Collegiate athletics in the United States has been undergoing seismic shifts in the last decade. Faced with a continual wave of litigation on many fronts (e.g. concussions; the rights of athletes to their names, image and likeness (NIL); athletes’ rights to revenue generated from the multi-billion-dollar collegiate sport industry; challenges to transfer restrictions, challenges to eligibility restrictions; etc.). The results have not been favorable to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the various conferences or universities. These legal challenges have ushered in a new era with far less control centralized with the NCAA. At the same time, the amount of spending in athletics has continually increased, and if the House Settlement is ratified, spending will only rise even further. Many universities and athletic administrators claim that sports are the “front porch” of the university that invite people to be a part of the university community, drive enrollment and strengthen support. This is used to justify the heavy investment in athletics, as well as a big-business operation model. However, it’s not clear these ideas are supported with any actual evidence. In this talk, I will outline two different lines of current research examining data related to collegiate athletics. One line focuses on the Mid-American Conference, of which Kent State University is a part, examining the economic realities of mid-major conferences, with more than 50% of athletic department budgets supported by student fees or direct institutional support. The findings indicate that the non-student athletes tend to come from lower socioeconomic status (SES), while the athletes tend to be higher SES, disproportionately male and white. The other line of research, examines the impact of conference realignment and football success on enrollment. Preliminary findings demonstrate that neither conference realignment nor football success has a statistically significant impact on enrollment.
About the Speaker
Dr. Theresa Walton-Fisette, Professor in Sport Administration at Kent State University, investigates power relationships and the resistance and maintenance of those relationships within sport and physical activity, including media analysis of gender equality in sport, women’s amateur wrestling, and elite distance running and investigations physical education and embodied identities. Most recently she has been examining social understandings of collegiate athletics. Her work has been published in Sociology of Sport Journal, Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Sport History, and Sport, Education and Society. Dr. Walton-Fisette earned her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2002.
How to participate
Iowa Colloquium on Sport and Culture is Friday, April 11, 2025, 4:00pm CST (22:00 CET). The talk will be delivered on Zoom and is free and open to the public. Please register in advance for this webinar at this link. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
