This is a guest opinion column

Have you seen the news? There have been several stories about college and university athletics, the cost, and actions taken due to deficits. Many fans have openly expressed their disappointment and even dismay. Division I Cleveland State University ended wrestling, women’s golf and softball. Last summer, the University of New Orleans announced it was cutting its athletic budget by 25%. More recently, Division II Sonoma State University announced it was eliminating all 11 sports starting this fall as part of an effort to eliminate a $24 million deficit.

These cases are not the most shocking because the average person has not heard of these schools. But you have heard of the following schools:

“Mississippi State athletics operated at a planned deficit in 2024 fiscal year” ($7 million). “Michigan State operated through 4th budget deficit in past five years in 2023-24” ($16.7 million). “UCLA throws its athletic department a $30 million lifeline, but deficit deepens.” “Ohio State athletics operated at $37 million deficit last year.”

That’s right. THE Ohio State University, winners of the 2025 College Football National Championship, lost $37 million last year. Schools like Utah, Louisville, Rutgers, Houston, and Missouri are all in the same boat. These are big, flagship universities with massive endowments, television deals, and deep pocket donors.

And they all lost money.

Imagine my curiosity with the number of stories about Talladega College, a small, rural school where 70% of the students are Pell Grant recipients, deciding to cut four sports that all began in the last 3 years without any plan for funding. I hurried here in June after an abrupt presidential departure, weeks after we made the news because we were late paying our employees for May. This was a clear sign that the College was in financial distress. We held a press conference in September to transparently discuss the challenges and to say that we would continue to make tough choices to right size our operations.

One of my first tough decisions was to end gymnastics, a feel-good program that cost almost $400,000 and generated no revenue. Add that our athletic association, NAIA, does not sponsor gymnastics, and to compete against NCAA Division III schools meant travel to the Midwest and the Northeast, which was costly. Just from a practical perspective, we did not have a place for our gymnasts to train, which meant traveling to Trussville three days a week for practice, adding to costs.

These additions were bad decisions, point blank. We added sports that were not sponsored by our own athletic conference, causing us to have to pay not one but three sets of dues. Men’s volleyball was added expecting a jump to NCAA Division II, only to be denied membership; we put the cart before the horse.

Very few schools make money from athletics. In fact, most athletic programs are subsidized by a student athletic fee. A report on these fees in Virginia found that on some campuses, students pay over $1,000 a year to subsidize athletics. At Old Dominion (where I was director of student activities years ago), students pay about $1,800 a year to subsidize athletics. At Longwood University, which doesn’t have football like Talladega, the cost is about $3,200. (https://cardinalnews.org/2024/03/27/students-are-forced-to-subsidize-college-sports-why/) For Talladega to save the programs ended, instead of an annual $720 athletic fee, we would need to charge students about $1,800 a year.

Our actions are not only prudent, but timely. Rep. Tim Walberg, new chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, sent a letter this month to the Comptroller General raising “questions about how schools fund their athletic programs and the extent to which Title IV student aid subsidizes these costs through students’ tuition and fees.” (https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ltr_to_gao_athletics.pdf) His inquiry was not sparked by small NAIA schools like Talladega; it was the fact that 92% of Division I programs required student fees and institutional subsidies to bridge the gap, and the average Division II school required over $5 million in subsidies to pay for athletics.

I’m a die-hard Yankees and Steelers fan. I was a sportswriter for my high school newspaper. I’m the photographer for my son’s AAU basketball team. But as a president of a small school with a large percentage first generation and low-income students, and sensitive to the national outcry about the increasing cost of college, I can’t imagine charging our students more money to continue sports that don’t generate revenue simply to say we offer those sports.

Remember, The Ohio State and its $8 billion endowment lost $37 million on athletics last year. That says it all.

Walter M. Kimbrough is interim president of Talladega College.