Here’s what I’m sure is a news flash to you: Happy Valley is a sports-oriented town.
We are home to the second-largest stadium in the country by capacity. And the third-largest indoor arena in the state by capacity, behind those in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. All while State College is only the 24th-largest “city” in Pennsylvania, according to World Population Review. In other words, we’re REALLY a sports-oriented town.
Because of our passion for athletics, during the last 10 years I’ve occasionally written about sports on this website. Most importantly to me, several times I’ve written specifically about college sports and scholarships.
Back in 2017 I suggested Penn State consider the Ivy League model of providing “scholarships” as a way to get around the measly scholarship limits the NCAA placed on sports other than football and basketball. For example, only 9.9 scholarships are allowed for D1 wrestling – not even a full starting roster, let alone the entire team.
And, back in 2019 after it seemed clear my admonition for Penn State to raise a $50 billion endowment in that 2017 column would not come to fruition (shocked, I know!), I focused in on the wrestling scholarship topic. Expanding on comments made by Penn State head wrestling coach Cael Sanderson that, “generally speaking, wrestling needs more scholarships,” I laid out how the maximum scholarship limits imposed by the NCAA were limiting for sports other than football and basketball.
Then, in June 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unanimously against the NCAA in an antitrust case. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion included this wonderful line: “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
This opened the door to the new NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) opportunities for student-athletes. Even though it still seemed at the time that the chance of the NCAA ever increasing scholarship limits was extremely small, I wrote how the newly created NIL money could create a work-around where student-athletes in all sports could get de facto full-ride scholarships.
Little did I know that only a few short years later we would be less than two months away (April 7) from a judge deciding on the final approval of a settlement on three court cases – House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA – that will provide many benefits to student-athletes.
One of those benefits is that scholarship limits will be eliminated in all sports. Instead, roster limits will be established and schools will have the choice to offer partial or full scholarships to everyone they want as long as they don’t exceed the roster limits.
This elimination of scholarship limits is great news for student-athletes. On one hand, it presents the opportunity for schools to do away with what I call the walk-on charade. It’s something we as fans love to read and hear about: the overlooked youth who believes in themselves and walks-on at a major university, only to rise up through hard work and determination and win a scholarship! And we fans get to bask in the glow of this feel-good story at our university.
Except, it only happens to a very small number of student-athletes. The rest toil in anonymity for years, paying for school, oftentimes through massive loans, while being subjected to the same physical rigors of the team as the scholarship players, but getting none of the monetary and ancillary benefits.
The flip-side of the loss of the walk-on charade is that many more student-athletes will have the opportunities, if their schools choose to do so, to receive full scholarships.
Now, the introduction of NIL and the elimination of scholarship limits take care of some of the “illegal” parts of the NCAA’s business model that will be addressed by this upcoming decision on the settlement agreement. But, does the settlement go far enough? Or, are there other changes the NCAA “should” be making – not “have” to make, that is – to better follow their mission to “Provide a world class athletics and academic experience for student athletes that fosters lifelong wellbeing ”?
Well, of course I think there is at least one.
And that is to require Division 1 FBS schools to offer a minimum of 26 varsity sports.
Currently, to be a Division 1 member, FBS schools must sponsor only a minimum of 16 sports.
Let’s take a look at a select group of schools to see what’s currently happening. Below are the number of sports and the annual athletic revenue each of the schools reported to the NCAA on their annual financial report. The information, pulled from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, was self-reported by more than 230 NCAA Division I institutions, and is for the fiscal year July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023.
Big Ten:
Penn State 31 sports $202.2M
Ohio State 34 sports $279.55M
Michigan 29 sports $229.56M
Oregon 20 sports $150.61M
UCLA 25 sports $105.42M
SEC:
Alabama 21 sports $199.91M
Georgia 21 sports $210.11M
LSU 21 sports $200.48M
Florida 21 sports $189.14M
Tennessee 20 sports $202.1M
ACC:
Florida State 20 sports $169.56M
Clemson 20 sports $195.98M
North Carolina 28 sports $139.35M
Virginia 25 sports $140.94M
Seems as if some schools are embracing the athletic and academic more so than others, even though all the above schools are generating more than $100 million in athletics revenue. My suggestion is that if a school is generating that much revenue, it should be able to offer many, many different athletic opportunities.
Also, given that all of the above schools already offer the “big” sports of football and basketball, the addition of other sports won’t cost them much. Using Penn State’s own NCAA financial report from the past fiscal year (ending June 30, 2024), here are the total operating expenses Penn State reported for a few selected sports, as well as how many total D1 teams play that sport:
Women’s Tennis $1,051,459 311 teams
Men’s Tennis $1,044,636 242 teams
Women’s Lacrosse $2,015,928 131 teams
Men’s Lacrosse $2,590,180 77 teams
Men’s Gymnastics $1,295,665 12 teams
Men’s Volleyball $1,613,867 28 teams
Women’s Golf $828,857 282 teams
Men’s Golf $694,341 308 teams
I’ll note that there are 366 D1 schools, so there are plenty of sports that schools who are only fielding 20 or 21 varsity teams can add. There’s room for growth. And, the cost to do so is not $100 million dollars. The SEC schools who would need to add five or six sports to meet the minimum I proposed could do so for a total cost of less than 5% of their annual income. Which will be a smaller portion every year as their income increases from television revenue.
The point being, perhaps it is time the NCAA starts getting ahead of the game, and proactively living up to its mission to provide a world class athletics and academic experience by offering as many athletics opportunities as possible. Instead of reactively paying millions of dollars to lawyers to fight for what the Supreme Court has now labeled “illegal.”
How about it NCAA, what do you say? C’mon! Increase that minimum sport requirement for D1 FBS schools!
