The University of Southern California has been represented by at least 40 past, present and future student-athletes at seven consecutive Summer Olympics, including more than 60 at each of the most recent two. While USC is an outlier, universities across the country fed the 2024 Paris Olympic pipeline with home-grown talent — from Oklahoma State (12) to Miami of Ohio (2) to the University of South Florida (6). More than 1,200 former, current or incoming collegiate student-athletes representing 251 NCAA member institutions competed in Paris, or roughly 9% of the 10,714 total athletes at this year’s Games. Meanwhile, 65% of Team USA’s roster boasted NCAA ties. AB senior editor Paul Steinbach spoke with college athletics scholar Meg Hancock, an associate professor at the University of Louisville, to learn if the seismic changes to collegiate athletics over the past two years threatens its status as a major launch pad for would-be Olympians.
How long has intercollegiate athletics been a research interest of yours, and why?
Intercollegiate athletics has been an interest of mine, honestly, for as long as I can remember. Even going back to my childhood, I wanted to be the first woman to play on the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team. So, college sport — in some way, shape or form — has always been of interest to me, whether as a fan or wanting to compete at that level. And I did play Division III basketball for a couple of years before coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to go to the WNBA. I met with my athletic director, who was also a faculty member in one of the minors that I was taking at the time, and I just thought, wow, this is amazing. You get to be a part of a college athletic department, help athletes grow and develop, and you get to teach in the classroom. This is like my dream job. Initially, my goal was to get a Ph.D. and return to leadership in athletics. But once I started in my field after my master’s degree, I was working in college athletics at Dartmouth College, I just realized that I really enjoy working with the student-athletes and the coaches in a space where I can help them grow and develop. So, I went back and got my Ph.D., and that has been an area of focus for me for the past 15 years.
What do you make of what’s going on with conference realignment, the transfer portal and NIL? It must be fertile ground for you to till when you’re in front of a classroom.
Oh, yes, I think that is the best way to put it. There is an aspect of what’s going on in college athletics right now that, quite frankly, writes classroom content all by itself. We have the opportunity to explore leadership issues, finance issues, equity issues, ethical decision-making. We have to think about it from the athletes’ perspective and what is in their best interest. I thik there’s a lot of, “They should be able to do this. They shouldn’t be able to do that.” And that’s really entrenched within the history of the NCAA and the rules and regulations that it’s had for a very long period of time. I am not surprised that we are at this inflection point. But I do think the speed at which things have happened — you’ve identified several of those — we begin to see conference realignment and the financial implications of that. And then we obviously have the litigation around amateurism and name, image, likeness. And then we add the transfer portal in and all of the changes that that has created. As well as COVID-19. I think the pandemic really exposed college athletics in a lot of ways, both financially, but also, frankly, it’s social importance to the fabric of our society. We see sport as an escape, and college athletics is a huge part of that. Particularly at Division I level, we know that athletic departments are still recovering from the financial losses experienced during that time. And, obviously, the degree to which we are beginning to see television and media companies kind of indicate the financial worth of intercollegiate athletics. And so I think we’re in this perfect storm right now. In some cases, I think we’re in the eye of it. In other cases, I think we’re still swirling around a bit as we try and figure out what the best path forward is. It’s intercollegiate athletics, and there are a lot of very smart people in very high positions, and we’re talking about presidents and athletic directors and conference commissioners, and all the staffs that support them. I know we’ll get it figured out, but I think that pace of decision-making is going to be at a much slower rate than the action that we’re seeing right now.
When I started at Athletic Business 25 years ago, we first started to hear the rumblings that ultimately there would be a couple of so-called super conferences, and I thought, “That is insane.” And here we are. The transfer portal is the freest free agency there is in all of sports, and I fear it’s going to resemble what Kentucky men’s basketball has been — rosters changing drastically every season. Do you think we’ll ever go back?
You know, I don’t think so. But it is hard when we see teams turn over every year. Speaking as a fan, we have an affinity not just for the institution and the mascot. We have an affinity for the athletes that are entertaining us. And whether that’s in basketball or football or softball or golf, it’s hard when you lose those individuals because they’ve gone to another school. Folks very much appreciate professional sport organizations because of star power, and I’m wondering if we just begin to see shifting allegiances beyond alma maters to following stars — individuals who are great talents, but who move from school to school — rather than folks building an affinity and affiliation for their institution.
Let me ease into the Olympic discussion here, because these things are related. With college athletic departments in coast-to-coast conferences spending millions more on travel, not to mention the House v. NCAA settlement and the prospect of future athlete compensation, what impact will this have on their sponsorship of Olympic sports, and how might this jeopardize the talent pipeline that Team USA, in particular, has enjoyed for decades on the international stage?
