Beyond the Bracket: The Future of College Athletics | Office Hours Podcast

 What is the future of college athletics—and how do we get there?

In this special episode of Office Hours, SIU System President Dan Mahony takes the guest seat as faculty leaders Cherese Fine (SIUE) and Julie Partridge (SIUC) lead a thoughtful discussion on the current state and future direction of college sports.

As a lover of sports and higher education leader, President Mahony shares his perspective on:

• The financial realities facing athletic programs
• The evolving student-athlete experience
• The sustainability of current models
• Why institutions must be intentional moving forward

With March Madness as the backdrop, this episode goes beyond the bracket to explore the bigger picture of college athletics in America.

🎧 Listen and subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of higher education, innovation and student success.

Transcript

This is Office Hours with SIU System President Dan Mahony.

A monthly podcast that explores what's happening in and around American higher education. And now, your host, SIU System President Dan Mahony.

Thank you for tuning in to Office Hours.

Last summer, we did an episode on college athletics that got a good bit of attention. Since that time, there have continued to be a lot of changes. So today, we decided to take a deeper dive into the topic. Because this has long been a primary focus of both my teaching and research, we decided to flip the host duties over to two of my colleagues who both serve as faculty athletic representatives for their respective universities. So in this episode, Beyond the Bracket: The Future of College Athletics, I will be the one answering the questions, and Dr. Fine and Dr. Partridge.

I am now turning the show over to you. Thanks, President Mahony. Welcome to this special March Madness edition of the podcast. I'm Sheriece Fine. I'm an assistant professor at SIUE, and I've also had the pleasure of co-teaching a class with President Mahony on the history and current issues in college athletics. And I'm Julie Partridge. I'm a professor at SIU, and I've also had the honor of teaching a course with President Mahony on current issues related to college athletics. So, thanks for passing the mic to us to lead the discussion about the current state of things with college athletics, which is seeing some really big changes right now. Yeah. So, college athletics has experienced one of the most significant periods of change in history. I call it like this ever-changing thing happening in college athletics. So, President Mahony is a national expert on the current state of college athletics and where it might be headed. So, President Mahony, you were an athlete, your father was a college athlete, and now you're leading a university system through these changes. So, we're really glad that you're willing to sit in the hot seat with us today and share your expertise. Well, thank you. Happy to be here. So, let's get started. So, you said one of the biggest misunderstandings about college athletics is that people assume it was carefully designed, but in reality, it's evolved over time. What do you mean by that?

Well, really, it's interesting if you go back to the very beginning in the 1800s. This was really student-run, student-organized, pretty much in opposition to the faculty and administration at the time, who did not want college athletics at all. And so, from the beginning, this was not something that a group of administrators sat around and designed in a really thoughtful way. It's interesting, even at Carbondale, they actually tried to ban football and then tried to modify and control it in different ways. So, this was not something wildly embraced by universities at the time, but over time it grew. The NCAA doesn't really come along until the 1900s, well after college athletics starts, and actually doesn't fully evolve into the organization it is until the 1950s. So, for a long period of time, they were trying to figure this out. And even when they did, I don't think they completely understood exactly what they were going to do at that point, and were trying to set up rules that constantly changed and evolved. We talked about how the rule book was kind of every time someone would violate a rule, they'd create a new rule. So anyway, I think a lot of times when we think about it, people think that, and I heard somebody say this to me the other day in athletics, "Well, it was meant to be this way." I was like, "It really wasn't intended to be any particular way. It's kind of evolved into what it is." And I think by taking that perspective, it opens you up to the possibility of how might it change, how might it be different, and that may not necessarily be a bad thing. In our class, we have them do a project where they design college athletics from scratch. And I've advocated recently that's kind of what we need to do at this point, is we need to kind of take a step back and say, if we were to design it from the beginning, what would it look like, and how do we move ourselves in that direction?

So, you also talk about how presidents often arrive in their roles with expertise in the academic side of the university, but almost no preparation for overseeing athletics. Why do you feel like that's such a challenge when you have no background and really all you have seen or been told is what you see on television?

