Coffee with Crawford | Athletes get paid, students get billed — welcome to college sports 2025 | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- University of Louisville students have gotten the news: Their part of the growing bill for college sports' revenue-sharing era is $400 per academic year.

Earlier this month, U of L announced a $167.4 million athletic budget that laid bare a stark reality. With $20.5 million in direct payments to athletes — the result of the NCAA's House settlement — the department is nearly $30 million short of breaking even.

To close the gap, the university is stepping in with $12.5 million in direct institutional support. The athletic department has taken out a $25 million bank loan to cover expenses for the next two years. And students — via a new $200 per semester athletic fee — will chip in an estimated $5.4 million.

WDRB first reported those totals in June. Reporter Samantha Condra reported Wednesday on the fee specifically. The Louisville Cardinal student newspaper was informed of it via an email from the president's office June 27.

U of L has increased student athletic benefits for the fee -- providing no-additional-cost student tickets (and in larger numbers) for football, men's and women's basketball, volleyball and baseball. Guaranteed seats for those sports could be purchased for a $75 membership fee to the Ville'ns spirit group, but that allotment has sold out.

Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford

Some perspective: The budget for U of L's College of Arts & Sciences — the largest undergraduate college on campus — is about $78 million. That's less than half the size of the athletics budget. That college is home to perhaps half of the university's undergraduate students, and through their tuition and fees alone, they account for $154 million in revenue — almost identical to athletics. (My figures are all estimated here. Consider them ballpark.)

But there aren't any million-dollar professors walking those halls. I promise.

Here's the troubling picture: Students — many of them working nights at UPS, mornings at Starbucks, or any number multiple part-time jobs around town just to stay afloat — are now being asked to help pay the salaries of some athletes.

At Louisville, the student athletic fee will cover roughly a quarter of those athlete salaries.

And for their contributions, students — and the rest of us — aren't even allowed to know where the money is going. Because of the way Kentucky's NIL law was written, player salary details are shielded from public records. Normally, when public money is involved, salaries must be disclosed. But not here. Not for athletes. We don't even know how much is being allocated to each team.

And this isn't just a Louisville issue. At WKU, the athletics fee is $218 per semester. At EKU, it's called "The Eastern Experience" — $250 a semester. NKU charges a one-time $450 "Norse Experience Fee." Murray State has a $150 "Racer Experience Fee" per semester.

The University of Kentucky doesn't charge an athletics fee, but it did raise student ticket prices for the coming year.

By my rough math, students at Kentucky public universities that fund Division I athletics will pay more than $22 million in athletic fees this school year. And that doesn't account for other athletic subsidies.

Nor is this just Kentucky. It's all over the country. South Carolina just instituted a $300 per year athletics fee, on top of an $86 fee students already pay for access to tickets. West Virginia has added a $125 per semester athletics fee. Clemson added its $300 per year fee last year.

You can see why some of us think this isn't sustainable.

In fact, a bill making it way through Congress, The SCORE Act, would ban the use of student fees for athletics.

Now, don't get me wrong. There is real value in college athletics. There's intangible value, too — in the form of donor dollars raised in football suites, enrollment spikes tied to athletic success, and the spirit and community that sports can create on campus.

I've spent a career covering and championing college sports. I believe in their power.

But when college students themselves — already battling rising tuition, housing, and debt — are forced to help pay the salaries of their fellow students simply because they wear a uniform, something is out of whack.

Quick Sips

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Simone Biles took home top honors at the ESPYs. Catch the full list of winners here.
Pat Kelsey met with the media Wednesday and explained how last year's NCAA Tournament seeding snub inspired Louisville's smoke-filled nonconference schedule. Read it here.

The Last Drop

"You can't sharpen your teeth eating oatmeal. Whether (scheduling tough) ends up being the best strategy in the world, I don't know. But that's what we decided. Bring it."

– Louisville coach Pat Kelsey, on going big with next season's schedule

Louisville athletics projects a $12.5 million deficit in 1st budget of revenue-sharing era