Todd’s Take: Ballpark Visit Is A Reminder That College Sports Is About More Than ROI

Football and basketball might drive the revenue, but the college athletic experience is supposed to be about something bigger than just return on investment.

Indiana and Purdue baseball teams stand for the National Anthem during their Big Ten baseball game on May 10, 2025. / Hoosiers On SI | Todd Golden

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Football and basketball have been my life since last August. I’ve lived and breathed Indiana’s fortunes – great to terrible – on the gridiron and hardwood.

These are the sports you’re most interested in and we tailor our coverage to that – as do the majority of our competitors.

However, once in a while, you need to get off of that treadmill. It’s very easy to get into the bubble of high revenue sports and forget that there’s a whole world of college athletics that exists outside of it.

Yes, as presently constituted, those non-revenue sports are dependent on football and basketball to maintain how they’re currently run. Everyone fully realizes that, but a reminder is needed sometimes that college athletics shouldn’t just be about how the experience relates to the bottom line.

So I wanted to come to Bart Kaufman Field this weekend for a number of reasons. I hadn’t seen Indiana baseball in person, it was a series against archrival Purdue, which is of higher interest than another Big Ten series, and frankly, I like baseball.

But I think the biggest reason I came was to remind myself that college athletics shouldn’t only exist for those at the top of the financial food chain.

Fans file into Bart Kaufman Field for the Indiana-Purdue baseball game on May 10, 2025. / Hoosiers On SI | Todd Golden

The baseball players on the field – and you can replace “baseball” with any other non-revenue producing sport – aren’t the ones being thought about as far as the House settlement, congressional action or a presidential executive order is concerned. They will live with the consequences of whatever comes – good and bad.

It has created almost unbearable uncertainty for all sports, but particularly those sports who don’t have a seat at the decision-making table.

If the House settlement is approved – and that’s a big if given the arrogance the NCAA and power conference schools are demonstrating in trying to play chicken with a direct order from a federal judge to grandfather roster spots in their counter-proposal to make them optional by school – baseball will drop to a 34-player limit.

Indiana’s current roster has 41 players on it. While the players who play regularly will likely return, some will not, so this last home series of the season takes on some poignancy.

“The hard part right now is that nobody knows any of the rules. You don't know the money you have. You don't know the roster spots that you have. It could be 34, it could be unlimited. You have no idea,” Indiana baseball coach Jeff Mercer said after Saturday’s 5-1 loss to Purdue.

“This is not anyone’s fault, it’s not Indiana, this is big picture. If you knew what the rules were, then you could begin to formulate a plan, begin to attack it, be organized and move your way through it. The hard part of it is just not knowing,” he added.

I’m not sure how it’s logical to anyone with a functioning synapse that the “solution” to how college athletics should work should result in athletes losing opportunities. Sure, it’s hard to quantify from a bottom line standpoint what value the 41st player on a baseball player brings to an athletic program, but the college athletics experience was never supposed to be about cost-benefit analysis.

And for that 41st player on the roster? Or the last athlete on a cross country, volleyball or football roster? The experience that they get out of athletics is immeasurable.

Everyone wants to find a solution, but there are none that serve everyone's interests. I have reservations about President Donald Trump’s proposed presidential committee on college athletics. Not for political reasons, but for the confusion it will add to an already muddled landscape. However, I am encouraged by some (not all) of what co-committee chairman Cody Campbell wants to achieve.

Campbell is a former football player at Texas Tech. He played in the early 2000s under the traditional amateur model that college athletics operated under for decades.

He wrote in The Federalist on his zeal to protect women’s athletes and those who play so-called Olympic sports.

“Here’s the economic reality: Football and men’s basketball haul in over 93 percent of the cash — billions that keep swimming, softball, and wrestling alive. Women’s sports and Olympic sports don’t turn a profit. They never will. But they are the heart and soul of the college sports system, pumping opportunity to kids who’d otherwise be sidelined,” Campbell wrote.

“Over-allocate the cash to pay football and basketball stars and/or exclude many institutions from profit streams and media exposure, and universities will swing the axe on the sports that can’t pay their own bills,” Campbell continued. “Non-revenue sports, Olympic sports, women’s sports? Gone. Dreams? Buried.”

He isn’t wrong. All trends are pointing in exactly the direction Campbell states. I don’t agree with all of Campbell’s solutions, but I do agree with his diagnosis of the symptoms.

Why should you care? Fans who are basketball or football-oriented only might ask what all of the fuss is about? So what if field hockey, rowing, wrestling or softball can’t carry on?

That’s short-sighted. The college system remains fertile ground to develop Olympic athletes for one thing, but apart from that, college opportunities should never be sacrificed on the altar of financial spreadsheets. If there is largess to be reckoned with, colleges need to show more restraint in staff sizes, salaries for administrators and coaches, facilities, etc., before a single athlete is cut.

You know something else that this baseball weekend reminded me of? People do want to watch these sports.

Bart Kaufman Field was jam-packed on Friday and Saturday. Yes, it’s graduation weekend. Yes, the weather was Chamber of Commerce picture perfect too, but there’s an audience for non-revenue sports. Indiana baseball has had a mediocre season by recent standards, but were still 2,500 folks squeezed into the ballpark.

People want these sports to work. As college athletics becomes unbalanced in terms of money and resources flowing to the top, it was nice to be reminded that there’s still a lot of value in the college athletic experience as we’ve always thought of it.

These sports matter – even if it doesn’t always say so on the balance sheet. Most of all, these athletes should matter to us too - even if it isn't reflected in monetary profit or loss.

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