By Grace Erholtz
The landscape of college sports and amateurism was fundamentally changed when the House settlement was approved in early June. The formal settlement resolved sprawling litigation in House v. NCAA and two associated cases. You can find out more about it here; briefly put, the settlement paid out $2.8 billion in damages to recent NCAA student-athletes, enabled potential revenue sharing at large D-I schools, and moved from scholarship limits to roster limits in all NCAA sports going forward.
House and non-revenue sports
Turning to the last of these: Adam Meyer’s article here on Nordic Insights does a fantastic job of analyzing how roster limits could impact NCAA skiing in the future. The article describes how the imposition of roster limits will have impacts on Division I teams like the University of New Hampshire that could include cutting athletes from their rosters and being extremely limited in how many first-year skiers they can accept each year. For example, Meyer noted that if New Hampshire, a team that currently has the House-maximum 16 female skiers, chooses to opt into the House settlement, they will likely either have to cut some of their existing female athletes or deny incoming female skiers a roster spot.
(Roughly a month after Meyer’s article was published, UNH did indeed opt into House. Initial reporting on the school’s decision focused more on student-athlete compensation than on the shift from a scholarship model to a roster-limits model.)
As devastating as this imposition of roster limits will be on the affected athletes, the overall implications of the House decision could be much more devastating: Its effects on “non-revenue sports” (every sport except football and men’s basketball, plus men’s hockey and women’s basketball at a handful of schools) could go far beyond the restrictions imposed by roster limits.
Most universities do not have extra money on hand to fund potential House payments to athletes, especially as most universities are already operating under financial strain due to rising costs, declining enrollment, funding uncertainties, and the lingering side-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the budget. There is also the awkward fact that nearly all athletic departments are not self-sustaining. But the money has to come from somewhere if universities want to keep up with top programs that can find the funds to shell out the maximum allowed. That money potentially comes from de-prioritizing “non-revenue” programs more than they already are, or even giving them the axe completely to fund their spending habits for football and men’s basketball.
The fate of the University of Wyoming ski team: Lessons from the Equality State
This is not the first time that “non-revenue” programs have been targeted for elimination due to financial constraints and out of a desire to prioritize football and men’s basketball. One of the most prominent examples of this from the world of NCAA skiing was the former University of Wyoming varsity ski team.
Two years ago, I entered the Master’s program in Kinesiology and Health at the University of Wyoming, or UW. As part of my Masters program, I proposed a qualitative research study that asked why the UW varsity ski team was eliminated in 1992.
The inspiration for this study came while I was doing research to help write a comprehensive history of the ski team. As part of this research I stumbled onto internal athletic department documents and newspaper articles that made me question why the most successful program at the University of Wyoming had been eliminated due to supposed budgetary constraints and Title IX noncompliance. Notably, I found a letter from Tim Ameel, coach of the 1985 NCAA champion team, that seriously questioned the university’s seemingly hasty decision to eliminate the team.
For my Master’s thesis, I interviewed 11 former athletes and coaches who had been on the UW ski team between 1988 and 1992, covering the time period between an unsuccessful first attempt to eliminate the team in 1988 and a successful effort four years later. I wanted to understand, among other things, how the team survived elimination the first time, why the team was eventually eliminated, athletes’ experience on the team, the life impact from being on the team, and university support for the team.
After coding and analyzing the data generated from these interviews, I concluded that the team was eliminated because the Athletic Director and Board of Trustees did not see the ski team as valuable to their vision of the University and the University’s athletic department, not because the team’s elimination would save them money or would make the athletic department compliant with Title IX.
(Title IX is a federal statute prohibiting gender-based discrimination in education that directly supported the rise of women’s sports in this country. It has more recently been in the news for conflicting interpretations of the protections that it may or may not offer to transgender or gender non-conforming students.)
This was demonstrated by two things: One, a refusal to look past the bottom line and see the team’s value, both monetary and otherwise, to the university and Laramie community. And two, a belief that the ski team was not “American” enough to be a part of the Wyoming athletic department. Research participants shared their perception that university officials thought the school’s athletic department should revolve around typical American pastimes like football, baseball, and men’s basketball, and should feature more American/Wyoming athletes.
My research participants spoke at length about how they would not be who they are or where they are without the team. That the team was and will always be their family, and that the team’s elimination struck them like the loss of a good friend. UW varsity skiing was the very embodiment of the ideal student-athlete experience: academic success, athletic success, unforgettable experiences, and lifelong relationships.
Athletic and administrative officials at the University decided to eliminate a team that had won two of the University’s only three NCAA team national championships and boasted 19 individual NCAA champions and dozens of All-Americans — feats that could not be matched by all of the rest of the athletic programs at UW combined. The preeminent theory for this shocking elimination, as proposed by participants and generally confirmed by primary source documents, was that the athletic director did not see the team’s value and reasoned that the money spent on skiing would be better spent on the priority sports of football and men’s basketball.
While the team’s elimination was devastating for all coaches, skiers, alumni, and team supporters, its death also brought consequences for the university. For one, cutting the team did not save the school any money, but rather ended up significantly costing them. According to one of the former coaches, because the Athletic Director and Board of Trustees chose to eliminate a sport that contained both men’s and women’s skiing, they were eventually forced to put significantly more money into their women’s athletic programs because cutting the women’s ski team along with the men’s caused a blatant Title IX violation.