That makes your understanding very limited. And I've seen this with presidents a lot. They really don't have a deep grasp of what the norms of college athletics are. I remember one being quite upset because they had a number of minor violations that their compliance office found in a year and thought that was a bad sign. I'm like, "No, actually that's a really good sign." At my institution, it was a previous institution, we had zero, which really worried me that we didn't have good compliance. So, even little things like that, they don't understand particularly well. And often that misunderstanding leaves them open to making some bad choices. And I think certainly the NCAA sometimes has used this. So, the presidents sit at the top of the NCAA, but they rely heavily on the NCAA to educate them on how things are supposed to work, which I will say doesn't always seem to work well, in my opinion.

Yes. So, many people assume college athletics should be financially self-sustaining. They also think that college athletics makes a lot of money because you see all these large deals with so much money. But the data does tell a very different story. So, what is the actual financial reality of college athletics across the country?

Yeah. And I think the misperception comes a lot from the fact that we often tend to look at one side of the ledger, either the revenue or expenses. And in college athletics, we look at the large amount of revenue and assume that means they're making lots of money, or we look at specific expenses like coach salaries. Well, they clearly wouldn't pay someone $13 million a year unless they were making large amounts of money. So that's where the misperception, I think, comes from. But the reality is, across college athletics, most institutions, with the exception maybe of about 20 to 25, lose money. And that was all before we started directly paying athletes. So I'll be interested to see. I mean, this is the first year. So as good as I may think I am on data analysis, I can't analyze data that's not yet available. And so we're watching this actually take place in real time. But before that, it was a small percentage, and that was true even at the top Power Four level. And I think what's most interesting is that at the Power Four level, from fiscal year 22 to fiscal year 24, the deficits grew from $2 million a year to $14 million just in two years. So even before we got to now, rosters in theory with 20-plus million dollars a year that we're paying athletes, we were already losing $14 million at the schools that most people think are making massive amounts of money. When you come down to what is now probably Group of Six conferences, the FBS schools, it's probably more like $28 million. The rest of Division I is more like $16 million. Even at Division II and III, it's about $7 million at Division II and $3 million. And then I will say that's the optimistic number, because one of the things, as I always talk about as a former accountant, is how you account for things. There aren't necessarily strict rules on that. So I'll take academic advising for athletes as an example. That could be paid by the athletic department. It also could be on the university's books. So if you move that over, that may be a quarter million, half a million in expenses that do not appear on the athletics side. So when I talk about, say, a $28 million loss, they may not be paying that. So it actually may be more than that. It's not likely to be less than that. So it's pretty high.

Yeah. The word unsustainable comes to mind.

Yeah. So along those lines, one of the most striking points that I've heard you talk about before is that in many cases, the more revenue an athletic department generates, actually the more money they lose. So how can you explain a little bit more about how that happens?

Yeah. And this is particularly true, less clear at the kind of Power Four where there are some differences. I mean, Texas and others are some of those few that are profitable and generate a lot. But when you get to that kind of second level FBS schools, the Group of Five or Six, depending on how you classify it today, or FCS schools, you see that kind of consistent pattern of the more that they generate, the more that they lose. And really what we're seeing is, I used to always remember people would tell me, "Well, you got to spend money to make money." I think what ends up happening is you end up, in that effort to make money, spending way more than the return on investment is. And so the other thing is what ends up happening is when you are successful, and you see this even at the Power Four, everybody's like, "Well, you got to keep that coach, and you got to invest more." So winning actually leads to greater investments and then greater losses because the revenues don't go up at the same level. One of the examples I often use is Caitlin Clark when she was at Iowa. I remember a lot of people would say to me, "Wow, Iowa just must be making lots of money off of women's basketball because of Caitlin Clark." And it's like, yes, they generated a lot more revenue. Absolutely. She was phenomenal and great for that program in that way, but they also spent far more during that period and actually lost more money during the Caitlin Clark years than they did before that. So, it actually didn't help out their bottom line.

And just thinking about winning programs, right? I think there's a myth that winning and championships automatically boost enrollment at universities. What does the research actually show about that?

