Taking a deep(ish) look at four Cleveland-area men's wrestling teams expenses
Expenses in D1, D2, and D3 differ, but not in the ways you might think
Roughly two weeks ago, the Cleveland State University Board of Trustees approved the discontinuance of three sports at the end of this academic year: men’s wrestling, women’s golf, and women’s softball. As of 8:45 pm on January 23 (the day of the announcement), the combined number of athletes impacted (based on the school’s official website) was 52. The school’s 2022-23 EADA report showed 330 total unduplicated athletes, meaning this decision impacts roughly 15% of the school’s athlete population.
Clearly, the uncertainty around athlete employment, NIL, and the House settlement is creating anxiety for universities. Enrollment challenges are well documented, particularly in the upper midwest and northeast. Increasing costs for everything from dining hall supplies to utilities strain a university’s budget.
CSU, like so many schools in the region surrounding Lake Erie, is experiencing financial hardships brought upon by these myriad circumstances. In May 2024, a report indicated CSU could lose as much as $153 million over five years. In August, the school laid off employees as it attempts to come out of a $40 million deficit. In November, its credit outlook was downgraded to negative. The news of the sport cuts came less than six weeks after CSU reaffirmed its commitment to Division I athletics.
Matt Brown reported that the combined costs of CSU’s cut sports was $1.08 million for FY24 based on an Open Records Request from the school. As Brown wrote, “How that relates to loss of potential student enrollment and tuition, vs what Cleveland State might spend to recruit and retain a non-athlete, I couldn’t tell you. Or, at least, I couldn’t tell you at press time.”
I recently wrote about the challenges at Division III Albright College and how the school is taking the opposite approach to CSU by adding sports in the face of financial stress. Division I and Division III are, to be sure, different in many ways. Presence of athletic grants-in-aid, enrollment and tuition revenue, balance between academics and athletics and the true meaning of “student-athlete” are all part of that. But when it comes to some sports, such as wrestling, the actual operating expense difference may be surprising.
Consider the chart below of four different Cleveland area universities that sponsor men’s wrestling. All data is from the school’s 2022-23 EADA report, and includes Operating Expenses, defined in the EADA report as: “all expenses an institution incurs attributable to home, away, and neutral-site intercollegiate athletic contests (commonly known as "game-day expenses"), for (A) Lodging, meals, transportation, uniforms, and equipment for coaches, team members, support staff (including, but not limited to team managers and trainers), and others; and (B) Officials.” In other words, nearly everything but coach salaries and athletic-related aid.
The chart also includes Total Expenses defined by EADA as, “all expenses attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. This includes appearance guarantees and options, athletically related student aid, contract services, equipment, fundraising activities, operating expenses, promotional activities, recruiting expenses, salaries and benefits, supplies, travel, and any other expenses attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities.”
A cursory glance at the table shows the D1 program (Cleveland State) spent the least on operating expenses per participant, meaning it spent more on athletic aid, salaries, and recruiting. Similarly, the D2 program (Lake Erie College) spent the most overall with the fewest number of participants. Meanwhile, the two D3 programs (Baldwin Wallace and John Carroll) spent more in operating expenses due, in part, to the lack of athletic aid. So how can we explain this in the context of Cleveland State dropping a sport that cost only $125,000-ish more than a D3 program? Here is a somewhat wordy attempt.
The EADA report does not identify individual coach salaries, but it does require an Average Institutional Salary per head coach, which was reported as follows for men’s team coaches (from 2022-23 EADA report):
Baldwin Wallace = $45,563 per 12 total head coaches
Cleveland State = $94,947 per 8 total head coaches
John Carroll = $47,352 per 10 total head coaches
Lake Erie = $39,558 per 9 total head coaches
CSU’s men’s basketball coach makes a base salary of $325,000, so if we back that out of the totals, the revised average would be $62,082 ($94,947*8 = $759,576; subtract $325,000 = $434,576/7 coaches).
We can use the average head coach salary (controlled for men’s basketball at CSU) and add that to our mathematical equation. Calculating salaries spent on assistant coaches is more challenging, but if we take the reported Average Annual Institutional Salary per FTE for men’s teams and multiply by the number of reported assistant wrestling coaches for each school:
Baldwin Wallace = 1 FTE/4 PTE (3) * $33,109 = $99,327
Cleveland State = 1 FTE/1 PTE (1.5) * $56,787 = $85,181
John Carroll = 0 FTE/8 PTE (4) * $29,646 = $118,584
Lake Erie = 0 FTE/2 PTE (1) *$25,146 = $25,146
Our final math looks like this, understanding these are guesstimates based on known publicly available data. Actual spending on coach salaries is likely to vary from below.
The balance represents as close as we can get to identifying how much each school spent on athletic aid, recruiting expenses, and anything else not counted in operating or salaries. That the two D3s went into the red is easily explained. Neither is permitted to offer athletic aid, and the differences likely represent variance in coaching salaries from the institutional average.
While this is all fun and interesting, what does it tell us about Cleveland State’s situation? My ideas are, of course, pure speculation as I know no one in the CSU athletic department. Nonetheless, here are a few ideas.
New NCAA roster limits which could go into effect next year, cap the number of men’s wrestlers at 30, meaning Cleveland State would have seven fewer athletes. Assuming CSU maintained its current level of support for wrestling, the operating expense per participant would increase to $2,309. If we assume those extra seven athletes are walk-ons, paying tuition, the reduced roster size would cost the institution revenue in the form of fewer students.
Joe Scalzo of Crain’s Cleveland Business wrote on January 24, the day after the announcement, “The Vikings’ wrestling program, for instance, has 37 athletes but only operates on the equivalent of three full-ride scholarships, generating an estimated $373,800 in tuition revenue. CSU has decreased its full-ride equivalency from 9.9 scholarships in 2015 to five in 2023 to three this season.”
As a state school with many Ohio resident wrestlers, the income from tuition will be lower than a private school. Also, with many in-state athletes, recruiting expenses would, theoretically, be low. If, as reported, the CSU program generated $373,800 in tuition revenue, but had a total expense of $374,564, it nearly break even.
The sticker cost to attend John Carroll University this year is $48,700. Scholarships from the university can knock that price in half. So, let’s say the 32 wrestlers on the roster from the 2022-23 EADA report each received $23,000 in scholarships, bringing the cost to $25,700 * 32 = $822,400, a considerable difference from its expenses.
Of course, the university must pay faculty, staff, and administrators from the tuition budget. CSU breaking even does not leave additional funds to do that. So while this is not a true apples-to-apples comparison, it should provide some food for thought for schools wanting to add sports programs as a way to enhance enrollment and improve revenue. If CSU were a D3 instead of a D1, its wrestling program’s contribution to the university’s bottom line operating expenses might be higher.
From a competitive standpoint, Lake Erie was #15 in the NWCA D2 Coaches Poll as of January 20, 2025. Baldwin Wallace was #12 in the NWCA D3 Dual Coaches Poll as of January 24, 2025. Neither Cleveland State nor John Carroll were ranked. Penn State was the unanimous #1 in the NWCA D1 Dual Coaches Poll as of February 4, 2025. Per the school’s 2022-23 EADA Report, Penn State had:
33 wrestlers for whom they spent an average of $20,419 per athlete for a total operating expense of $673,834
2 FTE/1 PTE assistant coaches
Total reported expense was $3,361,744
In other words, the top Division I men’s wrestling team spent roughly 10 times ($3,361,744 v. $374,564) what Cleveland State spent in 2022-23. With the changes coming to Division I athletics and the current enrollment challenges, the economics of staying in Division I may no longer make fiscal sense for many universities.