EdCircuit Staff 
College athletics shape how many people see a university. A winning team puts a school on national television, game days fill a town, and alumni come back to campus. Universities often justify their athletic spending by pointing to these effects on applications, giving, the local economy and campus life. The research supports some of those claims, finds others weaker than they sound, and shows that for most schools athletics cost more than they bring in.
This article looks at each way college sports are said to drive campus growth, and at what the evidence says.
Athletics and applications: the Flutie effect
The “Flutie effect,” named after the former Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie, is the idea that athletic success brings a college more applicants. Researchers have tested it:
- A study published in 2009 found that success in football and basketball increased applications by 2 to 8 percent at the top 20 football schools and top 16 basketball schools, with private colleges gaining two to four times as much as public ones.
- A study summarized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2012 found that winning five more football games in a season raised applications by about 5 percent.
The effect is real but modest, and it fades unless the success lasts. As one 2023 review of the research put it, the effect only matters if a school can sustain its success, and most cannot.
Adding sports to grow enrollment
Some small colleges add teams specifically to attract students. Adrian College in Michigan added more than 30 teams after 2005 and more than doubled its enrollment, with about 70 percent of its students now athletes, Inside Higher Ed reported in 2023. The strategy does not always work. Fontbonne University, one of the colleges in that report, announced in 2024 that it would close in 2025. A 2024 University of Georgia study found that colleges adding football saw early enrollment gains that were statistically indistinguishable from other colleges’ after two years.
Alumni giving
Game days bring alumni back, and many universities count on that connection for donations. The evidence is mixed, and the money tends to stay in athletics.
- The NBER study above found that a five-game improvement raised alumni donations to athletics by 28 percent, not donations to academics.
- An earlier study of alumni giving found that football and basketball records had small and statistically insignificant effects on overall giving.
- Research presented in 2012 found that at 29 large football schools, each $1 increase in athletic giving went with a $1.40 drop in academic giving.
The local economy on game day
Packed stadiums fill hotels and restaurants, and studies sponsored by universities and tourism groups report large figures. A study commissioned by Ann Arbor’s visitor bureau estimated that the University of Michigan’s 2024 football season brought $227 million in visitor spending to the city. Independent economists are more cautious. A study of 63 metropolitan areas over 35 years found no statistically significant evidence that college football games raised local employment or income, largely because spending on games replaces spending that would have happened elsewhere in the area. Who pays for an impact study is worth checking before quoting its numbers.
Campus community and student life
For many students, games are a shared part of college life: something to attend with friends, a reason to wear school colors, and a link to the university after graduation. Athletic departments also employ students in jobs from game-day operations to social media. Athletic facilities can serve the wider campus too, when recreation centers and fields are open to all students. These benefits are harder to measure than applications or dollars, but they are a large part of why students and alumni value college sports.
What college athletics cost
The financial picture is the part universities discuss least. In 2023–24, 94 percent of Division I athletic programs spent more than they generated, and colleges contributed $7.2 billion from tuition, fees and other funds to cover the gap, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The median program’s shortfall was $20.6 million, up from $12.3 million a decade earlier. The NCAA’s own finance report found that only 21 schools in the top football subdivision generated more than they spent in fiscal 2024, and that institutional support and student fees made up 37 percent of Division I athletic revenue.
Those figures come from before the House v. NCAA settlement, which since July 2025 has allowed schools to pay athletes directly, up to about $20.5 million per school in 2025–26. Many schools are covering that cost by cutting Olympic sports.
Weighing the benefits and the costs
College sports can raise a university’s profile, give students and alumni a shared identity, and bring visitors to town. Winning can bring more applicants for a while. But at most schools athletics run a deficit paid by the university and its students, giving tied to winning flows mainly to athletics, and independent studies find little lasting effect on local economies. For trustees, students and families, the useful question is not whether athletics bring benefits, but whether a particular school’s benefits are worth what it pays for them.
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