Colleges Keep Adding Football Programs

Football is back at Whittier College following a three-year hiatus.

After the college cut its football program in 2022, the Poets returned to the field this fall with a roster of 96 players, a meaningful enrollment increase for the Division III college in California, which has fewer than 1,000 students.

At a time when college sports are awash with doom-and-gloom narratives, Whittier officials are celebrating the enrollment boost as an off-the-field win.

Critics frequently liken the state of college athletics to the lawless Wild West because of the revolving door of the transfer portal; eye-popping name, image and likeness deals for athletes; and a new revenue-sharing agreement that has distributed millions of dollars to previously unpaid players. On top of that, the majority of college athletic departments are bleeding money and heavily subsidized by the academic enterprise, with some charging thousands in student fees. 

That’s especially true of football, which is at once both the most lucrative collegiate sport and the biggest money pit. Of the minuscule share of institutions that do turn a profit off athletics, football and men’s basketball overwhelmingly drive those revenues.

Yet colleges are adding new football programs at a rapid pace in the often-overlooked lower levels of the sport: the NCAA’s Division III (which prohibits athletic scholarships) and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Ten new or revived teams are taking the field this fall—mostly at the lower levels—marking the biggest expansion of the sport in the college ranks since 2013, according to data collected by the National Football Foundation. Another seven programs are set to launch in the near future.

Institutional leaders adding or bringing back football are quick to separate themselves from the colleges at the top levels that compete with multimillion-dollar budgets (and often rack up millions more in operational losses). Their argument hinges instead on football as an enrollment strategy, a move that has been tried across many institutions—with mixed results.

Bringing Back Football

When Whittier College cut football after the 2022 season, students and alumni were stunned.

The program is probably best known for the most famous player to suit up for the Poets: President Richard Nixon. (Some future NFL coaches also rotated through Whittier.) Many in the community considered the program vital to their student experience—and cutting it affected enrollment, said Whittier President Kristine E. Dillon. 

Unsurprisingly, football players transferred out immediately. “[But] we also had students who weren’t football players leave because that was something they wanted in their college experience,” Dillon said.

When she was tapped to become president in 2023, initially in an interim capacity, Dillon said, she began hearing impassioned pleas from alumni who wanted to restore the program. But the financial picture at Whittier was shaky, and the budget for the football team had been eliminated. With Whittier already fundraising to meet its pressing needs, Dillon said she was unwilling to tap those funds; if football was to come back, supporters would have to find a way to pay for it.

Following an analysis of ramp-up costs, Dillon set a fundraising goal: $750,000. Whittier not only reached it; it exceeded the target by $75,000, allowing the college to relaunch its team this fall. Adding football boosted enrollment by roughly 10 percent.

“That definitely has an impact on my enrollment,” Dillon said. “And we also found that there were people who wanted to attend Whittier College because there was a football team.”

Some 2,000 miles away, Stillman College in Alabama is pursuing a similar strategy. Earlier this month, college officials announced that they are reviving the football program, which has been dormant since 2015. The impetus for the resurrection is to drive enrollment at the historically Black college.

Board of Trustees Chair Joe Hampton told Inside Higher Ed that conversations around bringing back football have circulated for several years. In reviving the program, Hampton said, the board had to weigh whether it was the “fiscally responsible thing to do” and sustainable over time. The college already has facilities in place, which will help keep the start-up costs low, he noted. 

Amid a push to increase enrollment from around 750 to 1,000 students by 2030, Stillman officials are counting on football to bring more than 100 athletes—plus other students—to campus. The university is banking on the vast popularity of football in the state.

“Alabama is a hotbed for football,” Hampton said. “There are thousands of young men who play high school football that are really good athletes, but more importantly, really good people and really good students who would love the opportunity to participate beyond high school.”

Mixed Results

Not everyone buys the notion that adding a football program will increase enrollment.

Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College who has written several books about college sports, believes adding football is often a desperate act for struggling institutions.

“American colleges are not in good shape. Demographics are not helping us; the Trump effect of making it more difficult for foreigners to come into the United States and get visas is not helping us. On top of that, you have a situation in college sports that’s totally disorganized and unpredictable. I think there’s a general sense of ‘Holy shit, what can we do now?’ So you fall back on the glories of football and football being the most popular sport in the United States,” Zimbalist said.

Available research shows mixed results, but tends to back up the skeptics. One study found that football yields modest enrollment gains that fade over time and provides only short-term increases in tuition revenue. Another noted no significant enrollment benefits in adding Division III football. But another study found that DIII colleges with football programs had stronger enrollment than those without, though it did not establish that those gains were attributed to athletics.

Dillon is pleased with the immediate results at Whittier’s fundraising effort to restore football. But she acknowledges it may not work everywhere, especially if finances are already strained.

“I think the economics of this have to be: What is your net tuition revenue for the increase in enrollment? What is your program budget? It can’t get out of hand. If we’re spending more to run a football program than the tuition dollars can support reasonably across all of our priorities, of course, it’s a bad idea,” Dillon said. “But I think—at least in our case—it’s a very good idea.”

(Whittier is also adding a women’s flag football program in 2028 as the sport surges nationally.)

Zimbalist concedes that adding football isn’t always a bust but urges colleges to be cautious and consider other avenues before betting big on an athletics strategy that doesn’t always pay off.

“I’m prepared to believe that in some cases, in particular circumstances, in particular parts of the country, that can work out,” Zimbalist said. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to work out all the time.”

For Whittier, Stillman and other colleges adding football, the results are still to be determined.