It doesn't. And I've looked at this every way I can. What I can say is it's hard to tell, for example, with a consistently strong program, how much of an impact that has. So I'll use one of my alma maters. Ohio State has always been pretty good at football. That's a consistent thing. It's hard to say what impact that has. I would guess it has some, but I can't tell you because they've never been consistently bad. So you can't compare the good versus bad. But when we do have programs that have periods where they're good, you would think that would bump up enrollment, and the research just doesn't indicate that it does that. And I think it's because of a couple things. One is students pick universities for a whole host of reasons, and it's unlikely related to one-year success or even a couple years' success. That's not likely to change their mind. Also, some of the things, and I heard Chancellor Minor talk about this one time with SIUE basketball, it's like by the time the tournament takes place and we qualified, most students have already made their decision of where they're going. So, it's not going to have an impact in that year because we're already kind of past that period. And even with football, by the time someone wins a national championship, most students have already decided where they're applying to. And so, it doesn't have nearly as much. It does tend to bump applications, but it doesn't affect their final decision. So, we do see some impact, but not on their final decision. The best example I always used, I had a person I knew who kept talking about his brother worked at Auburn when Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy, and that that was so great, like everybody was exceeding their enrollment targets. And I'd heard this story so many times, I'm like, I'm just going to look it up. So I looked it up, and there was no increase in enrollment. They actually went down. They went down one student.

Not meaningful.

Yeah. Not a meaningful change, but basically it was flat. It had zero impact, but people believed that it did. So again, that's part of that mythology of college athletics sometimes, is we believe it. We want to believe it too, but it doesn't actually occur.

Yeah, because they always talk about how athletics is like the front porch to the university in regards to marketing and promotions.

Yeah. And again, I think it's not to say that there's no impact, and I do think there are ways where it can help our enrollment. I talk about both institutions. What I've seen in the last couple years is the student engagement at games and things like that have gotten better. I think that helps students feel more like they belong in a place. I think there are ways it can help, but it's not necessarily, hey, if we go 25 and 4 versus 15 and 15, that all of a sudden enrollment is going to go up by 500 students. That's just not the way it works.

So along those lines, this idea of the front porch of the university, or the benefits that athletics can bring, you have said that athletics does still bring meaningful value to universities, even if it is more difficult to maybe measure what that looks like. So what do you believe are some of the benefits that athletics brings?

Certainly, it's the opportunity to bring students together in a way that's fun and enjoyable, and we're always looking for that, whether it's athletics or other things. I know both chancellors have tried to create a lot of events on campus that bring the community and students together in a fun, enjoyable way, and athletics is one of the easier ways to do that. It also brings the outside community in, and I think that's an important thing. I just saw the other day a post from SIUE about the increased attendance at basketball games here over the last several years. And I think that's been a meaningful, positive impact for this university. So, it's not just that we have more students coming, but we also have more community members coming. And the excitement around the university kind of grows from that. So, I think you get that type of an impact. And I think, like I say, for those places that have had that long tradition, I'm sure that that also is impactful as well. I also think it brings in a lot of different students to the institution as well who wouldn't be there otherwise. At some of the places I have been, at my previous institution, I think we were 90% in-state. Without athletics, that percentage would have been like 95%. A lot of our out-of-state and international students came because of athletics and added a lot to that campus environment. And even in my classes, I remember having students from Australia and all over the world in my class. It really made it a richer educational experience, and none of that again happens at that institution without athletics. So there are certainly benefits, but they are often hard to quantify, and that's where it becomes a little bit more challenging. So, when I talk about the numbers that we're losing on college athletics, it's hard to say whether that is justified by those things because they're not as easily measurable financially.

Yeah. So, we want to transition to the present moment of college athletics. So, we have the House settlement, and then we also have name, image, and likeness, also known as NIL. And all of those changes are currently reshaping college athletics. Could you share a little bit more about the House settlement and NIL and the biggest implications for universities?

Yeah, so the House settlement did a few things. One is it established a payroll of, this year, $20.5 million, but that escalates over time. So we can actually now, for the first time, directly pay athletes, and different from athlete to athlete. So the compensation we could do before was kind of the total cost of attendance, tuition, room, board, all those things. Now we can go beyond that. And that's okay by the settlement. That's a pretty significant change. But the House settlement also did some other things. It set roster limits, which created some issues on some programs, particularly ones that traditionally had a bigger roster. It took the cap off scholarships. So I'll take, always, my sport of wrestling. Wrestling now has a roster cap of 30, and you can give 30 scholarships, as opposed to, I think, what used to be 9.9 scholarship equivalencies. All of that is really good for the athletes, but all of it has driven up the cost of college athletics pretty significantly. Because very quickly, I can guarantee you, because I've been in the president's role and worked in athletics, the second you tell a coach they technically, by anti-trust rules, can have 30 scholarships, they're going to be at my door asking, "Where are my 30 scholarships?" They're going to want to go to that maximum number. So now you've tripled the amount of cost relative to scholarships alone. And then you have all of the fighting over the $20.5 million. Although I will say, one of the things I have been seeing, and just what little I do know of deals, I'm not directly involved with it, I'm not sure schools are actually keeping with that $20.5 million cap. In fact, I'm fairly certain they are not. So I'm not sure whether that's even a meaningful control over spending, saying, "Well, you can't go above $20.5." Like, for example, I know in basketball what some players got. I'm like, okay, if that guy, who's the fifth guy on the team, got a million dollars, they're blowing past that $20.5. There's just no way that that can be happening. So it was great, I think, for the athletes, but it created greater financial pressures for the institutions.

