Are College Sports Programs Too Big?

The Strangeness Comes First

Free write (5 min): are you a fan of college sports? If so, why — and what makes them different from professional sports? Students who don't follow sports at all have a genuine perspective here; make room for it.

Start with how unusual this is. The deck opens with a video of a British visitor experiencing American college football for the first time, and the point is real: very few countries have intercollegiate sports at all. Elsewhere, sport is either absent from universities or limited to in-school clubs.

• England has the closest system — BUCS, covering 50 sports and 170 universities — but athletic scholarships are uncommon and small.
• Canada's U Sports has been moving toward the American model, but covers 12 sports at 56 universities.
• The Philippines, South Africa, and New Zealand have smaller leagues in some sports.

The NCAA regulates athletics at about 1,100 schools and involves over 500,000 student-athletes annually. Nothing comparable exists anywhere else.

Then the history, which shows how deep the roots run and how recent the money is:

• 1843 — Yale organises the first formal college sports club in the US, for sailing.
• 1852 — the first intercollegiate sporting event: a Yale–Harvard sailing regatta.
• 1859 — the first intercollegiate baseball game.
• 1910 — Theodore Roosevelt's involvement leads to the body that becomes the NCAA.
• 1948 — the NCAA's "sanity code" limits scholarships to school expenses.
• 1972 — Title IX widens opportunities for women in college sports.
• 1994 — the NCAA signs its first television mega-contract for the men's basketball tournament. This is where the money arrives.
• 1998 — the Bowl Championship Series is created for football.
• 2014 — Northwestern football players sue for the right to unionise. The suit fails.
• 2021 — the Supreme Court rules the NCAA cannot restrict education-related compensation for student-athletes.

Assign the readings, due before Tuesday:

• Racial Gaps in the Power 5 — Inside Higher Ed
• Lasting Benefits of College Sports for Student-Athletes — Gallup
• NCAA Athletes Could Make $2 Million a Year If Paid Equitably — Forbes
• Will New Rules Make College Athletes Instant Millionaires? — The Guardian
• The Supreme Court Sides with NCAA Athletes — NPR

Nineteen Billion Dollars

Mindful moment (5 min), then the financial data — and the deck's framing question is the right one to open with: how much money is $19 billion? How does it compare with your state's annual budget? Look it up live. The comparison is what makes the number mean anything.

• Where the revenue comes from — what share arrives through media rights, royalties, licensing, and advertising?
• What share comes from men's basketball and football alone? And why those two?
• Profit at the top. Roughly how much does the average top university football programme make?
• Revenue against scholarships. Over the decade shown, how much did revenues rise — and how much did scholarship spending rise? The gap between those two numbers is the topic's central fact.
• What athletic departments spend most on, which surprises most students.
• Coaching salaries, over eleven years, in both absolute and percentage terms.
• The highest-paid public employee in every state. Look for regional patterns — where are basketball coaches top, and where football coaches?
• Advertising in college sports against professional sports.

Scholarships, Graduation, and Who Benefits

Mindful moment (5 min), then the human side of the ledger, which is where the week gets difficult.

• Scholarships. How many students receive athletic scholarships across all divisions? What's the average award across all divisions, and in Division I specifically? The gap between those two figures matters — most athletes are not on full rides.
• Graduation rates. Student-athletes overall graduate at higher rates than the general student body. Ask why: is being an athlete easy, or do athletes get support — tutoring, structure, academic monitoring — that other students don't? The second answer raises an obvious follow-up about who else could use that support.
• Then the counter-data. At the wealthiest conferences, Black male student-athletes are over-represented relative to the student body, and graduation rates for those athletes are low. Work through what "over-represented" means before evaluating it — and whether a scholarship is worth much if the degree doesn't arrive.
• Long-term outcomes. Gallup's self-reported data compares former athletes with non-athletes, including gaps for minority athletes. Ask the methodological question the deck asks: is it fair to compare these groups at all?
• Public opinion on whether college athletes should profit from their position, and how it has moved.

Before students leave: themes, lingering questions, and one new resource for Thursday.

Both Cases, Fully Made

Mindful moment (5 min), resources shared, then the deck's two lists — and both are stronger than students expect:

For big programmes:

• Scholarships cut the cost of college, and for some athletes they are the only route to attending at all.
• Profitable programmes subsidise other sports and student activities that would otherwise not exist.
• Sports build a sense of community on campus in ways little else does.
• And simply: they make the college experience enjoyable. Would Notre Dame be Notre Dame without football? Would Duke be Duke without basketball?

Against:

• Big programmes distract universities from teaching and research — their actual mission.
• Community can be built in other ways, at far lower cost.
• Programmes exploit some student-athletes, using their ability to build winning teams without adequate compensation.
• Too many football and basketball athletes are not graduating or receiving a real education.
• Athletes generating millions in revenue have no bargaining rights to claim a share of it — which is what the 2014 unionisation case and the 2021 Supreme Court ruling were both about.

The closing questions: is it a problem that universities make so much from football and basketball? Should athletes in the profitable sports get a share? And if some are getting poor educations while generating that revenue — are they being exploited?

Score Your Participation

The four reflective questions, then the participation matrix. Students also use the participation rubric to score the week and explain the score.