I think the fact that we’re having this conversation is very important, because when we look at the top three areas where athletic departments generate revenue, they do it through their television and media rights, they do it through donations, and they do it through ticket sales. When we think about the impact of revenue generated, at some point you can’t keep raising ticket prices. You can’t keep tapping into donors. And we know that donors now are donating money to collectives and NIL efforts beyond what they would typically donate to an athletic department. So, at some point, those two wells are effectively going to dry up. And so then you’ve got television media rights that help fund conferences and athletic departments. Well, in certain cases — the ACC, for example — they’re under contract until 2036, I believe. So, we’ve got 12 more years of the same amount, per institution. Combine that with the understanding that the net median revenue generation for FBS institutions and Power 5 conferences — and I’ll say Power 4, but we know that includes the schools from the PAC-12 — was negative $3.1 million in 2022. According to the latest NCAA financial database, which goes through 2022, I think about 26 of the 65 Power 5 schools actually generated a profit, whereas the vast majority did not. So when we think about drying out donors, the inability to continue to raise ticket prices, stagnant television and media rights and athletic departments that, from a median perspective, run a deficit on an annual basis, where is the $20 million to $22 million going to come from? It is hard to imagine that it wouldn’t come at the expense of sports, and I think when we look at the way that athletic departments are structured, it is easy to imagine that the sports that would suffer would be Olympic sports, which don’t generate revenue. Men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball — they will be okay, but look at smaller sports like rowing, like equestrian, even beach volleyball — even though that’s a great sport within the NCAA right now, there’s still some expense associated with that given where the teams have to travel. I think it’s going to be very difficult for athletic departments to find a way forward without compromising Olympic sports, which we know will also compromise the Olympic structure. When I look at the landscape of things, including the funding structures and how sports are supported, I think we have to be aware that the decisions that are happening in Division I college athletics — let’s be even more specific, Power 4 conferences — actually have ramifications far beyond the intercollegiate landscape.
The United States medal count topped all nations for the 19th time in Summer Olympic history. How important are NCAA Olympic sports to the actual Olympic Games and Team USA, in particular?
When we look at our system, 65% of our team — 385 out of 592 — affiliated with college sports in some way. It shows you just how important the intercollegiate system is to our Olympic team. And the United States is very unique in the way that its intercollegiate system is structured. I think that it can be very advantageous as we think about how we streamline resources and how we provide the best opportunities for athletes to gain access to world class coaches, including performance coaches, nutrition coaches, dieticians, and medical experts.
Where do the Olympic Training Centers figure into all of this? Are they still as relevant as they used to be? Will they become more relevant if beach volleyball or fencing or rowing get removed from the college sports landscape? Where are we going to train our Olympians?
I think that therein lies the question. Is it going to be Colorado Springs? I do think this is where intercollegiate athletics and the USOC and the Paralympic Committee and other national governing bodies really have an opportunity to think about that and to get a sense of how sport is valuable to collegiately, Olympically, recreationally. And when we look at governing bodies, most of them have missions that want to expand their sport. So this is a really cool opportunity, I think, for the Olympic Committee, the Paralympic Committee and governing bodies, in concert with intercollegiate athletics administrators, to really think about how we build sustainable funding structures that will continue the Olympic pipeline, help students access those sports Interscholastically, then intercollegiately, and build that pipeline to and through the Olympics.
The collegiate facilities arms race has to play into this Olympic pipeline, that the facilities are out there and available to just a tremendous stable of would-be Olympians.
Yeah, I mean, particularly at the Division I level, because of the facilities arms race has been going on for decades. They are world-class facilities, even if they’re 10 or 20 years old. When people think about where they want to train, how they want to train, the images of college athletics facilities, that’s what they see in their mind. They see intercollegiate weight rooms. I’m in Kentucky and from Kentucky, but they see Rupp Arena and they see the Yum Center, and I think that is absolutely something that is attractive to future Olympians. I know parents want their children to be in facilities that are also clean and state of the art, and where they can see pictures of college athletes, of Olympians, on the walls, and they can have their children see those every day right where they’re training or where they’re participating and competing. And I think that the college athletic space is very unique in that way.
Do kids competing at the college level aspire to be Olympians the way they once did? For some sports, the Olympics are still the pinnacle of what they can achieve if there aren’t professional leagues for their sport. Do kids go to college to be college athletes first and then they hear, “Hey, you have world-class ability. We could probably get you to the Olympics if you’re interested,’ or do they have that mindset heading into college?
