considering a contraction of its programs to save money. Nor are they likely to expand. Once upon a time – actually still – I wanted Rutgers to restore those eliminated sports. And, for that matter, to add more to its slate of sports. I’d love Rutgers to add ice hockey; I know there are serious people who have some ideas to share should Keli Zinn give them a call.
Among the P4 conferences, both the Big Ten and the ACC sponsor the most championships, 28. The Big XII has 25, although its beach volleyball – yes, the Big XII sponsors it – has only three conference schools among the six teams under its umbrella. And the SEC, where it “just means more”, sponsors just 22 sports….including equestrian.
A while back, there was a post (I wish I had kept it) that showed that at Penn State, every sport except football and men’s basketball ran a deficit. And it was primarily football that paid the bills for all of those 31 sports. It isn’t much different at other schools that appear to be making money, all those “haves”. As an example, from the 2024-25 financial report, Michigan football had a “profit” of $113,636,406 ($175,299,591 of revenue against $61,663,185 in expenses). But the Wolverine’s field hockey team ran a $2,137,770 deficit; men’s soccer a $2,049,059 deficit with women’s soccer down $2,404,977. UM’s women’s tennis had $1,517,067 more in expenses than revenue. And before you ask, football’s “revenue” includes its portion of the school’s media rights.
Is it a viable system? Part 3 of this series talked about a reckoning for college athletics. Recent campus decisions suggest those concerns are not theoretical. The University of Minnesota approved a new $200 annual athletics fee for Twin Cities students, citing rising expenses following the NCAA’s landmark House settlement….According to university estimates, the fee is expected to generate about $7 million annually, helping offset a projected $9 million shortfall in the athletics budget.
Similar dynamics are playing out elsewhere. South Carolina approved a new $300 annual athletics fee for undergraduates, while Iowa State University has forecast recurring budget gaps averaging nearly $25 million annually through 2031, even after halting capital projects and raising donor contribution requirements.
For institutions outside the top tier of revenue generators, the financial picture is even starker. According to NCAA data cited by lawmakers, no Division II athletics programs operate at a profit. Even within powerhouse conferences, deficits are common. Louisiana State University, often held up as a financial success story, reported a deficit in its most recent full budget cycle.
Some out there have said that Rutgers should drop to a different conference….and then lose the income they do get from the Big Ten, settling for a lesser payday. And how does that help? And when looking at the fact that almost everyone is running deficits, higher debt loads, and raising fees and prices, what is the answer? Can anyone afford to keep going this way?
Some commenters on this series point out that college athletics shouldn’t need to be “profitable”. No argument here. Most schools, especially those in the G5/6, DII, and DIII, definitely do not “make money” on athletics. In ‘24-‘25, Kean University spent a grand total of $5,957,544 on its entire athletic program; TCNJ’s total was just $3,313,749. Those are practically rounding errors at Michigan. As has been pointed out in these posts, almost every sport outside of football and some basketball programs, runs at a loss. But for Rutgers, the issue in my mind has always been the revenue side of the ledger; Rutgers simply does not generate enough income from things like ticket sales, merchandise, and donor contributions. Certainly not how other schools do.
The issue isn’t whether there’s a profit or loss. And the thrust of this series has been, I hope, to show that there are a lot of varying issues facing college sports that are significant and need to be addressed. How big a loss/deficit/whatever-you-want-to-call-it can any school accommodate before there’s an implosion and more Olympic/non-revenue sports are cut or reduced to feed the 500-pound football team in the room? The status quo isn’t viable. And an answer needs to be found sooner than later.
