In 2021, when James Madison University sought to upgrade its sports programs by joining the Sun Belt Conference, the school first needed the permission of a group of state legislators collectively known as the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission.
JMU submitted an eight-page document that laid out its justification for the move. By joining the Football Bowl Subdivision set of schools, and the Sun Belt in particular, JMU would be aligning itself with peer schools and achieving “stability in a volatile environment” in college sports. It would also be bringing in more revenue from the Sun Belt’s TV contract.
There was just one catch: Virginia law governs what percentage of a public college’s athletic budget can come from mandatory student fees — the higher the status of the school’s conference membership, the lower the percentage is. Under its previous classification (a Football Championship Subdivision school and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association), JMU was allowed to subsidize up to 70% of its athletic budget through mandatory student fees. By JMU moving up to the Sun Belt, state law required that subsidy percentage to drop to 55%.
At the time, JMU was already well over the 70% threshold. The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database says JMU that year used mandatory student fees to cover 87% of its athletic budget. The pandemic likely goosed that figure upwards, but from 2005-2011, JMU had always derived more than 80% of its athletic funding from student fees. That percentage dropped into the high 70s from 2012 until the pandemic. The lowest it ever got, though, was 75%.
As part of the school’s presentation to the legislative panel, JMU laid out a schedule on how it would get its subsidy percentage down to the required 55% level. It laid out a gradual decline until reaching 54.1% for the 2028-29 school year.
By 2023-24, student fees were supposed to account for 58.3% of the budget.
However, the Knight-Newhouse database (which is current through the 2023-2024 school year) shows JMU was still well out of range at 73%. A report to the Board of Visitors that year calculated the figures differently and put the percentage at 55.4%.
Now, a proposal pending before the General Assembly would give JMU a potentially easier target to meet. That proposal — from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville — would increase the amount of JMU’s athletic budget that could come from student fees to 60%. The same measure would also increase the percentage for Old Dominion University, the state’s other Sun Belt Conference member, to 60%. In 2023-24, Old Dominion used student fees to cover 61% of its athletic budget, so the Deeds proposal means the Norfolk school wouldn’t have to make many changes to comply. JMU would have to make more, under the Knight-Newhouse calculations, just not as many as under the current 55% threshold. Or maybe it wouldn’t have to make any at all and could increase the share of athletics paid for through mandatory student fees.
The Deeds proposal, which comes in the form of an amendment to the state budget, would also allow Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia to cover more of their athletic budgets with student fees. They are currently capped at 20%. He would raise that to 25%. That could potentially let both schools spend more in student fees on athletics, although it should be noted that neither is close to hitting its cap now. The Knight-Newhouse database shows that in 2024 Virginia Tech used student fees to cover 5% of its athletic expenses while Virginia used 11%.
Why are there different thresholds for schools that are all in the same NCAA classification? Because they’re in two very different types of conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Tech and Virginia play, has a much bigger TV contract than the Sun Belt, in which JMU and ODU play. JMU, which has had a meteoric rise in college football rankings, culminating with an appearance this year in the 12-team College Football Playoffs, has had a particular challenge funding its athletic ambitions. The school lacks a deep-pocked alumni base: Virginia gets 25% of its athletic budget from donors, Tech gets 23%, ODU gets 12%, JMU just 7%. In terms of actual dollars, that ranges from $38.86 million for Virginia in 2024 to $5.68 million at JMU that year. To make up for the lack of donor support and less money from TV revenue, JMU has relied on mandatory student fees. Where Tech raised $14.54 million from 30.504 undergraduates that year and Virginia raised $16.67 million from 17,589, ODU raised $32.39 million from 17,736 and JMU $55.54 million from 21,006.
In actual dollars, JMU raises more money from mandatory student fees than any other school in the country; Old Dominion is second. Many of the top-ranked college sports programs in the country don’t rely on student fees at all, according to the Knight-Newhouse database, because they’re in conferences with big TV donors and generous donors, typically the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference.
Deeds introduced a similar measure last year that didn’t pass. “The bill I introduced last year was at the request of UVA, Tech and JMU,” Deed said by text message. “It was designed to give the schools more flexibility in the use of the fees, for instance for athletes’ medical needs. Virginia is more transparent than other states, so it’s really not fair to compare our schools with those in other states.” He said the budget amendment is “aimed at the same goals as the bill” last year.
Deeds voices a concern often heard in discussions about mandatory student fees for athletics: Some Virginia schools show up as relying heavily on these fees for athletic budgets simply because they’re more transparent than others. The belief is that many schools in other states simply extract that money from students in different ways and don’t report it as a “mandatory student fee” even though it might be a mandatory something else. The Knight-Newhouse database disputes that. It also captures the vague category of “institutional support,” which would cover other ways that colleges raise money for athletics other than TV revenue, donors, ticket sales and such. Even when that is factored in, some Big Ten and SEC schools still show up at zero while JMU has the second-highest amount in the country (behind only South Florida).
Deeds’ budget amendment would do some other things.
For Virginia and Virginia Tech, it would set conditions on using more money from student fees. They would have to demonstrate that the increase in the subsidy “was matched by a comparable dollar increase in generated revenue over a five-year rolling average or that it was matched by a comparable percentage increase in generated revenue utilizing a compound annual growth rate in generated revenue and student fees.”
It would put an expiration of 2030 on all these percentage caps but also set in motion a study by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “for the purpose of determining whether the provisions of this act should be amended permanently.”
That study would be required to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable, competitive funding models for intercollegiate athletics,” to “assess the local, regional, and statewide economic impact of college athletics” and to consider these percentage caps on using mandatory student fees “in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics” and to take into account the ability of Virginia’s public colleges “to maintain competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics.”
Aside from however you feel about these mandatory student fees — I get lots of emails from readers outraged about them but not a single state legislator has proposed their abolition — the fascinating thing about Deeds’ proposed study is that it casts college sports into the context of economic development and would seem to make it a state policy that Virginia’s teams be competitive.
If that’s the case, maybe students shouldn’t be the only ones forced to pay for those teams?
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