In the high-stakes world of college athletics, a perfect storm is gathering. On the surface, the headlines are about nine-figure coaching contracts, revolutionary NIL deals, and landmark legal settlements. But beneath the surface, these seismic shifts have created a financial vise that is slowly and inexorably squeezing the life out of non-revenue sports. And the programs caught deepest in this vise are women's athletics.
The current financial model in major college athletics has become a zero-sum game. A combination of mandatory new costs, wasteful spending, and a massive diversion of donor funds has created a three-front financial war. While this crisis was born from the excesses of big-time football, its primary casualty will be the very programs created to ensure gender equity.
The most significant change to the collegiate model in a century is the landmark settlement in the House v. NCAA lawsuit. This agreement paves the way for a revenue-sharing model where schools can pay athletes directly. While proponents hail it as a long-overdue victory for athlete rights, its financial mechanics represent a grave threat to departmental budgets.
Under the proposed model, Power 5 schools will be permitted to share up to an estimated $20.5 million per year with their athletes, with that cap expected to rise. This isn't profit-sharing; it's a cap on revenue sharing, meaning the money comes directly off the top of a department's earnings.
This is a new, mandatory, multi-million dollar expense that is intrinsically tied to the sports that generate the revenue: football and men's basketball. As part of the settlement, schools must also pay $2.8 billion in back-pay damages, a massive bill that athletic departments must now figure out how to pay. An analysis from Temple Law notes that the formula for this back-pay is heavily weighted, with over 90% set to go to male athletes. The result is a shrinking of the central pool of funds that athletic departments have historically relied upon to subsidize and support every other team on campus, from lacrosse and softball to swimming and gymnastics.
While schools are bracing for new, mandatory costs, they continue to hemorrhage money through wasteful, optional ones. The college football coaching carousel has normalized the practice of paying astronomical sums to fired coaches, creating a "dead money" crisis. In the 2022 and 2023 seasons alone, Power 5 schools committed approximately $146 million in buyouts to football coaches and their assistants.
The most glaring example is Texas A&M's record-breaking $77 million buyout for head coach Jimbo Fisher. This single payment represents more than triple the estimated annual cost of the new revenue-sharing model for the university. That $77 million provides zero return on investment. It's money that could have fully funded every women's sports program at the university for years. Instead, it vanished in an instant to pay for a mistake.
This isn't an isolated incident. This culture of reckless spending creates massive, unplanned financial holes that must be filled, and non-revenue sports are the easiest place for administrators to look for savings.
The Name, Image, and Likeliness (NIL) era was meant to empower athletes, but it has had a powerful and often-overlooked side effect: the great diversion of donor money. The lifeblood of many non-revenue sports programs has long been the generosity of boosters who donate to the athletic department's general fund.
Today, those same donors are being aggressively solicited by NIL collectives—third-party entities whose primary mission is to raise money for player payrolls, almost exclusively for football and men's basketball. As one analysis on the new business of college sports notes, "Vast sums of money that once went to athletic departments are now being diverted to players."
This creates a critical "opportunity cost." Every million dollars a booster gives to an NIL collective to secure a five-star quarterback is a million dollars they are likely no longer donating to the university to fund scholarships for the women's tennis team or to resurface the field hockey turf. This shadow financial system, which is "not guided by Title IX," is quietly starving the very programs that depend on traditional philanthropy to exist.
When you combine these three forces, the conclusion is unavoidable.
The financial pie is not growing, but the slice consumed by football is becoming all-encompassing. This reality is forcing university presidents and athletic directors onto a direct collision course with Title IX. Passed in 1972, this federal law mandates equal opportunity for male and female athletes. As budgets tighten, the temptation to cut non-revenue sports—a disproportionate number of which are women's teams—will be immense.
This isn't just a fear; it's a legal reality. According to The Associated Press, eight female athletes have already filed an appeal challenging the House v. NCAA settlement, arguing that its proposed distribution of back-pay "violates federal antidiscrimination law" (Title IX).
The very law that created the vibrant landscape of women's collegiate sports is now threatened by a financial crisis it had no part in creating.
The question for every university leader is no longer just "How do we win?" It is now "What are we willing to sacrifice to win?" And as the financial vise tightens, the answer appears to be the futures of thousands of female athletes.