Athletics Departments Have Become ‘Shadow Universities’

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction

1:35 - Why All College Leaders Should Care About College Athletics

4:14 - Introducing Our Guest, Karen Weaver

5:12 - What Are University Presidents and Board Members Missing About College Sports?

6:38 - How is the Transfer Portal Impacting Graduation Rates?

8:26 - Do Athletics Align With College Mission Statements?

9:51 - What Washington Should Do to Regulate College Sports

11:50 - What If College Sports Lost Tax-Exempt Status?

13:23 - How Women’s Sports and Olympic Sports Fit In?

16:20 - Do NCAA Classifications Work Anymore?

20:22 - Who Defines Success for College Sports?

20:53 - Is Athletics Worth It As a ‘Front Porch’ of the College?

22:08 - How Should College Athletics Be Reformed?

25:36 - The Growth of Club Sports

29:18 - Do We Know the ROI of College Athletics?

34:00 - Getting Beyond Football and Basketball

37:05 - Connecting Athletics to Work-Integrated Learning

40:05 - Why Are People ‘All In’ on College Athletics

40:59 - How Injuries Play a Role

42:48 - The Connection Between Research and Athletic Prestige

45:07 - Is a Whole New Governance Structure Needed for Athletics?

46:05 - Lightning Round with Karen Weaver

Relevant Links:

“Four quick thoughts on the Protect College Sports Act: aka a college sports bill you should actually pay attention to,” by Matt Brown in his Extra Points newsletter.

“Sport Finance: Where the Money Comes From and Where the Money Goes,” by Karen Weaver.

“Trustees and Presidents: A Podcast for University Leaders,” by Karen Weaver

“Understanding College Athletics: What Campus Leaders Need to Know About College Sports,” by Karen Weaver

“The Future of Elite Youth Sports Is Here—and It’s a Mess,” in The Wall Street Journal.

“Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” by David Epstein.

Transcript

Michael Horn

Jeff, sometimes I imagine that our audience thinks we talk too much about athletics on this podcast. 

But then I look back at our archives. And outside of our episode earlier this year on sports gambling in colleges, we haven't dedicated a full episode to college athletics since October 2024.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Michael, that feels probably too long since we've actually done a whole episode on the topic because, you know, as you know, Michael, college sports continues to get upended in all sorts of ways. 

And while it's hard to figure out where the shakeout might land, what's clear is that athletics will have a seismic impact on, really, on the day-to-day experiences at colleges and whether some schools even survive.

Michael Horn

So Jeff, as we continue to paint a picture of where the puck is going in higher education, today we dive into the messy topic that is college athletics with Karen Weaver, a former field hockey coach of the year, athletic director and author, and currently the academic director of the collegiate athletic certificate program at the University of Pennsylvania. That's ahead on this episode of Future U.

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Michael Horn

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo

And I'm Jeff Selingo.

Michael Horn

Jeff, let's just, say it upfront. This is an ever-moving target. 

Even, you know, since we recorded our interview with Karen just a couple weeks ago, more developments keep unfolding in college athletics. 

The University of Arkansas restored its tennis program. I caught wind of that just as we were recording, so I sorta referenced it might happen. And then there's this piece of legislation, the Protect College Sports Act, that actually has a chance of getting 60 plus votes in the senate according to Matt Brown of Extra Points. 

So it is hard to pin all of this down right now. 

But before we dive into our interview with Karen, I'd love to hear your own lightning round take. 

Why is this topic critical? Why should our listeners care about college athletics?

Jeff Selingo

Well, Michael, I really see it through the lens of finances more than anything. 

You know, I happen to really love college sports, but even if you're not a college sports fan, the fact that these athletics departments — and we'll talk about Division I first and then Division III — but that these athletic departments have essentially become their own shadow universities. 

And when I really saw that was last year, I got invited up to the EACUBO, so the Eastern NACUBO. So these are financial officers in the Eastern Region of the United States. They're members of kind of the National Association of College Business Officers, and they had a whole track just on college athletics. Right? 

Now there are CFOs now, not of the entire university, but just the athletics department now at many of these Division I institutions. Right? We know we have a whole academic and student affairs group that sits within athletics now. 

So in many ways, they become like an entire shadow university that sits off to the side here, in colleges and universities. So I think that's the first thing we should think about at the Division I level. 

And then at the Division III level, you know, we just heard from Doug Moore on a recent episode how incredibly important athletics has become to the enrollment management function of Division III, institutions, and in some cases, have become too important, and thus many of these colleges and universities are losing money because they have too many athletes, in seats at their university. 

So whether you're a college athletics fan or not, whether you're at a Division I institution or a Division III institution, you probably should be paying attention because I don't think that anyone is really following the money and how much these colleges and universities are spending on it.

Michael Horn

Alright. Well, with that context, let's bring Karen on. 

