RESEARCH DESCRIPTION

The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics released a landmark report about major college athletics 20 years ago that criticized low athlete-graduation rates, questionable academic standards and the tendency of athletics programs to operate independently of university oversight. The report found that many major college sports programs, threatened the integrity of higher education. Since then, presidents and other leaders of Division I institutions have done much to improve governance policies and to raise academic expectations. The result has been better classroom outcomes for athletes and greater accountability for their coaches, teams and institutions.

In this follow up report, the Knight Commission proposes further recommendations for financial reform in college sports against the backdrop of escalating athletics spending, shrinking state budgets and institutional endowments, and conference realignment.

Report Partners: Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics

REPORT CONTENTS

· Median athletics spending at public institutions in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) has grown nearly 38 percent from 2005 to 2008, while academic spending grew only 20 percent. The ten public institutions spending the most on college sports are on pace to spend more than $250 million annually, on average, in 2020.
· Median athletics spending per athlete ranges from 4 to nearly 11 times more than the academic spending per student in the FBS conferences.
· Restoring the Balance, the Knight Commission’s blueprint for financial reform, offers three principles for strengthened accountability in intercollegiate athletics:

1. Requiring greater transparency, including better measures to compare athletics spending to academic spending.

2. Rewarding practices that make academic values a priority.

3. Treating college athletes as students first and foremost—not as professionals.