How Sustainable Are College Athletic Programs?

In 2022 I wrote a blog post about the insanity of West Coast teams UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington joining the Big Ten conference.

In the case of UCLA and USC it also was the height of hypocrisy as well.

Both schools for years had been preaching about the dangers of fossil fuel use to their students.

The climate change agenda was incorporated into almost everything students were taught.

Students are told they have no future unless fossil fuels are eliminated as an energy source.

Almost all universities across the nation have some type of "Sustainability Plan".

I pointed out that was certainly the case at UCLA and USC.

For example, here is a screenshot of UCLA's plan. Of course, UCLA is a state university.

Source: https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/plan/

It includes a "Sustainable Transportation Plan" in which the goal is to have a "fossil-fuel LA County"

This is a screenshot from the University of Southern California (USC) Office of Sustainability web page that links to the 2020 USC Sustainability Plan.  This was supposed to guide the university through 2025.

An important element was "Greenhouse Gas Mitigation".

Source: https://libguides.usc.edu/sustainability#s-lg-box-23243071

A key goal of the program was to increase student, faculty and staff participation in alternative transportation programs.

I was thinking about all of this talk about "Sustainability" in 2022  when I saw that UCLA and USC were applying for membership in the Big Ten athletic conference.

How in the world was flying athletic teams across the country in keeping with the "Sustainability" goals for those universities?

If climate change and sustainability efforts are the most important challenge of our lifetimes, according to these colleges and the state of California, why were they making a decision that would increase carbon emissions that is fundamentally at odds with that narrative?

And for what would be considered an incidental purpose related to the educational purpose of the institution?

In addition, I asked how any of this would be sustainable economically?

It might be one thing if this concerned a couple of football games per year.

However, affiliating with the Big Ten meant that all sports teams at UCLA and USC would travel thousands of miles to play others schools in the conference.

These were the athletic teams at UCLA in 2022 according to its athletics web page.

USC opened the 2026 football season at home versus San Jose State in the LA Coliseum to a sparse crowd.

Some blamed the heat. Some blamed the opponent. Some even suggested that the reason was that USC has admitted so many international students that have no interest in sports like football .

USC's student enrollment is now almost 30% international.

It had almost 12,000 international students in the 2025-2026 school year---5,700 were from China and 2,100 from India.

USC, like many universities, as as have many colleges, prioritized international students for the full price tuition they pay.

Despite the influx of international students, USC reported a total university deficit last year of over $200 million.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-15/usc-budget-deficit-layoffs

Athletics was mentioned as one of the reasons for the budget issues.

Full details on the financial is not available as USC is a private school.

Being a state university, the financials at UCLA are more transparent than at private USC.

UCLA recently fired its Athletic Director Martin Jarmond due to large department deficits.

UCLA reported losing $52 million in athletics in fiscal 2024. 

The red ink must be climbing even higher in 2026.

Source: https://wtam.iheart.com/content/2026-09-01-ucla-fires-athletic-director-amid-budget-deficit/

Jarmond's tenure at UCLA, which began in 2020, included the school's transition to the Big Ten Conference and multiple NCAA championships. However, the athletics department's financial woes overshadowed these achievements. The department ended the 2024 fiscal year with a $51.8 million debt, requiring a university bailout. The rising costs associated with name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation further strained the budget.

On the other side of the country in the Big Ten sits Rutgers.

Rutgers reported losing $78 million on athletics in fiscal 2025 and an astounding $500 million since joining the Big Ten in 2014.

Source: https://www.nj.com/rutgers/2026/03/rutgers-has-dug-a-500-million-hole-since-joining-the-big-ten-where-did-the-money-go.html

 

How sustainable is college athletics?

As I wrote in 2022, sustainability from a climate change perspective is not even in the conversation when it comes to the size and breadth of today's college conferences.

UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington are in the Big Ten.

Stanford and UC Berkeley are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference. So is Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Sacramento State is now in the Mid American Conference.

Northern Illinois has joined the Mountain West Conference.

More importantly, it is hard to see how all of it is financially sustainable.

The transfer portal has spread chaos across the college athletic landscape.

NIL payments are out of control.

Recruiting, travel and coaching costs have all soared.

A recent report documented just how out of control it is.

 “From 2005 to 2023, schools saw increases of 322 percent in recruiting costs, nearly 300 percent in sports equipment, around 250 percent in both medical and game day expenses, and more than 200 percent in travel. Coaching salaries increased a whopping 370 percent over the same time period. And the problem is accelerating. Two years after a roughly $20 million roster was considered exceptional, industry surveys in 2026 placed several leading programs at $40 million or more.”

A large contributing factor is that there is no effective governance structure overseeing college athletics today. 

Any rules the NCAA attempts to make are immediately challenged in the judicial system.

This was the motivation for the introduction of the "Protect College Sports Act" by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) that passed the Senate earlier this week by a 77-22 vote.

The bill would provide the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to establish new rules on athlete eligibility, transfers and compensation so that college athletics would be able to be governed without the constant lawsuits we have been seeing.

For example, eligibility would be limited to 5 years and only one transfer would be permitted without sitting out a year. Schools would be limited to revenue sharing for their athletes up to a maximum of $50 million per year.

The new law would also limit future college conferences to no more than 20 members.

The bill still needs House passage which is uncertain. The House is in recess until after the midterm elections and the bill's prospects are unclear in a lame duck session of Congress.

President Trump favors the legislation so if the House passes the legislation it is likely the bill would be signed into law.

If the bill does not pass in this session of Congress the supporters would have to start over next year with the new Congress.

On top of all of this are colleges and universities that are increasingly unaffordable causing more and more people questioning the value proposition of a college education at the same time that demographic changes will mean there are fewer potential college age students in the United States.  

How sustainable are college athletic programs?

The bigger question is how sustainable is the entire college model going forward in an AI world with  collapsing birth rates?