Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
How much did your Athletics Department spend on football recruiting last year?
Here is one way to find the answer.
The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) passed enacted 1994
The EADA mandates annual reporting on athletics spending and participation by institutions that participate in Title IV (federal student financial aid program) and operate an intercollegiate athletics program
Snapshot of your institution’s annually reported EADA data is available online
Data reflects mostly top-line figures; not a laundry list of line-items
Ever wonder how much money your institution’s football program spent on recruiting last year? Or how much your women’s basketball program spent on operating costs for each student-athlete on the team? Or how much your university spent last year on men’s head coaches’ salaries in total?
Via the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) report, this data is merely a click away.
The EADA requires postsecondary co-educational institutions that sponsor collegiate athletics and participate in a Title IV federal student financial assistance program to prepare an annual report for the U.S. Department of Education on athletic participation, staffing, and revenues and expenses for men's and women's teams. The Department will use this information in preparing its required report to Congress on gender equity in intercollegiate athletics.
Historically speaking, in 1994, Sen. Mosley-Braun (S. 1468) and Rep. Collins (H.R. 921) sponsored the EADA, which was enacted later that year. An array of reauthorized higher education laws including the EADA have evolved into the federal statutory language in place today. The particulars are found here via the Code of Federal Regulations.
Through the EADA reporting requirement, there are three primary categories of reported information: 1) number of student-athlete participants; 2) coaches’ salaries; and 3) revenues and expenses.
Under these broad categories, each institution is to provide the following participation and financial information:
Sports teams and unduplicated student-athlete participation numbers by gender
Athletic scholarship dollars awarded to female and male athletes
Average salaries of head and assistant coaches for women’s and men’s teams
Number of head and assistant coaches for women’s and men’s teams
Recruiting expenses for each male and female team
Revenues for each women’s and men’s team
Operating expenses for women’s and men’s teams
Overall expenses for women’s and men’s teams
The revenue and expense data are drilled down further by the high profile sports of football, women’s basketball, and men’s basketball. Additionally, aggregated revenue and expense data is displayed by calculating all male sports’ revenues and expenses minus football and men’s basketball and all female sports’ revenues and expenses minus women’s basketball.
The EADA data is very top-line and does not delve into the granular such as how much money was spent on charter flights to transport your men’s basketball team to away games; how much revenue from season ticket sales your women’s basketball program produced last year; or the value of the average athletics scholarship offered to a softball student-athlete at your university, especially given that DI softball is functionally a partial-scholarship sport. In this last example, softball student-athletes may be pulling in other academic, merit-based awards or falling back on traditional loans to supplement any partial athletic scholarship to meet their cost of attendance realities. Such ground-level higher education meets college athletics financial examples are not discernable from an EADA report.
Nonetheless, the EADA report is a good starting point to quickly capture participation numbers, revenue totals, and the macro-costs of doing college athletics business today. The annual report from institutions is due October 15 each year and must be accessible upon request. Copies of the EADA report should be available in school’s athletic department offices, admissions offices, and libraries.
As universities and their athletic departments wrestle with tenuous financial projections for the coming academic year and sport seasons, the impacts COVID-19 has on future EADA report numbers will be telling.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