It think it depends on the sport. I really do. I think when we look at sports like swimming, and rowing, or even beach volleyball, I think there are very clear paths to that, because a lot of the coaches particularly at Power 4 institutions have experience coaching on national teams, and so they are looking for athletes who they can coach in that way. And athletes are looking for coaches that can elevate, obviously, their athletic stature, but also help connect them to other people who can continue to do that. If we’ve got an athlete who is not on campus over the summer, are they working with another college coach somewhere who has worked with a national team to continue to build their skill set? I think when we’re looking at Olympic sports, there are athletes, particularly those who are competing in Division I and II — I think the stat I read was about 37 athletes from Division II athletics are participating in the Games this year, so obviously highly elite athletes — it’s thinking about the elite level of coaching, of facilities. And when I say coaching, I’m adding in the performance coaches, the nutrition coaches and the actual Xs and Os coaches, that students have access if they’re interested in elevating their stature to being an Olympian.
When amateurism was supposed to be the guiding ideal in terms of Olympic participation, did U.S. Olympic teams rely even more on college and university athletes to fill their rosters than they do today?
That’s a really good question. I mean, I think the best way to answer this right now is, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know. I think a lot remains to be seen. We typically send contingents of around 600 athletes to the game, so it’s not like the contingency is shrinking, but is the pipeline shrinking? Is how athletes are choosing to train changing? And I think a lot of that also revolves around even questions of how people value higher education. I know that, you know, that might seem far afield, but if somebody’s thinking, “Hey, I can train privately around my own sport with my own coach, and I’m not going to pay to go to college. I’m just going to focus on sport.” I could see that happening. But here we go again with the House settlement and roster caps and scholarships changes. And so, I think a lot still remains to be seen. I would not be surprised if we saw more money funneled into scholarships for athletes that hasn’t been there in the past, because we know that most athletes are not on full scholarship to play their sport. If now there’s an opportunity to go on full scholarship and to be in a world-class facility with world-class coaches, I think that presents an opportunity. But we also have to recognize that that money that is funneled to particular teams to fund those scholarships means that other teams are going to lose that funding, and unless there is someone or an organization willing to step up and provide funding, we’re going to see some shifting in the college sport landscape, and thus the Olympic landscape, too.
We just saw Léon Marchand, who swam at Arizona State, win gold for France. Do we know how many athletes compete on U.S. college campuses and then go on to represent other countries in the Olympics?
Obviously, the U.S. has 385 NCAA athletes, Canada has 132 from 69 NCAA schools, 19 conferences and 13 NCAA sports. Followed by Australia. They have 44 athletes or 32 schools. And then this one, Nigeria, 38 athletes from 35 schools.
Wow.
Yeah, that surprises me. This is interesting, too. There are 406 athletes competing in track and field from NCAA schools — 154 schools, to be exact — and they represent 75 countries. I think that also shows that you that folks, internationally, also view the college sports system in the United States as a pipeline. I mean, that’s a pretty big stat there. Obviously, every country has their own pipeline and their own Olympic Committee and governing bodies and things like that. But I think that we also have to recognize that the college sport system in the U.S. provides a pipeline for our own nation to be represented, but it has opportunities for so many other folks internationally, as well.
You commented on the speed at which the whole college landscape has kind of been turned on its ear here in the past two years. Four years ago in Tokyo, 75% of Team USA athletes had NCAA ties. We’re four years away from Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. If schools start cutting Olympic sports in the next two years, are we going to see a dramatic shift in the number of collegiate athletes who are making it to the Olympic level?
I think that this is going to be the precipitating factor in getting intercollegiate athletics, the NCAA, athletic directors, presidents and our Olympic Committees to figure out a way to work together moving forward. Because, even watching the Paris Games right now, wow, it has been so incredibly exciting. It has been so much fun to see our athletes compete and do well. And, truthfully, for me as a fan, even seeing France do as well as they have in their own country. When we think about L.A. 2028, that is exactly what we want it to be for the United States. So, I think we will begin to see faster movement between the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the governing bodies in college sports to work together to figure out how to keep and protect Olympic sports in college athletics. There is a coaching association called the Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition that is working to protect Olympic and Paralympic sports. I think that, overall, there is a vested interest in keeping Olympic sports. In the next two years, in particular, we’ll see a lot more movement between the Olympic and Paralympic Committee and college athletics working together to try and preserve Olympic sports, so that we can show out in L.A.
Anything you want to add?
I really appreciate the conversation. I think that our intercollegiate system, as it is currently built, is critical to maintaining a pipeline to the Olympic stage in the United States. And I am confident that folks will begin to work together to figure out, “How do we preserve this?” I think we’ve got so much momentum going with the Olympics. I think we’ve got so much momentum with women’s sport, that there’s going to be a concerted effort to figure out how we can get U.S. athletes on the podium in L.A. in 2028.