As we said upfront, she was a field hockey coach of the year. She's enjoyed a long storied career as a coach and athletic director, teaches at Penn. She's the author of the textbook, "Sport Finance: Where the Money Comes From and Where the Money Goes," as well as the forthcoming book from Johns Hopkins Press titled "Understanding College Athletics: What Campus Leaders Need to Know About College Sports." 

And full disclosure, she had me on her own podcast titled Trustees and Presidents, a podcast for university leaders and college athletics.

So I'm excited for this conversation, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. 

And I think just her titles of her books. Right? This idea of where the money goes, I think, is absolutely critical, and that's why we thought she'd be a great guest to help us understand this current moment, how things might unfold, and perhaps how things should unfold. 

So, Karen, welcome to Future U.

Karen Weaver

Thanks for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here with you both.

Jeff Selingo

Well, we're really looking forward to this conversation. 

And, you know, you've noted that college leaders and boards kind of don't pay attention to the complex business of sports. And, you know, my simple take on this after spending time with both presidents and boards is that I always thought that academic presidents aren't always fans, and boards have too many fans on them. 

And so that in essence, maybe they kinda cancel each other out. What are both sides missing at a very high level about college athletics?

Karen Weaver

I think it's the overwhelming agendas that they have when they see each other. 

You know, you all have sat through enough board meetings to know that they are just jam-packed. I saw one board packet this year that had very substantial athletics changes, but the packet was 900 pages. I mean, how do you get through that as a board member? And many of these positions are volunteer. I think it's problematic. 

And I think we ran ... We didn't do ourselves any favors a decade and a half ago when we said, 'You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have subcommittees on athletics. That allows our boards to act too much like fans and stick their nose where it doesn't belong.' I really push back on that today. 

I think this is so complex that you've gotta have subcommittees of more-focused experts who can then do the translation to the rest of their colleagues and ask good questions. And I think that's something we really need to move towards.

Jeff Selingo

So, you know, one thing that's getting a lot of attention these days, of course, is the transfer portal. 

You know, we're seeing Division III schools luring Division I athletes in some cases, and there's just such this flurry of movement of athletes that just didn't happen before. 

And I'm kind of curious how this impacts student retention and graduation rates. You know, because those are those academic measures that graduation rates were first designed for. If you remember back in the '90s, the reason why we have graduation rates today is because Bill Bradley and Tom McMillan wanted to make sure that we had graduation rates of athletes, and the only way we could get graduation rates of athletes, we had to compare them to everybody else. 

And so if colleges see their main mission as retention and graduation rates, how does that play with now the transfer portal?

Karen Weaver

It doesn't. And I don't think we're really gonna know for a couple more years because we're still relatively new in the transfer portal era. But you read some of these stories and athletes, you know, are supposedly only changing schools once a year, but they're really not even taking their academics seriously, and they're not really there. They're shopping around for the best deal. 

And, Jeff, one of the things I saw a couple days ago is a great story in the Wall Street Journal about Florida and of what school choice has meant to athletes transferring in high school and the unlimited ability to move because of the way we define school choice. And I worry about that because that's certainly a part of our society believes strongly in school choice. And why should athletes have the inhibited manner of not being able to transfer when they feel that they want to? Their interests have changed. Another school offered a new major. 

You know, why are athletes treated differently? I think that's a fair question.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. 

And all this goes around this conversation, right, around mission and what really is the mission of a college, you know, beyond the athletics conversation. You recently wrote an op ed where you argued college leaders, they frankly used to pay a lot more attention to how college athletics fit into that mission. Right? They could have a coherent statement, about both sides of the house, if you will. 

But the question I have is with college athletics becoming even more commercialized, is mission alignment really still realistic, or are we sort of kidding ourselves around this conversation?

Karen Weaver

So if things stay the way they are, and obviously there are forces outside of this right now that are desperately trying to change this, Congress being one of them, antitrust lawyers being another, you know, in public sentiment because, this has been part of all of higher ed's reckoning, if you will, in this situation. 

I think for the vast majority of institutions, mission is very important. 

I think for the subset of institutions that are valued media properties — and I would put though the Big 10, the SEC, and a few of the ACC, and a few of the Big 12 in there. They have a different agenda, and that's  where the discussion has really been happening because it's all about more money, more money, more money. 

But so many other schools are not gonna be able to compete in that space. So what should they revert to? Their mission.

Michael Horn

I wanna come back to the financial piece of this, but you brought up, obviously, Congress and the federal government activity, so maybe go there, which is the Trump administration. 

As you know, they've become much more active on college sports policy in particular, including, we got a White House roundtable. We have an executive order touching everything from transfer limits to athlete eligibility. We know that congress has also been debating bipartisan legislation to bring some relief to colleges. What's really needed from Washington in your view versus, you know, the Overton window? What's really possible right now?

