AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — An arms race for talent in the two sports that generate nearly all of the revenue for university athletics departments is threatening Olympic sports at even the best-resourced schools, inviting fear from athletes, administrators and the highest reaches of the federal government about the future of those programs.
Congress this week is expected to consider two bills — one from the U.S. House and one from the U.S. Senate — that could give the NCAA more power to set its own rules without the threat of litigation and, lawmakers hope, help non-revenue sports and athletes that form the backbone of the nation’s Olympic movement. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April outlining his ideas and policies to “save college sports.”
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Schools are cutting those Olympic or non-revenue sports, which cost more money than they generate. It’s especially true as football and men’s basketball use more of the revenue they bring in, especially with new rules that allow colleges to share revenue with athletes.
More than 415 college teams have been cut, merged or reclassified since March 2024, according to one report due to financial strains. More than 40 Division I Olympic sports programs — including swimming, tennis and track — were cut between May 2024 and July 2025, according to Bloomberg Law. Arkansas, from the mighty Southeastern Conference, recently cut its men’s and women’s tennis teams only to reinstate them after donors rallied with short-term funding.
“The pressures are real, and you feel it,” Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips said last week at the conference’s annual spring meetings in Amelia Island, Florida. “And what you don’t want to have happen is the loss of opportunities.”
For decades, the profit generated by football and, to a lesser extent at most schools, men’s basketball subsidized the school’s other sports. The NCAA requires Division I schools to sponsor 16 sports, including at least six men’s and eight women’s sports. There’s always been financial tension and struggle for athletics departments, trying to balance a budget. For years, critics contended that football and men’s basketball players were being taken advantage of by the system which generated enormous sums off their labor but provided only a scholarship in return.
But a $2.8-billion settlement in a landmark case against the NCAA brought with it a new expense: direct revenue sharing with athletes.
In 2025-26, the first year of the new rules agreed to as part of the settlement, universities could share up to $20.5 million with athletes. Nearly all of that money is going to football and men’s basketball. The new rules reduced the size of some rosters but allowed schools to fund scholarships for every team member.
University of North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham described his department’s philosophy like this: “Commercial activity goes to those that generate it, the educational benefits are going to go to the sports that have been previously subsidized.”
The $20.5 million was supposed to be an upper limit. It has instead become a baseline that, combined with name, image and likeness (NIL) payments facilitated through schools, has pushed roster costs higher and higher. Departments have taken some of the money they used to get from third parties and diverted those into NIL deals for their athletes. That has reduced the money available to support other programs. Universities have funneled more money to support athletics, which themselves are seeking additional dollars everywhere.
The University of North Carolina and NC State are trying to sell naming rights to their football stadiums. NC State received an endowment for its athletics director position and is trying to sell naming rights to trophy cases at Reynolds Coliseum. The NCAA now allows schools to sell advertisements on jerseys. NC State is hosting concerts at Carter-Finley Stadium. UNC hosted the popular Savannah Bananas baseball team for two days, which generated more than $1 million for the athletics department.
“There’s no doubt that the cost of supporting collegiate athletics is continuing to rise,” said Steve Newmark, UNC’s executive associate athletics director. “There’s somewhat of an irrational arms race in the player market, and that’s just part of the landscape now, and we have to adjust to it.”
Funding Olympic sports
All programs generate some revenue. At some schools, sports such as women’s basketball, baseball, ice hockey, volleyball and even gymnastics bring in millions. But across the NCAA, the Olympic or non-revenue sports aren’t paying for themselves.
Which has left some vulnerable to cuts. In recent months, Gardner-Webb, Saint Louis and North Dakota announced they were cutting their men’s and women’s tennis teams. Illinois State is cutting its men’s program. Arkansas and Gardner-Webb reached the NCAA Tournament in men’s tennis this spring.
Arkansas reversed its decision this week after donors provided short-term funding for both programs. The school is seeking a significant endowment, which its AD called “the only feasible long-term solution to ensure the sustainability of our tennis programs.”
It might be the way of the future for sports such as golf, tennis and others with supporters asked to fund their existence. Wake Forest won national titles in women’s golf in 2023 and men’s tennis in 2025.
“We believe there’s a pathway to essentially fully operating sports like men’s golf, women’s golf, men’s tennis with the contributions and support from people that really care about seeing elite student-athletes perform at the highest level,” Wake Forest athletics director John Currie told WRAL.
Four ACC athletes, three of them from Olympic sports, led a panel discussion at last week’s conference meetings. They expressed concern about the future of their sports.
