‘This Is for the Next Generation’: Inside the Fight to Save Olympic Sports
By Ross Dellenger, Excerpted from Sports Illustrated
For so long an exemplary athletic department, both in size and success, Stanford University, in a sweeping and stunning move announced the decision to eliminate 11 athletic teams - roughly one-third of the school’s 36 sponsored athletic programs.
The decision drives at the heart of an unsettling trend permeating across U.S. universities, where the survival of Olympic sports is in doubt.
Since then a loud chorus of players, alumni and parents—they call themselves “36 Sports Strong”—who have embarked on a fight to persuade Stanford administrators to reverse, or at least reexamine, their decision.
While Stanford’s decision aligns with a national trend, the 36 Sports Strong group’s efforts are part of a different movement: a sports-saving wave. The group’s primary goal—to have Stanford’s 34 nonrevenue teams self-fund—is a potential blueprint to a new collegiate model, they say, that could save the broad-based educational mission of so many colleges.
In a six-month-old fundraising effort, team leaders have raised pledges of $40 million to fund the 11 discontinued squads, and at least three of the teams have raised enough to self-endow, fully covering their operating expenses permanently.
Over the last several months, eight schools have reinstated at least one sports team that they had previously cut. In almost every case, there existed one of two reasons a team was resurrected. Either a team raised enough funds to self-endow or self-fund for several years, or they threatened legal action on gender and race discrimination. Take, for example, Dartmouth. The school reinstated its five sports after accusations emerged that its decision unfairly impacted Asian athletes and women athletes.
In the case of the latter, leaders representing women athletes prepared to file a class-action lawsuit alleging the college was violating Title IX, a federal law that protects against sex discrimination by requiring schools to create equal opportunities and resources for women athletes.
“Does every academic organization make money? The 101 freshman composition class of 500 subsidizes the metaphysics class of 50. That seems to be O.K. It should be justifiable on the athletic side.”
“It’s all about power. Women only have it when they are ready to bring a lawsuit. And when they do, they can make enormous changes,” says Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic gold medal swimmer and the founder of Champion Women, an advocacy group for girls and women in sports.
Hogshead-Makar’s group has played a role in nearly every women’s sports reinstatement this year, she says. When a women’s sports team is discontinued, Champion Women springs into action. It often meets with team leaders over Zoom, show them a school-specific presentation of Title IX data and organize the next steps, which many times is connecting them with an attorney.
On Tuesday, leaders of the group presented their financial findings to Stanford provost Persis Drell where they also pitched a proposal: Reinstate the 11 sports and give them a five-year runway to self-endow, not just their own programs but also all 34 nonrevenue sports at Stanford.
So many other schools have allowed their teams to return once self-funded. Why can’t Stanford?
Many members of 36 Sports Strong theorize that the university, in part, eliminated sports to create admission flexibility. Stanford is one of the few colleges in the U.S. at capacity academically. In this theory, the university would now have the freedom to fill classroom spots occupied by athletes with those who may generate more tuition or carry a higher academic acumen.
In a statement to SI, the school denied that admission flexibility was part of its decision to discontinue the 11 sports, pointing to the fact that Stanford grants about 70% of undergraduates some sort of financial aid.
“One AD said to me yesterday, ‘We have two moneymaking sports to support 15 charities’.”
Stanford’s cuts highlight a deeper issue that college administrators are wrestling with in these financially distressing times: Do you continue sponsoring sports that, for the most part, lose millions each year?
Eliminating them is tricky. Not only does it upend the careers of players and staff, but it further decimates a university’s original broad-based educational mission and adversely impacts the U.S. Olympic teams. While most countries produce Olympic teams through a government-operated training system, the U.S. mostly relies upon its array of colleges.
“When you dig into this thing, you start to realize how much of America’s Olympic hopes are pinned on the collegiate model,” says Florida AD Scott Stricklin, who heads the 35-person think tank. “Our model is the envy of countries all over the world.”
But sustaining it is a financial problem.
College athletics has transformed into a big business and has forgotten its mission of supplying a wide range of athletic and educational experiences to young people, says Kathy DeBoer, the executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. She is a member of the newly formed Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition (ICAC), a group of 21 Olympic sports associations united under one umbrella with a mission to preserve college sports.
“One AD said to me yesterday, ‘We have two moneymaking sports to support 15 charities,’ ” says Tom McMillen, who presides over LEAD1, which represents the athletic directors of the Football Bowl Subdivision. “It’s a good way to describe it.”
Everyone doesn’t see it that way. Those against eliminating sports believe not every athletic team on campus must turn a profit.
“Does every academic organization make money?” asks Kevin White, the athletic director at Duke who chairs the CAC and a man who, in 38 years as an AD, has never cut a sport. “The 101 freshman composition class of 500 subsidizes the metaphysics class of 50. That seems to be O.K. It should be justifiable on the athletic side.”
The $40 million in which the 36 Sports Strong group at Stanford has pledged was gathered in a matter of months with a grassroots fundraising effort. The group believes it can reach the lofty goal of $200 million, a figure that the university itself believes would be needed to “permanently sustain these 11 sports at a nationally competitive varsity level,” a Stanford spokesperson said in a statement.
“Imagine what we could do with professional fundraising assistance,” says Adam Keefe, one of the movement’s leaders who played both volleyball and basketball at Stanford and has a son on the men’s basketball team.
“The real goal is to try to develop a blueprint to self-fund collegiate athletic teams,” says Ming, a leader of Stanford's wrestling parent group.
Self-supporting Olympic sports could be a game-changer in college athletics, experts say. For one, nonrevenue sports at the Power 5 level would no longer need to rely on the profits of football. Those at the Group of Five level and lower, where football makes little-to-no profit and Olympic sports are buoyed by student fees and institutional support, can save the taxpayer cash, says Schwarz, the economist.
In either case, a self-funding Olympic sport model leaves more money for the school, “in a perfect world,” Schwarz says, to spend more on the athletes.
“Being self-funding gives you some leverage. Football has that. It’s why it gets away with some of the crap it can get away with.”
So what’s the solution?
Already, Olympic teams are finding ways to save a buck here and there. In the future, they won’t be zipping across the country for events, instead busing to play teams within their geographic footprint, DeBoer says.
At Stanford, Pilson, the mother of Cardinal field hockey player Isabelle, questions the university’s fiscal responsibility. In fact she recalls two years ago when the field hockey team traveled to Australia to play a small handful of events. They spent 10 days in the country.
“Maybe don’t do that,” Pilson deadpans.
Isabelle, a junior midfielder, is in such a state of anger over the university’s decision that she recently told her mother she planned to never donate to Stanford as an alum. That sentiment has reverberated through those players and former players of the sports impacted—among others.
In fact, a star-studded group of Stanford alums signed a letter this past fall compelling the school to reverse course. The list included Andrew Luck, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Mike Mussina and Michelle Wie.
In the face of the backlash, Stanford officials have stuck to their plan.
“This fight is for the next generation of athletes,” says Alexander Massialas, whose fencing gear and photo resides in the Home of Champions. “We are doing this for the future of Stanford athletes.”
By Ross Dellenger, Read Full (3,200 word) article on Sports Illustrated