Karen Weaver

I think what's needed for one subset of the top 35 or 40 schools is different than what's needed for everybody else, and I think that's where we have real issues with who's governing college sports. So we really need a governing platform that works for different constituencies. 

Some people have argued that regionalization of everything but football and men's basketball, in other words, not traveling as much, playing more local competition might solve that. 

But it doesn't solve the money problem. It doesn't solve some of the demands on the athlete's time in terms of medical care and strength training. 

We have allowed athletics in the last 20 years, and I coached 30 years ago. But there's about 33% to 35% more competitions on a college athlete's schedule today than there was then. We just keep adding because we think that's a good thing. Right? Give them more opportunity. Drive more revenue. Give us a chance to be excited throughout the year. 

You can't tell me that men's basketball is half of the fall and half of the spring anymore. It's all year round. And so I think we have to look at what is appropriate in terms of the time demands. That's looking at ourselves first versus just constantly looking for the next tournament, the next opportunity, because I do think that's taken a toll on our athletes.

Michael Horn

So you mentioned treating colleges in different tiers effectively. Right? And sort of being realistic about that. 

You've described revenue sharing more broadly as a potential financial death spiral for many schools. I'm assuming that's outside of the 35 to 40 colleges. And so at the same time though, obviously, athletics departments, they're still acting, operating as tax-exempt nonprofits while they're bringing in millions of dollars in certain cases at the top of the system. 

So I'm curious if that tax status were challenged, would it force maybe overdue financial, you know, discipline into the system, or would it just simply destabilize this whole enterprise even more?

Karen Weaver

I think if it happened, I think it would accelerate the breakup. I really do. 

Senator Maria Cantwell has been very interested in this. She sent a lot of letters to presidents asking them questions about their tax status. 

You can't say that these are not commercial enterprises, especially the way the multimedia rights has been expanding around the hospitality and stadium experience, around creating a storyline or a storytelling around media experiences. 

All of that drives revenues for a good reason right now because we're in an arms race. 

But at some point, have to say, 'When does that become taxable income?' Because they don't fall under the nonprofit status unless it's carved out. So I think it's a legitimate concern. I really do.

Michael Horn

Now, football and basketball obviously dominate a lot of this conversation when we think about college athletics, but I wanna turn to Olympic sports, women's sports, others, right, and how they fit in both financially as well as strategically and into the mission conversation as well. 

From an outsider's perspective, big tennis fan here, having watched the University of Arkansas, maybe cut its tennis program. We'll see where the final bell tolls on that one. It seems like everyone's just trying to figure out how to monetize those sports as well. 

But it seems at least to me that that could send us down the very same road we're on with football and basketball. And so I'm curious, like, how does this, how should it play out with all the other sports that don't get nearly as much ink?

Karen Weaver

So I think you're right. 

I think the only model we know is what we've seen work in football and basketball, and therefore, we must apply that same model to everything else because it's consistent. 

I'm gonna sidetrack a little bit and tell you a little bit of a story. One of the things that we know in this explosion of women's sports in this era is that they have an entirely different fan base, an entirely different fan base that is more interested in different kinds of products, different kinds of marketing, different kinds of engagement, and that type of thing. Yet we don't get that on college campuses. We see the same commercials, the same, you know, engagement activities that always work for the men, but we haven't had the bandwidth to try it for the women. 

And I think that might apply too for Olympic sports. Right? You might have people who say, you know, that might work for basketball, but it doesn't work for track and field. So what do we do to create that audience, to sustain that audience differently?

And I think there are a number of companies out there right now. There's one founded by Angela Ruggiero, who's a four time gold medalist in the Olympics for USA hockey. And she was brilliant about it. She said, 'Our fans are different than the men's fans, so let's try to recognize that.' 

Same thing for all the Olympic sports. The tennis fan is different than the field hockey fan.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. It's interesting, Karen. 

By the way, you should take over a department somewhere because two things you just said really resonated with me. One was, you know, I heard Alex Rodriguez talk about this with the NBA and the WNBA. Right? This is why the WNBA is so successful because it really is a different fan base. 

And when owners start to realize that, they realize all this new money they could be making. And I think the Olympic sports, Michael and I were just talking about this recently, like, you know, there's such a fan base around tennis in the U.S., around golf, but yet, like in college, none of those things create the excitement that March Madness or college football create. 

Well, why not? Why can't we create better tournaments around those things? It's amazing to me, and I'm glad you brought both of those things up. 

But I wanted to ask you another question around where is the safe haven right now for colleges in sports? 

Because is dropping down to, say, Division II or Division III kind of better for colleges if they're underwater in D-I, or isn't that realistic? 

You know, Michael and I were with a president recently at a very well known D-I program, but it's also an institution well known for academic and research. And we asked that question. And that president basically said, 'Never.' Right? I'm never gonna do it unless everyone else does it. Right? 

