Few Virginians seem to recognize the magnitude of the burden being placed on Virginia students and their families by out-of-control spending on college sports by many Virginia public universities. This is not just a problem in our state, but anyone studying the national numbers will quickly recognize that Virginia is on the very high end when we talk about student subsidies for athletic teams. Every Virginia public university loses money on intercollegiate sports, and many lose, well, a shocking amount.
And now, with dramatic changes in the national intercollegiate sports landscape, schools that want to “stay competitive” will seek to spend much more. Famously, a college athletic director once said that the only thing worse for an athletic department than being in an arms race was not being in an arms race.
Well, sure, if you can use other people’s money.
So, how much are Virginia families paying? Well, a number of public universities here in the commonwealth charge students a mandatory sports fee in the neighborhood of $3,000 per year, whether the student ever attends a single intercollegiate athletic event or not. James Madison, Longwood and VMI are over the $3,000 annual level. Several Virginia schools are close to this mark, and some others are not too very far behind.
This writer has sporadically chronicled what is going on for half a dozen years now, but occasional op-eds in various publications can’t create broad understanding or true transparency.
Fortunately, we now see some increased attention to this pressing state matter.
Dwayne Yancey has detailed the economics of Virginia college sports in several pieces in recent months here for Cardinal News. And JLARC (the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission), Virginia’s highly regarded watchdog agency, sounded an alarm fairly recently when it noted how high per-student charges for intercollegiate athletics are at many state schools. Several weeks ago, in a Cardinal News op-ed, former Old Dominion University President James Koch expressed his concern regarding spiraling sports costs at many of Virginia’s state universities and the lack of value much of this has for students as they begin their careers.
Now, language in the (still to be finalized) new Virginia budget calls for JLARC to study the college sports scene at Virginia’s public universities in-depth. The initiative is timely, to say the least, and Virginians would benefit from a serious examination of runaway intercollegiate athletic expenditures at many of our state schools.
Unfortunately, the legislation calls for study completion by late 2028, a reasonable timeline given the heavy workload always assigned to JLARC on an array of vital state issues, but in truth universities and the legislature should act sooner to begin to curb costs well before this JLARC study will apparently be completed.
This writer would suggest a few obvious but important items to be addressed if we are to properly conduct college sports programs that are affordable for Virginia families. Governor Spanberger emphasized affordability in her recent successful campaign, and this is a place to really make a difference. Of course, state universities exist in the first place to provide an affordable education for our citizens.
Simply, we need to keep in mind the roughly 98% of our students who are not varsity athletes in an era when athletic directors say they have no choice but to keep up with competitors, and every competitor does something a little different, so athletic departments must match… everybody for everything. When President Kennedy spoke in his Inaugural Address about paying any price or bearing any burden, he wasn’t talking about, say, Taj Mahal quality athletic training facilities to aid in recruiting. In fact, we should finally begin to hold down costs while continuing to provide excellent opportunities for young people who seek to compete at the varsity athletic level.
James Madison University now loses almost $60 million a year on intercollegiate athletics, one of the highest totals in country. And thus, students pay the $3,000+ annual fee as a subsidy to keep the program afloat. To be sure, JMU has had some notable accomplishments on the field recently, but should the JMU university community, notably including the people who pay for the whole thing, have some opportunity to comment on spending and priorities? JMU is well on the way to losing half a billion dollars this decade on sports. Actually, JMU won’t lose a dime. JMU students and families will lose the money in subsidies to the athletic department.
Longwood University, which has not had much notable success in sports, also, remarkably, charges students a $3,000+ mandatory fee for intercollegiate athletics. (Longwood is a very small state university that, for some reason, is trying to play Division I sports.)
Is cost-cutting possible? In fact, it would be easy, with the will to do so.
For example, if we take the JMU program using official numbers obtained by investigative journalist Matt Brown, we find that for the 2024 academic year, the school spent $606,616 on Men’s golf. Golf attracts virtually no student attendees, from this writer’s experience, having attended a half dozen important regional college tournaments around the country and from talking to sports experts. The JMU total is not near the highest spender in the sport, but it’s important to note that many Division I universities spend less than half to support their men’s golf team. Why not spend at that lower level? Still D-I.
Men’s soccer? JMU spent $1,797,667 on the team in 2024, which was much closer to the top. And again, a great many schools spent less than half that number.
We don’t even have to get into football and basketball to begin to see opportunities to save money.
These are choices being made by athletic departments, without consulting the people paying the bills.
This writer would also hope that any JLARC study, or legislative consideration before late 2028, would employ thoughtful analysis of the issue. The current legislative language directing the JLARC study calls for consideration of the impact of college sports on the Virginia economy.
By any standard, this makes very good sense. But it runs squarely into rather dubious advocacy we presently see from athletic departments across the country. These departments are hiring consulting firms to produce statistics that claim that a Division I college sports program produces, pick a number, say, $500 million a year of benefit for the local economy. Think more people in restaurants a few times a year, hotel nights for big games, etc.
Of course, there is truth to this, but… what about the other side of the ledger? This whole enterprise is business development that is being financed by student subsidies, and frequently ever higher student loan debt. As a society, do we do this for any other form of business development?
So, when thinking of the great positive impact of big games on campus, let’s also remember that there are 1.1 million graduates and former students in our state who are carrying student loan debt. Many tens of thousands of these individuals are fairly recent graduates who have been billed A LOT of money for sports since runaway spending became in vogue, even though most don’t recognize that the charges were bundled into their mandatory fee every year.
Thoughtful people will understand that student loan debtors have less money to spend on nice dinners at restaurants or buying household items, etc., thus lowering receipts for these establishments, of course.
Somebody needs to inject econometric modeling into the analysis that reflects both sides of the equation for Virginia families. Massive subsidies do impact the people paying the bill.
In a short column it’s impossible to cover everything facing college sports today. This piece has addressed several questions that aren’t at the forefront of the current debate, which seems to mainly focus on how much a Heisman Trophy candidate QB is going to make in NIL/rev-share. But these are critically important issues for the commonwealth.
Mike Cavanagh is an independent researcher and writer in Alexandria. His email address is mikecav321@gmail.com.