Why concerns about Olympic, women's sports suffering from athlete revenue sharing are without merit
When a viewer of the Andy Staples On3 show wrote in asking about the threat of some women’s and olympic sports going away due to the future potential of revenue sharing with student-athletes, Staples explained why one doesn’t need to equal the other.
The question stemmed from comments made by ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne when they appeared on Capitol Hill for a roundtable discussion alongside Texas Senator Ted Cruz on March 12. They pleaded that if players were made employees and provided a cut of the money in revenue-generating sports, then the smaller sports would be adversely impacted.
Byrne specifically noted Alabama’s struggles making profit from sports other than football and men’s basketball, adding “there will have to be decisions made” and “it’s the Olympic sports that would be in jeopardy, men and women.”
Staples isn’t buying into that reality.
“They’re trying to scare you, but the truth of the matter is they sponsored all these sports before football made money,” he said Thursday morning. “They lost money on all these sports before football made all this money. If they want to sponsor the sports, if they feel like they’re important, if they actually care about them, they will continue doing that, because they feel like it’s a valuable thing to spend money on.”
Staples’ big theme is that if the schools genuinely cared about olympic and women’s sports, or found true value in them, then they’ll find a way to keep funding them, just as they always have before.
“If they cut those sports, it’s because they don’t care,” Staples continued. “It’s not because they can’t, it’s because they don’t care enough to do it. That’s it. So every time they say ‘we have to.’ No, they don’t have to. They don’t care enough.”
However, Andy Staples believes fans are part of the issue, too. If fans cared enough about these sports, invested the time and passion and attended or watched these sports with regularity, there wouldn’t be a threat of them going away.
“Really, you don’t care enough,” Staples said, talking to fans in general. “Because when is the last time you watched a college volleyball game, a college track meet? I don’t wanna hear you saying this is your concern if the football players become employees, because you’re not actually concerned about that. You don’t care about those sports. We know! We see how it works. We see what you watch.”
There are the exceptions, though, of the fans and school showing a major commitment to sports that aren’t football, basketball or baseball — and those programs show that they can thrive with the right support.
“Like gymnastics at Florida. They sell out every meet. It’d be crazy to cut that sport. Volleyball at Nebraska. They sold out a football stadium. You can’t cut that sport,” Staples said. “There is value in this stuff, and if there wasn’t, there’d be no olympic sports at the FBS level, or Division II or Division III.”
Staples also noted that these sports can be “enrollment drivers” since most student-athletes still want to play their favorite sports and will find the best place to do so, while their parents are going to pay tuition in many cases to help their kid fulfill a dream of participating in college athletics.
Whether it’s a tuition boost or a resonant connection with the fans, there are secondary sports that are thriving and providing value at the college level. Again, per Staples, if a school is getting rid of them, it’s simply because they (and the fans) didn’t care enough to begin with.
“There is value and they will find a way to fund the sports they actually care about,” Staples said. “If they stop funding a sport, it’s because they don’t care about it. It’s not because they can’t, it’s because they don’t care enough. So do not let them fool you.”