There's a little bit of an arms race here. Right? Like, I'm not gonna put down my weapons until you put down your weapons.

Karen Weaver

Yes. 100%.

I don't think it's the answer just to automatically look at D-II and D-III, and I'm gonna go a little further. I'm gonna say that I'm not sure these three classifications really work for us anymore. I think we have such a wide range of colleges trying to do a wide range of things, particularly in this new era of trying to be more connected to the workplace, connected to the families, that type of thing. We all don't look the same. 

Three worked. We actually the NCAA used to have two. It was large school and small school. And Division II, if you ask any president or even an athletic director, most of them will tell you, 'Well, we're the ones that can still give scholarships.' And they define Division III as they can't give scholarships. There's got to be more to it than that. 

And, yes, I will argue on behalf of Division III and say so many of those schools are academically focused, but you look at their programs, I see very few two-sport athletes. That used to be a common thing on Division III campuses because the length of the seasons have grown to mirror to look like what Division I and Division II do.

Jeff Selingo

Interesting. So what happens then for those institutions that simply can't afford to keep up? Is contraction kind of inevitable?

Karen Weaver

So this is what I spend most of my day thinking about because we I'm not worried about the Big 10, the SEC schools. They're gonna find a way to figure it out. 

But there are so many schools who've taken great pride in being Division I. Right? That's part of our core identity. It's part of our R-1, D-I status in the academia world. Oh, I know that Syracuse conducted an informal poll with their faculty and they said, you know, if we leave Division I, what impact will that have on you? And some of the comments were, well, we'll lose our research status. 

Now I'm trying to understand how research status impacts your ability to be in Division I. So that's an interesting psychological study right there as to how that works. 

But I think there's some value in that because one of the most robust academic alliances in the country is with the Big Ten. And so everybody who comes into that cites that as one of the main drivers outside of athletic competition to join that academic consortium. 

But I really wonder if, in fact, the NCAA has the bandwidth to be able to cover all of these different sections. And in fact, I was just listening to a webinar before I got on with you all. I understand that congress in their discussions and their lobbying going on right now is not, knighting, if you will, the NCAA as the 'be all end all going' forward if we end up changing. There might be a second association. There might be a different association. 

So maybe that answer comes in relooking at how we align ourselves.

Jeff Selingo

And so in other words, if there were more options, then contraction wouldn't seem as defeatist as it would right now to go from ... If you're Syracuse and you think you're big time because you've been in Division I for so long and you had national championships in basketball and you had Donovan McNabb as quarterback at one time. Right? I could understand why you wouldn't wanna go down. 

But if there was an option that it didn't feel like it was going down, maybe it would be better.

Karen Weaver

Can I add one more thing to that? I think we've allowed ourselves as college sports to be defined by what media revenues are. And the media companies are picking and choosing the winners and losers in this. We have no control over that. I think we need to take back our definition of what a winner and loser is, and that will help us not chase after these Saturday night at 07:30 big games or the postseason playoff, because that's what the media companies want to drive their revenues. But what do we want? What's most important to us?

Jeff Selingo

You know, that's an interesting point because it goes back to this idea that athletics is this, like, front porch of the university. We think it's so important because it's the way people get to know us. But given all these new investments, does that really still justify kind of the spending that we're doing? Like, is it still worth it to kind of maintain that front porch?

Karen Weaver

I don't know. That's a good question. I think a lot about it, and I talk about it in my book that's coming out in August. 

I think you really have to go back to what's realistic and a phrase I like to use with my students at Penn is, 'Skate to where the puck is going and you can see what the media contracts what they're interested in. They're interested in the top 18 to 30.' They're never gonna give you a million dollars to be on TV. So how are you gonna craft that kind of exposure in your own way? 

It used to be athletics, you know, and the local paper was all you wanted, but the Gen Z doesn't read the local paper anymore. So you gotta be on TikTok. You gotta be on Instagram. That takes creativity. That creates storytelling, and that creates engaging with Gen Z and then, of course, the generation after that.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. So last question, Karen, because we've gone through a lot here, and this is a big one. So say you were allowed to be the czar — you're not now just in charge of one single athletics department, but now you're the czar over everything, more powerful than even leading the NCAA. 

How would you rearrange college athletics to handle these challenges that we've discussed and the competing interests at the table?

Karen Weaver

Yeah. I think the highest level should break away. And that way, they can talk about collective bargaining, they can talk about employment, and they can even discuss whether college athletes should be full-time students. I mean, there might even be a legitimate claim to... They'll get their degree after they get done playing. I mean, there might be some of that. 

But for the vast majority of us, I think they would welcome the opportunity to get off the treadmill and say this is unsustainable for the rest of our academic enterprise. 

Can we all come together and put something that matters to us not necessarily ABC, NBC, Disney, and Prime Video and that we feel is worthwhile for our investment but also is beneficial for our athletes. 

