What Radford University’s sport sponsorship changes might tell us about a post-House world
Are more Olympic sports cuts ahead?
I saw two different articles during the last week of May emphasizing a trend (my word) of NCAA Division I universities adding sports ahead of the House decision. Both Matt Brown and the Associated Press covered the topic. Indeed, by my count, DI institutions announced 13 new sports sponsored during the spring 2025 semester, the highest count in one semester since the fall 2023 semester.
And while both articles also alluded to universities which discontinued sports in the same time period, the reality is this: 13 sports were added and 18 were discontinued by DI universities between January-May 2025. This does not include St. Francis’s decision to drop to DIII or New Haven’s decision to transition to DI.
No school that is a member of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, or ACC added any new sports. One, Utah, announced it discontinued women’s beach volleyball. In fact, no school from those four conferences has added a sport since Florida State announced women’s lacrosse in October 2023. Only two school that announced new sports, Long Island U. and Lehigh, presently sponsors a football program. (Note: I originally published this and omitted LIU as sponsoring football).
Division I schools that added sports in spring 2025:
Long Island U. = women’s flag football, women’s triathlon
Creighton = co-ed cheer
St. Bonaventure = women’s golf
Marquette = women’s swimming
Radford = men’s indoor track, men’s outdoor track, women’s flag football
Texas-Arlington = women’s flag football
Pacific = men’s cross country, men’s indoor track, men’s outdoor track
Lehigh = women’s wrestling
It was Radford University’s decision to add three sports, while dropping men’s and women’s tennis, that was interesting to me. Since women’s flag football will begin as a club sport, it is really a 2-for-2 swap for the immediate future.
In the short term at least, Radford is allowing its men’s cross country athletes to compete year round and calling it adding sports. As the school’s news release emphasized, it is “establishing distance-focused intercollegiate men's indoor and outdoor track and field programs for the 2025-26 academic year.”
Doing this allows Radford to stay compliant with NCAA requirements to compete in non-football DI. Bylaw 20.9.6(b) provides for schools to sponsor six male sports and eight female sports for eligibility. Schools could opt for seven and seven (Bylaw 20.9.6(a)).
In 2024-25, Radford competed in six men’s sports (baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis) and 10 women’s sports (basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis, indoor track, outdoor track, volleyball). That breakdown will be seven men’s sports and nine women’s sports in 2025-26. Once women’s flag football is online, Radford will be at seven and 10, a net plus one from this past year.
Cutting the tennis programs made some sense. The Radford men’s team canceled its entire 2024-25 season due to player injuries. Of the nine full members of the Big South Conference, only five sponsored men’s tennis and six sponsored women’s tennis.
Understanding the finances of the decision is a bit more nuanced. Because the Department of Education has yet to update the EADA website with 2023-24 data (yes, I know we are finishing the 2024-25 year), we are left with analyzing data from three years ago!
As a reminder, Operating Expenses are 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.” So, no scholarships, recruiting or salaries.
Total Expenses are 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.”
Also, we need to remember that, by definition, women’s tennis is a head-count sport, meaning “an institution shall be limited in any academic year to the total number of counters (head count)” (Bylaw 15.5.2.1). In equivalency sports, a coach can divide the available scholarship pool among however many counters the sport has. So, in men’s tennis, a school could distribute up to 4.5 scholarships to, say, 12 or even 15 athletes. That is not the case in head count sports where each counter receives the same.
The 2024-25 NCAA Division I manual placed the following scholarship limits on these sports:
Men’s Cross Country/Track and Field = 12.6 equivalencies (Bylaw 15.5.3.1.1)
Men’s Cross Country = 5 equivalencies (Bylaw 15.5.3.1.3) for schools not sponsoring track
Men’s Tennis = 4.5 equivalencies (Bylaw 15.5.3.1.1)
Women’s Cross Country/Track and Field = 18 equivalencies (Bylaw 15.5.3.1.2)
Women’s Tennis = 8 head-count (Bylaw 15.5.2.1)
During the 2022-23 reporting year, Radford had $359,252 in total expenses for the combined men’s and women’s tennis programs and $526,679 for the combined men’s and women’s cross country and track programs. While those numbers suggest tennis is less expensive to operate, that is not the case. Because track and cross country athletes rarely receive full rides, each athlete is also likely paying some amount of tuition creating some modest return to the campus on the investment in track and field.
In the pre-House world of Division I athletics where head count and equivalencies mattered, cutting tennis and growing track makes sense. Because Radford did not previously sponsor men’s track, the school was capped at five equivalency scholarships in 2024-25. Adding men’s track would allow the school to offer up to 12.6 under pre-House rules. Proposed roster caps post-House could be as high as 17 for cross country and 48 for track and field. As Radford stated in its release, “Beginning next year, athletes currently rostered or preparing to join the men's cross country team for 2025-26 will compete in indoor and outdoor men's track and field.”
Radford already fields women’s indoor and outdoor track teams so even if the school increased its scholarship investment in men’s track, adding a few more bodies on a bus to an away meet won’t increase the overall operating expense too much in the short term, while ensuring the school meets DI sport sponsorship minimums. And, more athletes receiving partial scholarships means more tuition revenue.
Cutting tennis programs has been a trend (again, my word) for a while. By my count, since March 2020, men’s tennis has seen a net reduction of 18 teams and women’s tennis is down 15 teams at the Division I level. Since April 2024, San Francisco, West Georgia, Seattle, Texas-El Paso, Eastern Illinois, and Radford have all discontinued tennis programs.
While the economics of sponsoring tennis programs may be a factor in discontinuing the programs, the difficulty of recruiting athletes has also been a consistent message. Jay Gatrell, Eastern Illinois University president, explained the logic in the school’s May 12, 2025 announcement.
A similar statement was in a release announcing the discontinuation of tennis programs at Division II Shepherd University (WV) on April 29, 2025:
Even tuition-driven institutions in Division III and the NAIA mention challenges with recruitment. Consider the statement from DIII Mary Baldwin University (VA) on May 22, 2025:
And, in January 2025, the NAIA’s Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference cited dwindling tennis participation and economic realities as reasons the conference would cease sponsoring it as a championship sport.
Since that announcement, member schools Aquinas University (MI), Cornerstone University (MI), Indiana Tech, and University of Northwestern Ohio all dropped their tennis programs. Concordia University Ann Arbor announced last summer it would discontinue all athletic programs, including tennis.
It is my belief, the shuffling of cards between Olympic sports on a college campus will continue as the exact House settlement shakes out. The NCAA rules about sport sponsorship (14 for Division I; 16 for FBS) could be at risk if universities decide they need more money to pay football and basketball athletes. Olympic sport coaches are already sounding that alarm, calling for codification of the rule.
I am genuinely curious to find out in a post-House world how many Division I athletic directors would downsize the number of athletic programs on their campus if the current minimum sponsorship requirements went away. I speculated on this possibility as far back as April 9, 2020, when I wrote the following on Athletic Director U. as it related to uncertainties around COVID-19:
Coronavirus or House. I still wonder whether this is where we are headed.