What, EXACTLY, are college Olympic sports supposed to be?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Late Monday, tucked in around another round of press conferences and debate on the Protect College Sports Act, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) and Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) introduced a new piece of legislation called the “Training and Education for American Members in University Sports and Athletics Act” … or TEAM USA.

This bill would put restrictions on the number of international players in college sports; they could make up no more than than 20 percent of a roster (and for rosters of fewer than 10, there could be no more than one international athlete).

My very first impulse was to write an entire newsletter about why I think this is a terrible and disappointing idea. The bill’s ethos runs counter to many of the reasons why I think elite, broad-based intercollegiate sports competition is a very good thing. Quite frankly, I feel the same way about how Olympic sports are brought up in defending/promoting the Protect College Sports Act, which just advanced through its first procedural vote and is lurching closer and closer to becoming an actual law.

But what I think is important is not necessarily what the NCAA thinks is important — or federal lawmakers, athletic directors, current athletes, fans or any other stakeholders think is important. I suspect most folks carry a variety of somewhat vague notions of why college sports programs outside of football and basketball have value, but they haven’t really thought about how those notions might conflict with one another, or what, specifically, is most important.

Let me give you all an example of one of those notions: Supporting the PCSA (or other future college sports legislation) is important because runaway athlete labor costs threaten the existence of Olympic sports programs. A broad-based scale of athletic opportunities is the most important thing.

I understand why this thinking makes intellectual sense. Everybody knows higher education is struggling financially, and if schools are suddenly on the hook for $20 million or more in direct athlete compensation costs, well, the money has to come from somewhere. Why wouldn’t it come as the result of cutting the swim team?

But there’s just one problem: According to the data, that isn’t happening.

In fact, the numbers show that despite the House settlement, NIL, the transfer portal and all the other college sports changes that coaches and administrators mostly don’t like … Division I college athletic participation is going UP, not down.

The NCAA tracks school and athlete participation numbers across sports and divisions. In 2025, the NCAA reported 202,353 athletes participating in varsity D-I programs, playing for 6,750 sponsored teams. In terms of both raw athlete participation and the number of teams, those figures increased from 2024. In fact, outside of COVID, the numbers have ticked upward for two decades.

While the total number of sponsored teams in Division II and Division III (across all sports) has slightly declined, the number of participating athletes in both divisions has also continued to grow to record levels.

I’ll say this again, above the paywall, to make it even clearer: Even with athlete compensation, the instability from the transfer portal, constant litigation achievement, litigation, and everything else, there are more athletes across more teams playing D-I sports than there were in 2018. There has NOT been a decline in total athletic opportunity.

Now, it is fair to point out that not every sport has enjoyed the same growth trajectory. There’s been a tiny drop in participation in men’s golf, for example, since 2021. (How tiny? Six athletes.) Women’s swimming appears to be down roughly 30 athletes from a post-COVID participation peak, women’s fencing is down five, and women’s skiing is down 31.

Some sports, most notably men’s wrestling and men’s gymnastics, have been in decline for years, long before Alston, House or NIL. There are roughly 860 fewer athletes competing on D-I men’s wrestling rosters in 2025 than there were in 1981 and 800 fewer male gymnasts. Those are significant drops, but the causes (conference sport sponsorship, Title IX compliance, operating costs, etc.) extend beyond the scope of anything addressed in proposed federal legislation.

Then you have sports that appear to be uniquely disadvantaged in recent years. The biggest example of this, from my reading of the data, is men’s and women’s tennis. Over the last decade or so, D-I tennis participation has dropped by more than 200 athletes and two dozen varsity programs, more than nearly any other sport. Rifle, mostly due to smaller reported roster sizes rather than dropped teams, also reported significant athlete decline.

We’ll get to that in a second. But if the single most important thing about D-I collegiate sports is preserving opportunities, it doesn’t appear federal legislation is needed. Those numbers are going up all by themselves, rising costs and chaos be damned.

But the specific sports that are being sponsored have changed. So should that be one of the priorities?

Here’s another one. The D-I college athletics system should be the primary athlete development tool to help the U.S. Olympic movement, U.S. professional sports and U.S. national teams.