Dwayne Yancey has asked a question in these pages that deserves an answer: Should Virginia students be going into debt to pay for college sports?
I don’t think they should have to. I say that as someone whose work is about keeping people in sport. I want more people playing college sports, not fewer. But a program worth having should be able to make its case to the people paying for it.
Right now it doesn’t have to. Virginia’s public colleges charge an average of $1,967 a year in mandatory athletics fees this year, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia figures Yancey reported in August. At Longwood University, it’s $3,206. At Virginia Military Institute, it’s $4,186. Those fees rose 5.5% last year, faster than any other part of the bill, and every school but one raised its athletics fee faster than its tuition. A James Madison University student who started in 2022 and graduated on time paid $11,689 in athletics fees, and about a third of JMU students borrow.
Most of those students never think about it. The fee is one line on a bill, bundled with everything else and paid by parents or by loans. That’s the problem. Nobody ever has to decide.
There’s a simple way to find out what students think: let them choose.
Start small. Pick a few schools and make the athletics fee optional for a year. Students who pay keep whatever the fee covers now, like free tickets. Students who don’t, don’t. At the very least, Virginia could let students who are borrowing to pay for school opt out. Nobody should take on debt to fund a team they never watch.
Schools will say their programs can’t survive that. Some would struggle. But athletic departments are good at raising money when they have to. They sell tickets, sponsorships and donor memberships every day. Asking them to sell themselves to their own students isn’t unfair. It’s a test of whether the community actually values what they do. I’d bet plenty of programs would pass, especially the ones that make game days a real part of campus life.
The question is about to get sharper. On Oct. 23, three current and former Division III athletes sued the NCAA in federal court to overturn Division III’s ban on athletic scholarships. If they win, look at VMI and Washington and Lee University, next door to each other in Lexington. Federal data show VMI spent about $46,700 per athlete in 2024-25 and W&L about $13,100. Take athletic scholarships out, and VMI still spent about $30,800, more than twice as much. Today the scholarship is the main thing VMI can offer a recruit that W&L can’t. If W&L can offer one too, the cadets paying one of the highest athletics fees in the state deserve to know what else their money buys.
That’s not an argument against VMI athletics. It’s an argument for VMI, and every school charging these fees, knowing its pitch and making it out loud.
The General Assembly has already ordered a study of how Virginia’s colleges pay for sports, due in 2028. It should include a real-world test. Let a few schools try an optional fee, measure who pays and watch what programs do to earn it. That would tell lawmakers more than any spreadsheet.
College sports is changing fast. Athletes are getting paid, conferences are being redrawn and the money keeps climbing. Through all of it, students have been the one source of funding nobody asks. Before Virginia locks in another decade of rising fees, it should ask them.
Alex Versen is executive director of The NOVA Foundation, a national nonprofit that helps former college athletes stay in sport, and a business-school lecturer in sport management.
