FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (WTVF) — Arkansas is cutting its men’s and women’s tennis programs at the end of the spring season. The latest sign that the college sports model of today is broken.
There are people who will tell you there’s enough money in college sports for the million-dollar player salaries, coast to coast conferences, etc.
It’s not true.
This isn’t an argument to stop paying players. Revenue sharing and true NIL are good and deserved.
But the current market is real only in the sense that it’s happening. Current pay is bloated and untethered to most athletes' actual value.
The revenue share cap isn’t a cap at all because pay-for-play continues funneled through (non-true) NIL paid by outside entities. If there’s no cap and it’s not your money, there’s no reason to be prudent or seek real value deals.
That’s how basketball salaries grew 20-30% this year alone
Schools with really big, really rich alumni bases get richer while the majority of athletic departments fail to make ends meet. Honest brokers fear the ruin of Olympic sports, like tennis, as a result.
There needs to be concrete rules on salary cap, transfer portal (which increases chaos and drives up salaries) and true NIL.
It’s going to take federal legislation to fix this, or significant compromise, mostly from the athletes making the money who have no reason to compromise.
The NCAA fought too long for everything it wanted and lost all power, swinging the pendulum dramatically to the players essentially having all the power. Now it’s on them (or the law) to bring a little compromise, because the current landscape isn’t sustainable.
'Who cares about tennis?' some will say while defending the rapidly growing player compensation in the high revenue sports of football and basketball.
That's an argument worth listening to, but while those are the most high-profile sports, they are far from being representative of the entire college athletics enterprise. Part of the agreement in college sports forever has been about the opportunity for many to get an education while playing a sport, even those that don't make revenue, because it’s better for the school and society as a whole.
Maybe it’s time to change that and make it only about revenue. Maybe that’s more fair. But that change will come with opportunity cost, like we've seen with at least 30 tennis programs being cut in recent years, or the decimation of sports like gymnastics and wrestling at the NCAA level.
The loss of those sports will also likely hinder future American excellence on the Olympic stage.
Right now the number of mouths at the table are growing faster than the pies can be baked. If something doesn't change to cap how much certain players or sports can have, there will only be crumbs left for everybody else.
And, as the tennis programs at Arkansas just found out, you can only survive on crumbs for so long.
