CLUB SPORTS ARE COLLEGE SPORTS
How non-NCAA intercollegiate club sports are restoring and reinventing college sports –
A history and guide for prospective players, parents and administrators.
BACKGROUND
The sports-watching public are well aware of the shifts in major NCAA Division I athletics as they move toward a model that is increasingly professionalized for the athletes. What most of the public does not recognize is that the majority of “college sports” are still not a quasi-professional endeavor. Of all the NCAA DI/II/III athletes, only 1.3% of NCAA athletes receive a full or partial athletic scholarship. The vast majority of NCAA athletes are paying tuition, not working toward NIL riches and are not aspiring to become a professional athlete after college. They are amateur athletes and college students, just as they have always been.
SITUATION
While highly recognizable NCAA DI athletes, primarily in football and basketball, are finally gaining their true market value, “non-revenue” sports are being cut en masse. During the pandemic, some 400 NCAA programs were cut, even at major universities like Brown, Cincinnati, Dartmouth, Michigan State, Minnesota and Stanford. It is not lost on this author that while football and basketball players at Stanford or Michigan State are now making money in their sports, their own athletic departments are cutting their own “non-revenue” sports even though they have billions of dollars in endowments at their disposal.
What all of this means for most athletes entering the college decision-making process is that a shrinking number of non-revenue athletic programs at the NCAA DI/II/III levels exists for a growing number of ever more vested student-athletes seeking opportunities to continue to play in college. Will more athletes simply stop playing if they cannot find a roster spot at an NCAA program? Will youth grassroots participation shrink in a given sport because the number of NCAA programs is contracting?...Hardly.
College-age athletic talent is, and has been, spilling over from the NCAA DI/DII/DIII levels into competitive non-NCAA intercollegiate club levels for some time and the trend is accelerating. A high level collegiate club team in many sports today is what an NCAA DII/III team would have looked like only 10 years ago. In the case of some sports, the NCAA has never sanctioned collegiate play and the grassroots pool of college athletes is growing. Examples include cycling, pickleball, rock climbing, rowing (m), rugby, sailing, squash, triathlon and many more that we will discuss. Non-NCAA intercollegiate club programming can only grow for those sports.
CASE STUDIES
In this book we will study the “Liberty University Club Sport Model” in which LU is deliberately shifting club sports away from unfunded or under supported rag-tag student-led organizations, to institutionally backed “varsity clubs” that have all the resources, support, and funding of non (athletic) scholarship NCAA DIII athletics. By doing so Liberty “has its cake and eats it too” with a top notch NCAA DI athletics department as well as an elite non-NCAA club sports department.
We will look at why non-revenue sports clubs at large state universities, primarily at power five football and basketball schools, are increasingly more talented because of the lower cost of tuition that can be a deciding factor for a student-athlete who is of NCAA DII/DIII athletic caliber. We’ll look at why a club team in a non-NCAA sport can even draw fan support that rivals NCAA DI fan support as did a UNC-NC State club hockey game that drew 26,000 fans due to the sheer size and name recognition of the two schools this past winter.
SUMMARY
If one can shift perspective away from the NCAA as the only purveyor of non-revenue college sports, one can see that the trend of the student-athlete marketplace is being recognized at the institutional level. Non-NCAA competitive intercollegiate “club sports”, primarily in “non-revenue” sports, are gaining institutional prominence, funding and support. In essence, competitive non-NCAA intercollegiate club sports are beginning to look, feel, and rival, NCAA DII/DIII sports.
The book is a timely history, guide and predictor that suggests college sports really aren’t all that different than they ever been. It has just taken 100 years to finally separate out the professional elements in U.S. college sports from the true student-athletes and their programs that are found in competitive intercollegiate non-NCAA club sports.
©2023 Bob DeGemmis. All rights reserved.
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