Trustees and Presidents: A Podcast for University Leaders On College Athletics

Who's really minding the money in college sports? Boards are realizing they have an important perspective.

About 85–90% of Division I athletic departments can't pay for themselves. Private equity firms are stepping in, and some want deals that the lenders don’t want the trustees to see.

Karen Weaver talks with Dr. Kim Schatzel, former president of Louisville and Towson and a former CEO. They cover the growing gap between the richest schools and everyone else, the fight over Arkansas's athletics budget, the Protect College Sports Act, and why conferences may be reshuffled soon. Kim's warning to boards: every trustee has the right to see every deal.

If you lead, govern or care about a university, this episode covers the questions to ask before the next deal gets signed.

Brittany Wagner, the academic advisor whose work at East Mississippi Community College became the soul of Netflix's Last Chance U, joins Karen Weaver to go beyond the cameras. Wagner reflects on unexpected fame, the life-skills coaching that shaped hundreds of athletes, and why today's transfer portal era has quietly erased academic advising from the recruiting conversation.

Currently an adjunct professor at the University of Montevello in Alabama, she makes a compelling case that degree progress, credit transfers, and international athletes' visa realities deserve as much urgency as NIL money and roster spots.

Netflix show referenced: Last Chance U

For more info about the certificate program: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/events/information-session-new-athletics-enterprise-certificate-program

"General manager" used to mean one thing. On a college campus in 2026, it means at least two, and the difference matters more than most administrators realize.

Karen Weaver is joined by Kristi Dosh, Forbes sports business contributor, founder of Business of College Sports, and creator of the first job board for NIL roles, and Scott Woodruff, General Manager of Villanova Sports Properties with Playfly, who brings 29 years across the Detroit Lions, Northwestern, and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Kristi explains how the GM title migrated into athletic departments to manage rosters, revenue share, and player valuation, and why the job looks completely different from one campus to the next. Scott describes the parallel GM role on the multimedia rights side, where jersey patches, court logos, and campus-wide corporate partnerships are reshaping what an athletic department can sell.

Along the way: the Nebraska arbitration and what "warehousing" means, why "best efforts" NIL letters aren't contracts, the twenty-somethings negotiating six-figure deals without a law degree, unresolved Title IX questions around revenue share, and what presidents should be asking their ADs right now.

Universities created the conferences. Conferences exist to serve universities, not to control them.

That's the argument Chris Bevilacqua made in a June Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed, and where this conversation begins. As Congress weighs the Protect College Sports Act, he says individual institutions have gone quiet, leaving conference offices to speak for them on decisions that will shape the next hundred years.

Chris then talks about the opportunities. Drawing on four decades in sports media — including founding CSTV, the first 24-hour college sports network — Chris explains why the traditional distribution fight was never winnable outside the Power Four, and why that no longer matters. Short-form video and social storytelling cost little, reach niche audiences precisely, and generate first-party data on future students. Small colleges need to reinvent themselves in this space.

Most university presidents are reacting to the upheaval in college athletics. Dr. Elizabeth "Betsy" Cantwell is running scenarios on it — a habit she picked up long before higher ed.

Before she became Washington State University's 12th president (and its first woman in the role) in April 2025, Cantwell built her career in national security, where scenario-based planning is standard practice: you can't know what's coming, so you prepare the country for many versions of it. She's an engineer and a research administrator by training, with prior stops leading Utah State and senior roles at Arizona State and the University of Arizona. She now applies that same discipline to a program left behind by the near-implosion of the 108-year-old Pac-12 — and to a roughly $20 million annual athletics revenue gap.

In this conversation with host Karen Weaver, Cantwell argues that athletics is the leading edge of every disruption bearing down on higher education — demographics, politics, the collapse of state funding, questions about cost and value — and that WSU has roughly a three-year window to position itself before the pieces land. Her framing throughout: Washington State and Oregon State were burned waiting for someone else to decide their future, and they don't intend to do it twice.

Sports betting has moved from casinos to every student's phone — and campuses aren't ready.

Karen Weaver is joined by Dr. Jim Borchers (U.S. Council for Athletes' Health, Big Ten), Dr. Lindsey Mortenson (University of Michigan), and Sara Custer (Inside Higher Ed) to unpack what Borchers calls the largest mental health epidemic facing 18-to-24-year-old men.

They discuss why health centers screen for alcohol and depression but not gambling, how prediction markets recruit inside fraternities, the harassment athletes face from losing bettors, and whether universities can warn students while taking sportsbook money.

"State assets generally aren't for sale to the highest bidder."

Dr. Blake Flanders spent 10 years as President and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents. He's leaving with a warning about where Division I athletics is headed — and a case for why governing boards need to stop staying out of it.

His board governs six state universities. Three compete in Division I: 🏀 University of Kansas 🏀 Kansas State University 🏀 Wichita State University

It also coordinates 19 community colleges, six technical colleges, and Washburn University, and regulates for-profit institutions in the state.

Flanders explains why the old hands-off norm made sense, why NIL and revenue sharing broke it, and what actually happens when private equity buys into college sports.

Chapters 00:00 – I

ntro 00:56 – What the Kansas Board of Regents actually oversees 06:11 –

From livestock judging coach to system CEO 12:01 –

Athletics as the "front porch" 14:46 – Why boards need to be more involved than ever 16:47 –

At-will leaders and the evaluation process 19:12 –

The policy born from a conference move 23:33 –

The KU athletics deficit and the faculty survey 28:40 –

Utah's $500M spin-off and Big 12 equity 30:43 – The private equity math: 10–12% returns 32:48 –

When a donor becomes an investor 36:15 –

What boards should watch for now

#CollegeSports #CollegeAthletics #NIL #HigherEd #KansasBoardOfRegents #Big12 #RevenueSharing #PrivateEquity

March Madness runs on upsets — the 16-seed, the mid-major, the coach nobody could name until Sunday night. Now the House settlement's pay cap is under pressure to climb, and the schools that make Cinderella possible weren't in the room where it's being negotiated. Dayton President Eric Spina and Saint Mary’s President Roger Thompson wrote the op-ed saying so. Why they believe the mid-majors are footing the bills for college football while their voting power shrinks.

Op-ed from Presidents Spina and Thompson:

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/cinderella-may-soon-casualty-college-090646622.html

College sports hits a Congressional crossroad. Five-time university president Gordon Gee joins Karen Weaver to break down the Protect College Sports Act, the Cantwell-Cruz bill racing toward Big Ten and SEC sign-off. Gee calls it "the last, best hope" for reining in runaway spending, delivering antitrust protections, and saving Olympic and women's sports from football's revenue grab—before Washington's involvement becomes the only thing standing between college athletics and total collapse.

“When the guy in charge of bench presses makes more than the university president, 10 times an average faculty salary, and absorbs the average cost of attendance for 60 students, it might be time to pause and reflect a little on where this is all going.”

Economist and Dean Emeritus of Purdue's Daniel School of Business, David Hummels, joins Karen Weaver to dissect the runaway spending in college athletics — from million-dollar strength coaches to ballooning student subsidies. Drawing on his research (and his Substack, Finding Equilibrium), Hummels argues universities have stopped asking whether athletics spending actually advances their mission. He challenges leaders to weigh subsidy costs against institutional value, and makes the case for reinvesting in broader student experience — intramurals, arts, community — rather than chasing prestige on the field.