Yeah, I think there was some FOIA information that came out recently that showed what some of those NIL amounts were, and some of them looked well past $20 million.

Well, and I will say related to the NIL, I'm not sure if either of you have seen this yet, but the Nebraska football players, if you noticed, are now suing because their NIL deal got stopped. This was the idea. The College Sports Commission was set up to both review salary caps and to review NIL deals to make sure that they were fair deals and that this was not somebody, some car dealer, say, giving an athlete $5 million to do one commercial. Clearly, that's not a typical exchange. So they rejected some for some Nebraska football players who are now entering arbitration to argue that they should be, and are being, legally financially supported by the institution to do that. So that's yet another cost for the institution. And we'll see how that all plays out. But it was interesting. It was all about, I guess, almost rather vague future commitments that the athletes were making. And so that makes it very hard to monetize what a future commitment is, as opposed to, again, a commercial where you could do that easily. But again, I think we all predicted there were going to be lawsuits over that. That was just a matter of time.

So, well, this kind of follows right along with that. There have been surveys that have shown that the majority of university presidents and athletic directors are more concerned than ever about the financial future of athletics. We've already kind of touched on this a little bit, but why do you feel like that, at this point especially, has become such a concern?

Because I think it was already there, but it was, at least for most places, although I would argue it was increasingly not the case for most places, manageable. They were used to it. So if they were losing $16 million, that's not a dramatic change from what they typically lost and budgeted for over time. When you take $16 million and make that $35 or $40 million, that all of a sudden creates a huge financial strain, and it's at a time where higher education institutions are facing increasing financial pressures for other reasons. State appropriations have generally not, in most states, kept up with inflation. There have been changes at the federal level that have increased the fiscal challenges at institutions. So they have all of these different things. We're discounting tuition for students more than we ever have before, which is great for students, but means we're bringing in less net tuition revenue. So, they have all of these other fiscal challenges, and now you're tacking on $20 million or whatever you choose to do in that way to your athletic budget. And so, I think it's interesting, even some places like Ohio State saying, "We can't sustain this." I mean, that's a pretty meaningful thing, where those places were saying they can't.

Yeah. So, let's talk about the transfer portal.

Yes.

So the transfer portal and NIL have created what people describe as a Wild West environment. How is that affecting team culture and competitive balance?

Yeah, and again, if there's one thing when I talk with people about this that will get people riled up, it is the transfer portal more than anything else. I think the average fan, I talk to my mom, that's one of the things, like she's upset about the transfer portal. And I think the reality of the transfer portal, and why it creates issues for a lot of people, is there's not that consistency. You don't get to see a player at your school for four years. That's becoming more and more rare. I think for those of us at the mid-major schools, now you have athletes that, you know, your best player every year is likely to be picked off. And a lot of times it's, you know, what this institution will offer is more than we pay all of our players combined. There's just no way to compete with that. It used to be that the transfers had to sit out a year, and so you did see some. I used to joke when I was in the Big South Conference that one thing you don't want is the freshman player of the year because so many of them ended up transferring someplace else. So it did happen, but now you're seeing it across almost all schools. Their best player is now transferring. I think it's created a challenge for coaches, who now have to not only recruit new players but recruit their current players constantly. That's a whole different mindset. I think you're kind of rebuilding a team every single year. I will say, in some ways, I understand everyone being upset with it. For me, it's almost like a high school coach now, where every year your roster changes a whole lot. You know, high school coaches deal with that because most high school players aren't really starters till their junior or senior year. So, you have that kind of turnover, but college coaches aren't used to that. They're used to having players they can build with over time. I think there's a lot of concern about the academic impact. Will students not graduate? Things like that. I don't think we have enough data to know what the impact is. I will say the NCAA still has eligibility rules that say you have to be making progress toward a degree, and so that hasn't gone away. So in theory, if those rules work, they should still graduate, but we don't know what that impact will be. I will say I tend to be different sometimes on this. I'm less concerned about it than some people. I'm concerned about the academic side, but I also think the opportunity to experience multiple universities as opposed to one isn't necessarily always a bad thing.