This is also backed up by primary source documents from the time showing that, due to this violation, the university ended up specifically being forced to add three new women’s varsity sport programs: soccer, softball, and tennis, in addition to being required to spend more money on women’s programs in general. Ironically, while UW administrators thought they were saving money to spend on football and men’s basketball, they soon found that it cost them significantly more money than if they had just decided to keep the ski team.
‘Non-revenue’ sports today
At the end of the day, looking past the confusion generated from cutting a university’s most successful program for questionable reasons, the bottom line was that UW officials decided that one “non-revenue” program was not as important as two sports that supposedly made money. This situation has unfortunately not changed since 1992: “Non-revenue” programs are increasingly once more on the chopping block at many schools in this country, typically for the benefit of “revenue programs.”
Much of the justification for the elimination of certain sports and the increase in funding for others centers around the idea that only programs that explicitly generate overt revenue streams for their institutions deserve funding, or even deserve to exist in a post-House world.
However, the point should never have been about “revenue” versus “non-revenue” when the mission statement of NCAA collegiate athletics is to “provide a world-class athletics and academic experience for student-athletes that fosters lifelong well-being.” The recent approval of the House decision throws out the entire pretense of providing life-changing opportunities to student-athletes because it squarely places the focus of collegiate athletics on making money over anything else.
Teams are already being eliminated so that their funding can be reallocated to their university’s payments toward, mostly, the football and men’s basketball programs, regardless of their past success or the opportunities they have provided.
“Non-revenue” programs being eliminated to make way for the ever-growing commodification of football and men’s basketball is not a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. It is happening right now. If this situation is not taken seriously, “non-revenue” programs may be eliminated on a scale not seen before, potentially even more devastating than the number of programs — 427 across all three NCAA divisions to be exact — lost during the pandemic.
This is not an empty threat. Grand Canyon University eliminated its men’s volleyball program in late April 2025, a mere thirty days before the end of the school year, in order to “allow GCU to focus on supporting its remaining 20 athletic programs at the highest levels in their respective conferences.” Their men’s volleyball team had just made the NCAA Final Four and was one of the school’s most successful athletic programs. Its elimination blindsided coaches, players, and students alike.
However, when viewed in the greater context of eliminations like this happening across the country, it comes as no shock that it is happening now. GCU’s elimination of its men’s volleyball program, like UW’s elimination of its varsity ski programs, proves that no “non-revenue” sport program is safe in a post-House world, no matter its success or the opportunities it provides student-athletes. And these are not standalone examples: Jaime Gordon, head of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, told a Knight Commission panel that 32 Olympic sports at the D-I level had been cut since the House settlement was announced.
All hope is not lost though. The story of the UW varsity ski team should serve as a warning to all administrators, coaches, athletes, parents, and other “non-revenue” program supporters who read about it.
Why does the fate of the 1992 UW varsity ski team matter today? It matters because the decisions university and collegiate officials make have life-altering implications for the schools and student-athletes involved; all angles therefore need to be studied and taken into account before entire programs are eliminated.
This analysis needs to include a willingness to both look past the bottom line of direct revenue streams and to ask what all the benefits of a program are. In the case of the UW ski team, this included 55+ international students paying tuition and being consumers in Laramie solely because the university had a ski team. These students were not athletes on the team, but came to UW solely because of the presence and unique culture of the UW ski team.
Other benefits from the team included marketing value from the team winning the 1968 and 1985 NCAA Skiing Championships, the ski team having the highest GPA of any program each year, and the prestige of the program making the school internationally known. What is being overlooked or underreported for “non-revenue” programs when they are put on the chopping block in 2025 in order to blindly continue throwing money at football and men’s basketball?
Not only does the elimination of “non-revenue” programs constitute a loss for the university in purely monetary terms, but it also has a very real, incredibly devastating impact on the students themselves. One of the most significant themes revealed from this study was that former athletes and coaches on the ski team described it as their family. They consistently said that the elimination of the team felt like they were losing that family. This can have devastating impacts on things like mental health, which is already a crisis among college students.
A call to action
This study about the elimination of the Wyoming varsity ski team and the experiences of those who lived through its elimination will hopefully serve as a cautionary tale to those in positions of power in both collegiate academics and athletics. “Non-revenue” sports are not “bad investments,” but rather are life-changing opportunities for all involved, and their value goes well beyond any revenue that could be generated through ticket sales or media deals.
The House framework is here to stay for now, pending legislative attempts to repeal or codify its provisions. NCAA-affiliated schools need to think carefully about the positives and negatives of all of their programs and make decisions that consider what will benefit ALL of their athletes going forward.
“Non-revenue” programs matter. “Non-revenue” athletes matter. They are no less important than “revenue” athletes and programs because they don’t generate overt revenue for their schools. Athletic officials need to take the time to consider the implications of every decision they make and how it will affect every program and individual. Hopefully the schools impacted by the House decision will not go the way of the University of Wyoming and also decide that the world needs fewer cowboys, because their decisions could be life and death for “non-revenue” sports like NCAA skiing.
Read more:
Grace Erholtz original Master’s thesis | original thesis plus transcribed interviews
Adam Meyer article on House and roster caps for NCAA skiing
Adam Verrier blog post on his time skiing for Wyoming in the late 1980s and early 1990s
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