“We need some federal help,” said Phillips, who was among those invited to a roundtable at the White House and is serving on Trump-appointed committees assigned to creating solutions.
Forty percent of U.S. Olympians in the 2026 Winter Games competed in NCAA athletics, including more than 75% of the U.S. bobsled, cross country skiing, skeleton and men’s and women’s ice hockey teams, both of which claimed gold medals. More than 1,200 incoming, current and former NCAA athletes competed at the 2024 Summer Games, including 385 Team USA athletes. Sixty-five percent of Team USA, including 14 teams on which all members were NCAA athletes.
It’s one of several reasons Congress has taken a keen interest.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected Monday to again try to pass the SCORE Act, though the measure is unlikely to be able to pass the Senate. U.S Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, have proposed bipartisan legislation that is seen by many as the best chance to secure a national framework around college sports. The ACC is among the conferences to sign a letter in support of the Cruz-Cantwell legislation, which hasn’t been released publicly. Trump called for congressional action in his executive order.
“This chaotic state of affairs has undermined competition, reduced opportunities for student-athletes, and jeopardized support for the current range of college athletics, particularly women’s and Olympic sports,” Trump said in his order.
Are club sports the future?
In search of football riches, conferences have grown larger and expanded far beyond their traditional borders. In the early 1990s, leagues had small geographic footprints. The eight-team ACC, for example, stretched from Maryland to Atlanta. Now, the 18-team behemoth has conference members in Northern California, Texas, Indiana, central New York, Boston and Miami as well as its founding members in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
A football team plays once a week, typically on the weekend, and travels via charter flights. Volleyball and soccer teams play many more games and fly commercial. The costs, both financial and in terms of missed class time, are significant. There are dozens of programs located much closer.
Should leagues be sport specific? Or are we headed to a future where those sports are considered club sports? Cunningham, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, suggested in a recent interview that college athletics could soon break down into sports where players are paid and sports where athletes pay to play.
“Could it ultimately end up in something like that? Sure,” NC State athletics director Boo Corrigan said. “Could it end up in the revenue sports and then super clubs and that type of thing? Sure. Maybe it’s a blend of the two.”
North Carolina has won 52 NCAA national championships — and 39 of them have come in women’s teams in soccer (22), field hockey (11), lacrosse (four), basketball (one) and tennis (one).
“We take a lot of pride in having 28 sports, having broad-based programs. It’s part of our DNA,” said Steve Newmark, UNC’s executive associate athletics director. “On the flip side, it does make it more difficult for us to figure out how to fund and make sure that we can provide the resources for all those sports. A lot of schools have 19, 20, 21 sports. We have 28 sports and we’re blessed in a sense that most of them have national championship aspirations.”
Still almost all of the revenue-sharing money is being allocated to football and men’s basketball, which generates nearly all of the revenue for schools. At UNC, for example, football ($13 million) and men’s basketball ($7 million) accounted for all but $500,000 of the revenue sharing limit in the first year. In the first year, the first $2 million of additional scholarship costs came off the top of the $20.5-million revenue-sharing limit.
“Whether you have 17 sports or 28 sports, you have the same cap,” said Newmark, a former NASCAR executive who will become the school’s athletics director on July 1. “And I actually think that’s not probably the best way to do it because it’s almost a disincentive for some schools to have more sports. And I think in a day and age where we all want to lean into these sports that are thriving at the youth level — volleyball, softball – we should actually be figuring out a way to generate more interest in having schools add sports.”
Football and men’s basketball generated more than $103 million in revenue at North Carolina during the 2024-25 academic year. They had $66 million in expenses, generating more than $37 million in extra revenue. The Tar Heels are paying football coach Bill Belichick $10 million per season and new men’s basketball coach Michael Malone an average of $8.3 million per season.
The university’s other 26 sports reported $26 million in revenue and $48 million in expenses. The school also reported $44 million in revenue unrelated to a specific sport with more than $73 million in expenses.
At NC State, it is a similar equation with football and men’s basketball making money to support 20 other programs. NC State has won four women’s cross country national championships since 2021 — the school’s only national titles outside of its 1974 and 1983 men’s basketball titles. The women’s cross country team won national championships in 1979 and 1980 in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), the equivalent of the NCAA for women in the 1970s and early 1980s.
“Right now we’ve got 550 student-athletes, probably 400 of which are not in football, [men’s] basketball and [women’s] basketball, that are having a great experience and going to NC State, being in Raleigh and being a part of the Wolfpack, and we think that’s a really positive thing,” Corrigan said. “We want to make sure they have a good experience.”
