Leaders At IMG Academy Propose New Collegiate Athletics Model
Additionally, even though Judge Wilken urged and required the preservation of roster spots in the House Settlement against the NCAA's desires, there has been expressed concern from athletes, coaches, parents, and fans about the status of programs in this new era, especially Olympic sport and women's programs.
Recently, new legislation from Congress labeled the SCORE Act, as well as the current Presidential Administration has also tried to address the concern over roster spots and opportunities.
However, leaders at IMG Academy, Brent Richard and Drew Weatherford have proposed an innovative and unexpected solution, instead of cutting sports or programs, athletic departments should be adding them.
Reasons for Collegiate Athletic Expansion
Richard, CEO of IMG Academy and Weatherford, former Florida State University quarterback and now managing partner at Weatherford Capital along with IMG Board member, believe that in the new collegiate athletic system, sports and athlete spots do not need to be cut, but yet expanded.
At the core of their argument is the idea that currently the House Settlement prioritizes a small percentage of the NCAA institutions, as only approximately 70 schools are part of the Power Four compared to over 350 total Division I institutions, more than 300 Division II, and more than 430 Division III schools.
Richard expanded on this idea stating, 'Press, conversation, and the primary changes in college sports are related to a few sports and really a handful of conferences that generate a lot of entertainment revenue. And you'd think, based on the number of article, it's very popular. These stories go wide and they make for really good headlines. But the truth is that you'd think that when you talk to people, the misconception is that this represents all of college sports.'
Richard continued, 'This conversation represents about 2% of college sports athletes. I want to be clear, it's really important that we get that right for those 2% of college athletes. At the same time, you can't just blanket all of college sports with some of these changes. And so I think the misconception that we're trying to point out is that there's 500,000 college student athletes out there, yet, most of the conversations center around the 2%. We just need to make sure that when we're creating a new model for the 2%, which is what's happening, that it doesn't come with negative consequences to the other 98%.'
However Richard and Weatherford feel that this way of thinking is a missed opportunity based on the numbers generated in youth and high school sports. Richard explained, 'Historically, there's eight million high school student athletes or almost 60% of every high school student is an athlete, that means 60% of every kid going into college was playing sports in high school.'
However, only roughly 500,000 student-athletes play NCAA varsity sports. According to Richard, 'The basic question, and common sense question is, is there demand for more than 500,000 roster spots or less? And the answer is very clearly. There's demand for more.'
Thus according to the IMG Academy leaders, this missed demand could be generating more campus enrollment and revenue for these institutions. Richard said, 'I think the fairly obvious idea that we should be talking about is adding more participation and at the very least, given that setup it it should be just a real red line that the answer should not be reducing student-athletes.'
Components of the Proposed New Model
As stated above, Richard and Weatherford feel that collegiate athletic departments should inflate their sport offerings as this could help create and increase revenue for their institutions.
Weatherford detailed, 'There's this illusion that these non-revenue sports are more of a drag financially than they really are just because of the way that they account for tuition, right, like they they count the expense, but then they don't count the revenue to offset the expense from tuition.'
He continued that many sports teams have student-athletes paying full tuition and linking back to the number of youth and high school athletes more could or would pay to attend institutions where they could play sports in college,"Now parents are paying for their kids to play elite travel sports from the time they're eight. So there's an argument to be made that, in addition to tuition, parents would be willing to pay extra fees for their students to play sports in college--- I actually believe they would."
Multiple Division Model Within the Same Institution
Furthermore Weatherford and Richard advocated for a model that would allow for multiple teams in a single sport but within different divisions, similar to a junior varsity and varsity team that sports like baseball have used for decades. According to Weatherford this could allow coaches to develop and recruit talent from their own programs to fill the varsity spots, leaving them less reliant on the transfer portal, 'It's their own farm system. [Varsity head coaches] they don't have to necessarily coach two teams, they can have someone else coach the team, but they recruit the DII player in the same way that the DI players.'
He continued this could make the general public and fans happier who have struggled with the constant movement of the transfer portal, 'I think what the whole universe would love is, it would make every school less reliant on the transfer portal. Think about the impacts of this if you're able to recruit an additional 30 players and develop them. A lot of coaches would say, 'hey, I'd rather pick a known quantity from the D2 team or from the JV team to elevate to the varsity team their junior year.' Then go get someone out of the transfer portal.'
Weatherford further explained this could increase facility usage which he believes is a major problem at most institutions, 'I think it just looks fiscally very irresponsible to have these facilities on campus that are utilized 10% of the time. These are taxpayer dollars being spent and donor dollars being spent to build multi-million dollar facilities and they're being utilized like 10 or 15% of the time. So that doesn't seem very responsible.'
Richard and Weatherford understand this is an uphill battle and comes with larger ramifications as adding and cutting sports is also impacted by Title IX regulations, as these collegiate institutions are bound to federal standards, but both leaders are recommending that college athletics look at a more inclusive approach that allows more athletes to compete, not less.
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