Yeah, I mean, there may be some advantages for students who get to play in Utah one year and Texas another year and Illinois a third year. They get to see different parts of the world, get exposed to different faculty. It's not necessarily always bad for the athlete. But I think there's certainly something we should be monitoring and see what that does. But right now the NCAA doesn't really legally have a way to control this. They would like to. There's been lots of talk about limiting it to one transfer, but you can't really legally do things that are not in the student's best interest, and we can't yet justify that that type of rule would be in the student's best interest.

Yeah. And there are so many lawsuits. So, I'll be curious to see what happens, especially for students that are wanting to come back soon, to come back, that's like eight or nine years now. And I'm curious what the data will show in the future, how that may impact high school students who are trying to come in when there are maybe not enough slots now for them.

Well, and I think that's been one of the arguments, that this is not fair to the high school students. And it's like, well, but the system's not necessarily set up to have to be fair to the high school student.

Yeah.

Again, it's what we're used to. Like every year there are 20 spots on a football roster for high school students, and now there may be 10. And that's not fair to the ones coming out, but there are still 10, and it's just a different system. But again, it goes against what we're used to.

Yeah. And as a coach, if I have a choice between picking up an 18-year-old who's going to take, especially in a sport like football, where you don't have freshmen maybe contributing quite as quickly, versus getting a 23-year-old who's completely grown, from a coaching standpoint, if I want to keep my job, that's a tough decision to make. You have to think about that. And I will say that's been one of the challenges for coaches, is so many of them have built up their way of recruiting and their recruiting pools around the country all based on relationships with both high school and AAU coaches, frankly. And now it's got to be a different way of doing it, you know, with junior college coaches. But also, you can't really have connections with coaches on other teams when you want to see all their players. You have to figure out a different way of doing it than they're used to. So, I understand. I don't think I've run across many of them who aren't frustrated that this is changing everything that they've always done.

Yeah. But to your point, they know that the 23-year-old is probably more valuable to them than the 18-year-old, and they have data to show what they can do in a college environment against other college players. It's, are we willing to take a risk on somebody that has only played against other 18-year-olds?

So, kind of along those lines, actually, you know, we mentioned, Sheriece, you mentioned some of the lawsuits and some of that kind of stuff. We're seeing now growing conversations about federal legislation to try to address some of these issues, like the SCORE Act. What role do you believe Congress may ultimately play in shaping the future of college athletics?

I'm not sure it will. I think part of that, and I don't think this is news to most people if we've watched Congress recently, it is fairly divided and it's rare that they come together on any issue. And this is one where they have struggled to come together. So, there's the SCORE Act that is largely supported by the Republicans. There's the SAVE Act that's largely supported by the Democrats. They differ on almost everything, even what we just talked about with transfer. I saw the other day Senator Tuberville was pushing for some congressional action that would limit transfers to one transfer. Senator Murphy, the Democrat, was saying absolutely not. That's inconsistent with our belief that workers should be able to go where they want to go, type of thing. And so I think we see those political differences making it very challenging. And even within college athletics, there's not one set of rules that we all agree to. And so even, I know there's been discussion about the Sports Broadcasting Act and changing that, that would allow some flexibility that the SEC, I think, and Big Ten don't want any part of. So anyway, I don't think even colleges have been consistent on what they would want that congressional action to be, and so I think that makes it really challenging. So I know there will continue to be discussion, but I'm not waiting for that to happen to solve all of our problems.

Yeah. And I will say some of the things I've seen discussed, I don't think actually solve all the problems. I think fiscal sustainability would not be solved necessarily by some of those things. I think we need more significant, we need to be open to more significant changes than I've seen in anything coming from Congress at this point.