And I wonder if they're not under so much pressure right now to, you know, become a brand or to leave and with honors and go on to the next level. Maybe we just need to just break it down a notch and just say, 'This is not the most important thing in your college experience. It's a holistic experience.'

Michael Horn

Terrific. Karen, thank you so much for joining us on Future U, and we're gonna bring you right back at the end, after Jeff and I have had a chance to reflect and react to all this. So, everyone listening, stay tuned. We'll be right back. Oh, welcome back to Future U. Jeff, before we dive into the specifics from this episode, I'm having this bigger takeaway, for me anyway, from this whole season actually of Future U. You talked a couple episodes ago about the importance of creating public funding models that were reflective of a school's mission — what we really want them to optimize on, the outcomes we really want — and then allow schools to earn prestige within those categories and essentially become larger, better funded presumably as they do that. And then today, Karen talked about the importance of dividing athletics along different divisions, different classification systems. 

She basically said, look, this D-I, D-II, D-III thing doesn't really cut it anymore — so that schools could really align athletics with their missions as well, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. And I think often, and we've done a whole episode on the new Carnegie classifications, whether we should align the Carnegie classifications to college athletics. Right? 

So this is what a college wants to achieve. These are the students they enroll. This is whether they're a major research university, more community-based, you know, university, like, whatever their goals are on the academic side and then align that with college athletics. Right? Rather than we're either Division I, II, or III, or by the way, we're in the ACC or the Big 12 or the Big 10. Right? Think differently about both the leagues and the conferences as well as the division that they're in. 

The other thing that I've been thinking about, Michael, is there's a lot of shadows going on in the university. I talked earlier about kind of the shadow university that sits within athletics, but the growth of club sports at colleges and universities is really fascinating me. Right? 

We already have kind of a different league beyond varsity sports operating. Think of it as JV. And many of these colleges where club sports are you know, they compete against, other institutions. They have conference championships or championships just like varsity sports does, but they operate outside of the NCAA, and they also operate outside of the athletics department. 

And in many ways, that's become a problem at colleges and universities because it creates a big risk. Right? You have athletes getting injured. You have athletes, you know, running into academic trouble, but they don't sit within the infrastructure that we were talking about of athletics earlier. 

And I'm wondering if there's a way to kind of recreate what used to be kind of a JV and a varsity team, but under the auspices more of a college athletics program that is not trying to compete against, you know, the very powerful, you know, Big 10 and SEC-type of institutions. 

And we just need to create room for that because, I will tell you, I've been talking to some people about club sports. You know, some of these club athletes are really good. In fact, they could actually be on the varsity team. They just don't wanna play on that team. 

And I think as we continue to ratchet up, Division I, particularly athletics, you know, if you're sitting at UCLA and you have to travel all the way because you're on the varsity team to State College, Pennsylvania, might it be better to be on the club sport team instead?

Michael Horn

Yeah. I so a couple thoughts spurred out of that, Jeff. 

Number one, I'm quite drawn to this idea you just painted, right, of club sports with a little bit more support, around those sports, and sort of more sanctioned, if you will, but that amateurism, if you will, preserved. 

And what I'm nervous about is as we construct perhaps different classifications that it just won't become another arms race, if you will, like the Carnegie classifications traditionally were. We're trying to escape that right now. 

But I guess I'm skeptical here because I think for this to work and not become an arms race for schools to level up and say, wanna join the Big 10 or the SEC, in this, you know, maybe 35 to 40 school different set of rules that Karen outlined. It comes back to funding, like you said, around funding consistent with the school's mission. Matt Brown recently just had a post about applying for the Wisconsin AD job, and he had this line of, like, 'Be the best Wisconsin you can be. Don't try to be Ohio State.' 

All well and good, except that Ohio State gets a lot of money, and that has its certain prestige and so forth. And what we found, you know, Clay Christensen, me, others in that orbit have found consistently in our own research, is that in most nonprofit arenas, revenue, money, it tends to equate to prestige. It's sort of like it fills in the blank, and it is hard to break that connection. 

So I guess I'm a little more skeptical that we can finagle our way out of that unless you have different ways of making money to showcase excellence in different divisions. 

But I don't know how that's gonna drive, you know, given that major media contracts and such are the things that are actually unlocking revenue, it seems, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. I mean but, Michael, I'm still not quite sure we really know the ROI of college athletics. Right? 

How much of enrollment is a direct result of being in Division I? 

How much of fundraising is a direct result of being in Division I? Right?

I still think that many people in higher ed think of the Flutie effect, but that was 40 years ago, you know, when Doug Flutie threw that pass, in the Orange Bowl. Right? It was in the Orange Bowl. And so, you know, and that's when college athletics was a much less-expensive endeavor. 

