The University of Texas has announced that it will add almost 200 new athletics scholarships after the House settlement is ratified, including offering the maximum 52 full scholarships in swimming & diving. That increase in scholarships is expected to take place over the next three years and will come at an estimated cost of $9.2 million.
That is in addition to paying out the $20.5 million in revenue sharing.
One of the richest athletics departments in the country, for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, Texas pulled in $239 million in revenue and spent $225 million, generating a $14 million surplus.
Besides fundraising, Texas has other strategies to come up with the new money, according to athletics director Chris Del Conte. That includes $13 million in new revenue and $6 million in budget reductions. That includes a $13 increase in the price of football single game tickets, or $80 over the course of the season, for the 100,000+ seat Daryl K Royal Stadium.
Del Conte is also advocating for the SEC to add a ninth conference football game to the schedule, which could add millions more in revenue. He also said that the Longhorns are adding high profile non-conference games like Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame, which will increase revenue as well and come with less downside risk given the expanding field for the college football playoff.
While football will receiving the majority of the House allocation, Texas does not currently plan to increase the scholarship cap from the current 85 offered.
Under the House settlement, most NCAA Division I sports will, for the first time, have unified roster limits, at least for schools that opt in. Scholarship limits, though, will be removed.
That means that the women’s rowing team, for example, will grow to a massive 68 allocated scholarships.
While the House settlement only tamps down swimming & diving roster spots to 30 each for men’s and women’s teams, the SEC is expected to further limit men’s swimming & diving rosters to 22. While the conference had not made a statement on the reasoning behind that different limits, coaches are saying that the primary driver is that SEC schools tend to have smaller athletics programs than their cohorts in the ACC or Big Ten, and therefore less flexibility in Title IX compliance to do things like add 48 full scholarships to the women’s rowing team (though Texas’ department is bigger than most).
Other notable increases includes a near-tripling of the number of scholarships offered for the beach volleyball program, which was only added as a varsity sport at Texas in 2022 and now has more scholarships than the indoor volleyball team, and gigantic increases in scholarship allocations for track & field programs as well.
While these increases will eliminate the idea of “walk-ons,” which has been much lamented, it will mean that essentially all varsity athletes at Texas will attend the school for free.
Not every university will have the resources for this kind of move, most of the mega-universities are expected to add scholarships through this process, not reduce them. Ohio State previously announced that it would add 91 scholarships across its varsity programs.
The moves are a double-edged sword: they will increase the gaps between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’ but they will also increase the share of revenue that is allocated directly back to students. These moves will also likely create a new arms race, with Texas’ latest announcement being a clear declaration that they intend to spend whatever money they can spend in order to be the top athletics program in the country.
Updated Scholarship Allocations
- Women’s basketball: 15 (currently 15)
- Women’s golf: 9 (6)
- Women’s rowing: 68 (20)
- Women’s soccer: 28 (14)
- Women’s softball: 25 (14)
- Women’s swimming and diving: 30 (14)
- Women’s tennis: 10 (8)
- Women’s indoor/outdoor track/cross country: 45 (18)
- Women’s beach volleyball: 19 (6)
- Women’s indoor volleyball: 18 (12)
- Men’s baseball: 25 (11.7)
- Men’s basketball: 15 (13)
- Men’s football: 85 (85)
- Men’s golf: 8 (4.5)
- Men’s swimming and diving: 22 (9.9)
- Men’s tennis: 9 (4.5)
- Men’s indoor/outdoor track/cross country: 35 (12.6)
These numbers total to 267 scholarships for women’s sports and 199 for men’s sports. That puts women’s scholarships at 57.3% of the school’s total – almost exactly in line with the student body enrollment of 57.9% female students.
68 for women’s rowing? Obviously just an easy way to balance out the sex ratios. Hard to imagine a team taking 68 rowers to a rowing meet.
Rowing has large rosters for four main reasons:
-A lot of rowers come to college new to the sport having done other sports, so they need large developmental rosters
-Rowers have a higher hit rate on donations than most sports
-The delta on adding another rower to the roster is relatively cheap
-Title IX balancing
And rivers are free and no maintenance.
Maybe an example of the House settlement making a positive impact? Obviously this makes Texas a very attractive option for all top athletes over other schools, but it _seems_ very cool that Olympic sports will get more scholarships. It also seems like it’s up to other schools alumni to step up to help them compete with this. Since roster limits are still small in the SEC there’s still a chance for other schools to compete with this.
From the stand point of 22 roster spots in Men Swimming at SEC this full ride example is making perfect sense – Seriously are 30/22 or 52 athletes on one DI team not enough? The SEC is facilitating members the choice of fully supporting a sport or eliminating it – Smart. While swimming might appear to be in trouble, it appears Track and Field is more likely to feel pain.
Gig’ em 🙁
Disgusted to see what is coming. Maybe they will have 4 divers so 18 swimmers. This will be professional swimming no student athlete just athlete.
I mean he’s literally assembling the avengers over there. If you are not up to par (Olympian/trials finalist) he will find someone who is.
Literal equation for performance and performance is the only data point that matters. I mean truthfully the next wave of world swimming is at Texas, you just can’t compete.
I disagree with “you can’t compete”. There are more than 5.5 athletes per class that *could be* game changers. They’ll go elsewhere. And other nil collectives will be able to fund 22 full spots if alumni step up a bit.
and how does this help the swim programs at schools like Purdue, South Carolina, Penn State and Duke not get cut?
I mean….good for Texas…. but they still have to live in Texas… so there is that
Not nice!!!!
Never lived in Texas but it is one of my favorite places to visit.
Why does women’s rowing need so many scholarships
Rowing has large rosters for four main reasons:
-A lot of rowers come to college new to the sport having done other sports, so they need large developmental rosters
-Rowers have a higher hit rate on donations than most sports
-The delta on adding another rower to the roster is relatively cheap
-Title IX balancing
Thanks for the answer. This makes sense to me
Isn’t Title IX balancing the far dominant issue, and the others are why rowing gets a big chunk of the balancing?
It certainly looks to me like they “plugged the number” using the rowing line item.