Yeah. And I feel like now we have more external changes. So now private equity, which we hear is everywhere now, has an interest in college athletics. So, whether it's focusing on FBS or Power Four schools, or let's separate football and make it its own thing, what are the opportunities, but also maybe some of those challenges that may come with private equity now trying to get involved with college athletics?

Yeah. And I've been trying to understand private equity and why they're even that interested. When you're losing that kind of money, you would think that that would not be something private equity would want to invest in. Clearly they see some opportunity, or at least some see some opportunity, but they may be guessing wrong too on all of that. I think there's been a lot of concern about the amount of control that institutions would give up in any kind of private equity deal. The Big Ten seemed very close at one point until several institutions wanted no part of it, and it died at that time. So, I think Utah has gone forward with something, and so they may be the test case to see how this works. But I wouldn't ever rule out anything until I see all the details. So if we had an opportunity to do it, I would look at it, but I would have lots of questions to make sure this is actually benefiting us in the long term and actually dealing with some of those kind of more long-term issues and moving us forward in a positive direction, and not creating more problems for us. So yeah, I have my concerns, but it's certainly not my area of expertise, and we haven't yet gotten to the point where we're actually actively discussing something that would get me more engaged in it.

Yeah. So, I think that Sheriece and I have probably both heard you talk about this in the classes that we've been able to teach with you. But you've argued that this moment might actually be the opportunity to rethink how college athletics works. So, what kinds of changes do you think universities need to be considering right now?

I think it's going back to one of the things the NCAA always says when people complain about NCAA rules, which is that, well, you are the NCAA. You're the ones who created these rules. Which, again, to some extent is true, and for the reasons I talked about earlier, I think they've influenced votes a lot to get things the way that they think it should be. But they are right that there are some rules, and I think there's a number of things that we could do differently. We put a lot of rules in place that force us to spend more than maybe we need to. And I think giving universities more flexibility to decide what type of athletic program we want to have would be a good thing. I've talked about, you know, we have to have a minimum number of sports. We don't have to have a minimum number of academic programs. We don't have to have a minimum number of anything else to be an institution. Allowing us to decide, if I want to have six programs that I really fund well, that may be a better route for a particular institution, and they should have that flexibility. And if I want to have two programs at the Division II level and two at the Division III level and a couple Division I, like all over the place, maybe that's a good thing. So, being more open to different ways of setting it up, I think, would be optimal. I think what you were talking about earlier, even with separating football out, in some ways I'm surprised we haven't done that more than we have at this point. It is just such a different thing, and it has driven so much of the conference realignment, which has led to conferences that have such a vast spread over the country that it's increased travel costs, strain on athletes, things like that. If you were to have football conferences and conferences for everything else, I think that would be a better model for all of athletics and solve, frankly, a lot of issues for us. I think I'm still, I will say just personally, surprised that the Power Four haven't broken off more than they have at this point, particularly in football. I think that's where, you know, it was nice to see James Madison in the College Football Playoff. I'd be shocked if that's still the case 10 years from now. I think they will separate out more, and that may not be a bad thing because I think at some point, if we're not thinking we should be competing with that group, then we don't spend nearly as much to do that and it gives more opportunity for schools to win championships and do things at a different level. And it's not bad to win an FCS championship. I would love to have one. Of course, we did win one, I should point that out, back in the 1980s, but I would like to have another one. So again, I think that we undervalue sometimes what those experiences would be for the athletes, for the institution. And we all feel like we have to be at that top level competing for that Division I national championship, and obviously there's only one who wins every year, and so that's not a realistic goal for everybody. So I think there's a number of things we could do that could deal with the cost issues, but I think we have to be open to the fact that it's not going to look the same as it always has.

Oh yeah, and I think you bring up a great point. So, just to continue that thought, what do you think institutions should do to think strategically about where they invest with their different teams, and what would success look like?

