Table of Contents
Introduction
Intercollegiate athletics at the country’s most prominent colleges and universities has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It involves not only institutions of higher education, but also television networks, apparel manufacturers, advertisers from all sectors...
Background
At present, more than 2,000 colleges and universities field intercollegiate athletic teams. There are a few small collections of institutions, such as the National Small College Athletic Association and the United College Athletic Association, but the three primary...
Expenses
As noted above, universities in the Football Bowl Subdivision sponsor football and also must fund at least 15 others sports, and most universities actually sponsor significantly more. Some athletic departments have more than 250 employees, including coaches...
Revenue
While universities and even the biggest athletics programs are not-for-profit organizations, some can generate significant sums from ticket sales, television contracts, and other sources. Most, however, depend on institutional transfers from general funds, student...
Construction in college sports: an arms race?
As with the rest of higher education, which has engaged in an “amenities race” for new laboratory facilities, student unions, residence halls, and other projects, a construction boom has echoed throughout intercollegiate athletics as programs have upgraded...
Title IX and Olympic sports
Most of this report focuses on revenue, expenses, facilities, and other trends primarily associated with football and men’s basketball, for a simple reason: Those sports are where the money is. However, big-time athletics programs maintain a variety of other teams...
Cost containment, then and now
Just about every athletics program, no matter what its budget, has been in cost-containment and budget-cutting modes over the past year. Such budget trimming has intensified as the national recession deepened. A day does not go by, it seems...
Commercialism
As with universities as a whole, athletics programs are trying to find new sources of revenue to keep up with expanding costs and are looking to the commercial world for assistance. The fast-evolving world of sports business includes event promoters...
Myths and intangibles
NCAA data from a February 2009 study authored by economists Jonathan Orszag and Mark Israel shows athletics budgets amount to 6 percent of most universities’ total institutional spending. Despite that relatively thin slice of a campus’ budget....
Conclusion
Concerns about the expenses of college sports are nothing new, and the current economic crisis only exacerbates a long-term trend. The NCAA’s Presidential Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics concluded in 2006 that while there was...
References
Bernstein, M.F. (2001). Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession,Illinois: University of Illinois Press...
