Lia Thomas is a star women’s college swimmer.
The University of Pennsylvania swimmer shined at the Ivy League Women’s Swimming & Diving championship last weekend. Thomas, a 6-foot-4 man who identifies as a woman, won three events.
While many argue that so-called transgender women like Thomas are ruining women’s college sports, there is another problem that conservatives should focus on. Namely, that college swimming is a fiscal drain, regardless of whether or not transgender athletes are competing.
Virtually every college sports team throughout the country loses money. And the only sports for which schools make more money, on average, than the program costs, are Division 1 men’s basketball and football. However, schools that are successful in these programs have other sports that lose money. At the same time, many less successful teams in football and basketball lose money. No women’s college sports teams make money.
So where does the money to fund sports programs come from? If it’s a public college, then the answer is usually students and taxpayers. If it’s a private school, then it’s mostly just the students. They pay for these programs in the form of higher tuition and student fees. A 2010 report found that nine public colleges in Virginia charged each student more than $1,000 in fees annually to fund their respective athletic departments. That’s adding more than $4,000 to the cost of a four-year diploma.
The average NCAA Division 1 athletic program with a football team lost about $14.4 million in 2016. The function of government shouldn’t be to pay for adults to play field hockey and swim competitively. And with a student loan debt crisis nearing $2 trillion, the focus should be on lowering the cost of higher education. An athlete’s genitalia is less important a concern when the program will lose money either way.
The finances of college athletics explain why U.S. colleges eliminated more than 200 sports teams in 2020 to help colleges alleviate financial problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, when Division 1 college athletic programs downsize and become a Division 2 or 3 program, they save money.
Last year, the University of Hartford decided to drop down from Division 1 to Division 3. A report found that it would save the school about $10 million per year. At a school with about 7,000 students, that’s about $1,400 per student per year — or more than $5,000 over four years.
While men who identify as women shouldn’t compete in high school or college athletics against women, addressing that problem doesn’t fix the bigger problem with college sports. Athletes like Thomas are rare. High college tuition is not rare. Advocating to fix the latter will help far more people than worrying about Thomas.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