Yeah, I think it's going to be different at every institution. And I think there are opportunities to think about it differently. I look at some schools that have invested a lot in baseball, I'll take Coastal Carolina, that have achieved a lot of national success that they're probably not going to get in football or men's basketball because everybody else is investing so much in that. So I think there are opportunities to do those types of things. I think we need to have a more thoughtful discussion about that return on investment and how do we maximize that. And I think one of the things I've been pleased with at Carbondale is how we've kind of tied a lot of athletic events to takeover events, where we go into those communities and we recruit high school students in those communities. We do fundraising events. It's like, if it's going to really have value to the institution, let's take advantage of when we play in Memphis or when we play in Indianapolis or wherever, and actually do events like that. I don't see a lot of schools doing that at this point, but I think that's one of the things I would suggest as well. But we have to decide what it is we can really afford. But I also think, on the other hand, back to what I talked about earlier, the NCAA rules have to be flexible enough for us to be able to do that. And I think often we don't end up doing that. I think a lot of us, either at the NCAA level or even when I was in the Big South Conference as a president, would pass rules at the conference level that would force me to invest more into athletics that I didn't have. And I don't think that's actually healthy. We do that too much.

All right. So, we want to make sure that we say you do love college athletics. I think we all do here. But again, you've warned that programs run the risk of becoming unsustainable if we don't make adjustments. I don't think we said the term arms race, but I think that's part of it, right? Like, you can only do this for so long. What message would you leave university leaders with across the country right now regarding college athletics?

Yeah, and I will go to the first point. Yes, I love college sports. March is one of my favorite times, both from a basketball standpoint and wrestling national championships and all of that. I am absolutely a fan. Some of my favorite students in class have been athletes I've watched on the field and then had in the classroom. And so having it as part of the institution is something I really enjoy. But I think we are at a point of having more hard and realistic discussions about what that future looks like, and not again saying we have to do it because we've always done it. And to be honest, we have a model for it, and it's been a struggle, but we have started to do that with academic programs. So, just like I wouldn't want to see us eliminate any athletic programs, but we may need to do that, I like all of our academic programs too. But sometimes you get to a point where it's like, all right, we can't continue to sustain Program X anymore, or at least not in the way we're doing it. We need to make some changes, which institutions have been doing increasingly because of those fiscal challenges I talked about. We need to look at athletics the same way. Nothing is kind of off the table. We have to look at what we can realistically afford. And we need to, again, not put rules in place across institutions that limit the flexibility of each institutional leader to make the best choice for their institution.

Yeah. President Mahony, Julie, this has been a great conversation, and I think one thing that's clearly coming out of this conversation is that this isn't about eliminating college athletics.

Oh, absolutely not. I think that's, again, there is value there, and I think whatever that may look like in the future, that will certainly be part of the future of American institutions. It just may be different, and it frankly already is so vastly different. And I understand for a lot of people, different makes them uncomfortable. It's not the way it's always been. I always remember when I started working at universities, the number of times I would hear, "Well, we've always done it that way." And that's across all aspects of the institution, not just athletics. And I've always been more of a, well, maybe there's a different way to do it. And I think some of the changes that have happened recently, as much as other people may not like them, have been positive in a lot of ways. And so now it's just figuring out, okay, how do we manage those changes in a way that we can sustain it and continue to support it at the level, I always feel like every program we offer, we should support in a way that kind of honors the commitment of those athletes and those coaches and everybody else. And that would be my goal.

Yeah. Well, if nothing else, Indiana winning a football championship probably tells us that things are different. They're different now than they have been before. So, we're in the middle of March Madness. That is a time that really reminds us why people love college sports, even people who maybe don't follow it at other times. But conversations like this really remind us as well that leadership and thoughtful planning are just as important as the games themselves. The product that we see at the end is a result of a lot of planning.

Yes, and the opportunities it brings to our student-athletes too.

Absolutely. Yes. So, thank you all for joining us. Thanks for being willing to sit in the hot seat today, President. So, we're going to hand the show back over to you.

Well, thank you, and thank you to both of you for hosting today. This is obviously an important conversation for those of us who love college athletics. And I think it's important that we continue to talk about it until we get to a place where our athletic programs are on solid ground going into the future and are financially stable and sustainable. So, as we wrap up this episode, I want to acknowledge our production team on the Office Hours podcast, SIU Edwardsville graduate student Solomon Omondi and Jason Church at WSIE Radio on the SIUE campus for his guidance. And last but not least, we're thankful to all of our listeners for spending a part of your day with us. So, thank you very much. Be sure to join us next time on Office Hours for further conversation with the people who work in and study higher education. Special thanks to Kara Baldus-Mehrmann and Daniel Mehrmann for the use of their composition "Writer's Block" as the Office Hours theme song. And thank you for listening to Office Hours with SIU System President Dan Mahony.