Now I know we're probably gonna get emails and letters from listeners who say, 'Yeah, but Indiana this year. Right? Indiana football.' But just imagine that if Indiana spent that money on improving academics or freezing tuition, would it still have the same result in terms of enrollment and love that it got because it won the national championship in football? 

And trust me, I say this as a huge sports fan, but I really do think that we don't know the ROI. 

And Michael, we were both at this fascinating gathering at GSV a couple of months ago where it was focused on college athletics. And we heard from a chancellor there who basically said, 'Given the arms race now in Division I, and when they went to donors, their major donors who have donated to athletics in the past, they were kinda tapped out.' Right? They said, 'You know, well, we really wanna — you know, this is a university also with a major medical center — you know, we'd rather donate to the new cancer wing at the medical center, or we'd rather donate to this initiative at the university.' 

And the more that we ratchet this up on the money side without really knowing the ROI, the more money I think that we take away from other parts of the university, particularly when it comes to fundraising.

Michael Horn

So that makes me, like, in some weird way happy to hear that, Jeff, because I think it's more in line with the missions that we want from these institutions. 

But I will tell you, at that same conversation, you know, there were presidents and others citing academic papers or internal research where they were like, 'Hey, each additional win of a football game corresponds to X percentage points more applications.' They had a lot of numbers around that. 

So they certainly feel like they know what the ROI is. And maybe they're not always scientifically basing investment out of that, but they certainly, justified or not, feel like they have a link there. 

And so I think this touches anyway on a couple more of the reactions I had, from our conversation with Karen that I'm just not sure how we get around. And I'll throw myself out of the bus a little bit here, Jeff. Like, I'm the person who likes capitalism, maybe one of the few Harvard faculty members who does. But I'm worried about the impact of money here, to your point. Like, I think it's great if they'll spend on the medical center and so forth, but you've made the point, and Karen also made the point, that there are huge opportunities to get revenue and viewership for, say, the Olympic sports, women's sports. Right? 

The non football and basketball, basically, in what you might call in my language, non-consumers. Right? People who don't follow those sports but would love to watch, you know, women's field hockey or something like that. Tons of opportunities to bring more people in. And I agree with you. I think there are revenue opportunities there. 

But I worry that then chasing that strand will just lead us to the very same problems we're currently staring down in college athletics, where athletic success and money become the goals more than the actual missions of the schools themselves. 

And maybe you're right. Like, the donors are gonna actually surprise us here and be a corrective, but I feel like actually we can figure out ways to monetize and make these sports sustainable, but it also feels like that might be a double-edged sword. 

And I'm not sure that's what we want colleges to be doing. Right? Maybe we want colleges to focus and pick a couple sports to go deep in and make money there, but I don't know. Do we really wanna professionalize that in the college arena, or do we wanna figure out a different way in this country to stand up those sports and sort of decouple professional athletics from colleges, frankly, like the rest of the world does, Jeff?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. I remember talking a couple of seasons ago about this. Right? This idea of decoupling higher education from sports, much like other countries have done. Personally, I just think that ship has sailed. I think it's gonna be almost impossible to decouple it now. So okay. So what can we do to make it more sustainable? 

But I, like you, worry, well, if we bring in more cash to the system, will it just kind of, you know, take this arms race in a different direction even if we're bringing more cash in for baseball or golf. Right? 

So there's two ideas here. One is I know that this is something you're really interested in again from this conversation at the GSV conference where they had this separate little group on college athletics, this idea about bringing it more into the work-integrated learning mission of the university, right, this apprenticeship. 

So I know that you probably wanna talk more about that, so I'll let you do that, more so. But this idea of, like, how can we learn those skills that we know everybody needs, but athletes can learn, while being athletes, in college. 

I also love this idea. I do think there are more-sustainable ways of bringing in money more than just from football and basketball. I'm kinda tired of us talking about these sports on two different levels. You know, I just got back from Milken a couple of weeks ago, and the thing I always love about Milken is they always do a separate track, or they always do a track on athletics in general, you know, professional sports more so than college athletics. But you hear from all of these other leagues, particularly, for example, the WNBA, and we know that women's basketball does very well in college as well. 

But, you know, there is a thirst right now for live sports. There's a thirst for women's sports, and there's not as much of an overlap in audience between women's sports and men's sports. It just makes me wonder, like, think about all those Olympic sports. Like, you know, women's and men's swimming is huge at the Olympics. So why can't we make women's and men's swimming in the NCAA just as big? Right? 

Golf. Golf is a huge sport on TV. Why can't we do the same? Tennis, as you know, huge sport on TV at the professional level. Why can't we do that more in college? Like, I think this idea that we have a very old way of thinking about, 'Well, it's just about football and basketball.' Increasingly, we know in the last couple years, it's been about women's basketball, but that's it. You know, all these other sports will just kind of continue to, you know, run them the way we always have, and I just feel like that's a very old model. 

