College Sports

College sports in America is big business. Having long ago shed their humbler beginnings, the 13 largest athletic departments each bring in north of $100 million annually from sports, almost entirely from men's basketball and football. The commercialization has resulted in millionaire assistant coaches, fancy stadiums and billions in television revenue. It's also causing an arms race in spending, as a small number of rich, powerhouse programs pull ahead and the vast majority of schools struggle to keep up. Cracks are beginning to show — some financial, some legal — that threaten to undermine this $13 billion dollar industry.

Athletic spending by universities in Division I, the top tier of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is outstripping revenue. A dozen or so programs (Alabama, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas were the biggest in 2016) can afford to live large, but the model is unsustainable for most of the 347 schools. As football attendance drops for the seventh straight year, debts mount and the continuation of lucrative TV contracts remains uncertain, schools must decide if they can afford to run what approaches professional programs. The University of Idaho football team is the first major casualty of the shifting landscape. It's dropping a level to compete against universities with similar budgets. Other schools are likely to follow suit. Attracting top talent is paramount, leading some schools to stretch the boundaries of NCAA rules — or go beyond them. U.S. prosecutors in September 2017 unveiled criminal charges alleging college coaches, managers and sportswear representatives committed bribery and fraud in attempts to recruit and win future endorsements from teen-age basketball stars. Looming over all this is a growing recognition that the college-athlete proposition can be a raw deal: Colleges raise millions; students get only a free or subsidized education, which many never finish. A 2009 lawsuit by former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon accused the NCAA, which rules college sports, of violating antitrust law by using students' names and likenesses without compensation. O'Bannon technically won, but his victory meant only that the NCAA had to let schools compensate athletes for the full cost of attendance, which it had begun doing anyway a year earlier. More challenges are in the works, including a claim that the NCAA, by capping scholarships, isn't allowing the free market to operate. A world where colleges compete for the services of star athletes by offering more than the cost of attending college — free agency, in essence — might not be far off.