I'm reminded, Michael, when the Pac 12 broke up, and there was, remember, there was this whole debate about Apple wanting to come in and kind of covering, you know, covering college sports the way it was starting to cover professional sports. And if you remember, some of the chancellors and presidents were against that because it wasn't ESPN or ABC or CBS, and, you know, that was just a couple of years ago. But just think of what has happened to linear TV in that time period. 

And now we expect, you know, Peacock and Netflix and Amazon to run professional sports, so why can't we do the same thing with college sports and, again, make this more sustainable? 

And I understand that there's this trade-off that you're worried about. Well, we'll just create a new arms race. But the arms race is there, and so to me, it is about finding new revenue sources.

Michael Horn

I like how you're the realist here, and I'm the dreamer at the moment. But I don't know if it's a reversal, but it's something. 

I will say I am quite intrigued with this idea if we can better connect what you just were talking about before, the athletics to, you know, work-integrated learning in the development of what I'll call specifically, like, durable skills and things that people want, you know, students, graduates, showing up to work with. 

We hear a lot about the importance of communication, being able to work in teams, leadership, etc, etc. Perhaps the best place we do that in society actually is in youth sports. Can we formalize that? 

You brought up in the interview with Karen, you know, Bill Bradley, sort of driving the data and measurement of graduation rates because of athletics. Maybe athletics could be the way we also drive the actual rigorous measurement of durable skills because right now, we're not doing a very good job. We talk a lot about that stuff. We know ETS, Carnegie Foundation, others have a bunch of efforts to do that at both the K-12 and higher ed levels, Brandeis and others involved in that. But, that'd be pretty cool if we could measure that in athletics and figure out how it transfers and sort of give way to Jim Kim, the former head of the World Bank and Dartmouth president. He used to always say, 'You wanna hire someone? Hire an athlete because they've got great work ethic, great leadership skills, etc, etc.' So that'd be interesting. 

One other thing on this, I think the other place though that the chase for revenue and sustainability becomes a big problem is the length of season and the demand on athletes, frankly, at the expense of what we today think of around academics unless we define it around the things that you've just talked about in terms of apprenticeships and so forth. 

And Karen talked about the dramatic growth in the length of seasons and the number of competitions. 

I'll just say, like, this is a theme across all youth sports. This isn't just college right now. David Epstein, whom we both know and really enjoy his work, before his most recent book about the importance of constraints, he had this book called "Range." Basically, he said the research is pretty clear outside of a couple sports. Being a generalist is better until you specialize, but youth sports continues to make people specialize more and more. I was talking to him or I asked question recently at a book talk he gave, and I said, is there any hope for us as parents to escape this? And he was like, nah, that the money is clear, they're going against the evidence, and the U.S. sort of succeeds in athletics despite our approach, not because of it. Look at Norway with a dramatically smaller population. They generalize before they specialize, and it's much healthier, and they do much better in the Olympics. 

Man, we just seem stuck on this, Jeff. And I continue to worry about the financial interests driving these things that aren't actually in the interests of kids unless maybe we crack this nut that we were just talking about in terms of work and durable skills.

Jeff Selingo

Well, and I think it also comes back to why are people ‘all in’ on youth sports. Right? Is it just for activity? Is it just for health?

Michael Horn

College scholarships.

Jeff Selingo

Right? Or is it college scholarships, which, by the way, really don't exist Right. For most students.

Michael Horn

Right.

Jeff Selingo

It's a myth. Right? It's a myth. And or is It a way in? Right? It's a hook, we know, at highly selective colleges. But, again, on both those fronts, we're talking about the shot of getting into the NBA. Right? We're talking about the chances of the Knicks making the playoffs. Oh, or making the finals. Oh, well, they did. Oh, boy. I just had to throw that in there for your Celtics fan. Sorry.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah, you just stabbed me there.

Jeff Selingo

But aren't you happy for New York?

Michael Horn

It's fun. It's fun.

Jeff Selingo

Okay. It's fun. So, you know, I just think that as we think about college athletics and now its connection to youth athletics, you know, one thing that we didn't really talk much about is also injuries, and the amount of students who get to college because of the repetitive motions of youth sports now not really making it through college. Right? 

And we know, and again, this conversation we had at GSV was fascinating. There's such a move now to win quickly in college because of this arms race that you hire coaches who coach in a certain way to get athletes ready for the first game rather than thinking about their long-term career. 

I think we have to ... Somebody has to start to think about the entire life-cycle of an athlete, and maybe this is where pro sports raises their hand and says, 'Okay. In exchange for some money, youth sports and college athletic departments, we wanna slow the development process down because you're bringing us athletes who are broken in many ways. Or they're not ready for prime time. And in order to slow that down, we're going to give you money. 

Now, you know, we know some presidents who were at that gathering with us in San Diego at GSV who talked particularly about that. Right? Like, the role of pro sports teams and pro sports leagues in giving money to colleges to, you know, make up for what they need on the money front. 

It's so complicated, Michael. I just really don't know, how to solve this problem because there's so many players in it. There's so much money at stake right now.

Michael Horn

Yeah. But this is the best idea I've actually heard, Jeff, in terms of having some long-term thinking because it's in the interest of leagues, right, to get better talent, better developed for them to not be injured and broken when they get there, etc, etc. Let me ask two more questions. First, she talked about this tie that faculty perceived between research prestige and athletics prestige. Can you unpack that one a bit more on the surface? It's seems crazy.

Jeff Selingo

I love that one because I remember, you know, what was it, ten, fifteen years ago when Nebraska was thrown out of the AAU, Syracuse walked out, on on its own, and there was this idea that, like, to be prestigious, you have to have big-time sports and big-time research. 

And it was really interesting, Michael, when the Big 10 expanded, if you remember, they were looking largely for institutions that are already in the AAU. Right? So they really see this connection between athletics and academics. 

And, you know, there was a project that I did. I worked on for the Big 10 Academic Alliance years ago, and there was this idea like so the Big 10 Academic Alliance is essentially an academic group that sits alongside the athletics conference itself. Right? So it's the presidents, the provosts. You know, they meet, just like they would meet in any other association. The presidents do, not to talk about athletics all the time, but to talk about academics and research. 

And the project that I worked on under this grant was the idea was, like, could we create these similarly-situated academic conferences alongside, for example, the ACC, the SEC, you know, the Big 12 at that time or the or the Pac 12. Right? And every time I talk to people in any of those other conferences outside the Big 10, the first thing they told me is like, 'Well, you know, in the ACC, you know, Louisville and Duke don't see each other the same way.' Right? Because they don't think they're in the same league. Right? 

So there is this idea that prestige comes from what athletic league you're in. Remember when the Pac 12 exploded and, you know, University of Washington and ASU and, you know, UCLA and Stanford? Remember, they were all trying to find a home. And how many of them wanted to go to the Big 10? Because that was seen as more prestigious for their kind of research function, for their academic function.

Michael Horn

So interesting. Alright. 

Final question. Is this why we need subcommittees on boards with expertise in these areas who are fundamentally fiduciaries to the mission of the school itself, Jeff? And perhaps can think in the long term, not the short term of the markets or follow the money, but the long term of where this heads if we don't sort of peer around the corners and think about some of the worries that I've expressed, in this back half.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Michael, I'm not even quite sure if subcommittee is good enough. I'm wondering if they need a whole new governance structure totally. Right? Like, is there an entire board? Maybe it still reports to the board of trustees at an institution. But is there an entirely different board that oversees these departments? Because I'm not quite sure, given the work of a board, whether a subcommittee is going to be substantial enough to really manage these operations.

Michael Horn

Alright. A few big ideas coming out of this episode. Let's leave our conversation there, and we'll bring Karen back for our final lightning round. And, Karen, good to see you. Three lightning round questions been popular with folks this season around here on Future U. 

First question for you, thinking back to when you were a student, what was your favorite class in college and why?

Karen Weaver

Well, the class that I started off my freshman year was, American history. I thought I was gonna become a history major. But by the time I got to my junior year, I really wanted to study exercise physiology. So I spent time in graduate school in biology classes and things like that. 

So I would say exercise physiology.

Michael Horn

Now along those lines, if you could have picked a class that was not offered, but you wish it was there, what class would that have been to fill in that college experience, but it wasn't offered back then?

Karen Weaver

I would say, since I was leaning into becoming a coach, I would have liked more coaching management. I really was, you know, just kinda making it up. 

Now I was early in the days of, you know, Title IX and all that type of thing. But coaching management would have been good.

Michael Horn

Well, you were though somehow, you know, figured it out because you were named coach of the year back, in the '80s by USA Today. 

So, you know, given that you've been involved with college sports your whole career, and you were this longtime coach as well, how are student athletes different today than back when you were first coaching?

Karen Weaver

I feel like we worry so much, and rightfully so, about mental health. 

I just didn't see the same kinds of stress that they put on themselves nor that their families put on them. Their families were just happy they were having a good time, but now the pressure to get more playing time, the pressure to get more awards, the chance to even for some athletes to sit on the bench and win a national championship, I would have rather been playing somewhere else. But I just don't know if the value propositions are the same. 

And part of that is also the amount of pressure being put on youth sports and the idea to try to, you know, chase that national championship, that scholarship via the youth program you're involved in. 

So that's a whole other conversation.

Michael Horn

But an important one nonetheless, Karen. 

Thank you so much for joining us, on this episode of Future U. And for all of our listeners, remember to subscribe, rate us, and do all the things around that, and we'll see you next time on Future U.