What sports should your athletic department add next? Some advice:

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

I am going on a family vacation from July 17 through 28.

Our plan is to run some freelance stories while I’m gone (and maybe a pre-written post or two if I can find enough time to knock ‘em out), and while I’ll be very reachable on the phone, I’ll be slow to respond to emails and whatnot. So if you have some mission-critical thing you want to send me, well, do it soon! And we’re still looking for a couple freelance stories to run during that time. Send pitches to [email protected].

A quick follow-up about freelance stories: While I love to get pitches from journalists and professional writers, I’m also happy to publish (and pay for) stories from industry leaders, current or former college athletes, conference leaders, etc. I saw, for example, that Baylor athletic director Doug McNamee recently published an editorial about the fan experience in USA TODAY. I know a lot of ADs and CEO-types read Extra Points … so if the spirit moves you to share your thoughts about something, I am happy to pass the microphone.

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I understand that these are financially challenging times for athletic departments all over the country. But even as some administrators contemplate dropping some sports, along with laying off staffers or cutting costs elsewhere, even more colleges are actually talking about adding new sports.

It’s true! There are actually more athletes competing at the Division I level than there were three years ago, even though many teams have eliminated support for some of their programs.

There are many reasons why an athletic department, large or small, might consider adding a few extra sports, but the two most common reasons are (a) wanting to move toward even greater compliance with Title IX and other regulations and (b) wanting to grow university enrollment.

I’ve already written quite a few articles about the merits (and challenges) of using athletics as an enrollment strategy. I don’t want to do that today. Instead, I want to explore a follow-up question: If we’re going to add a sport, which one should we add?

There’s no perfect answer. But over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to leaders at several emerging sport associations, ADs, consultants and other folks, and I think I now better understand the argument for various sports.

Here are some things I’ve learned about women’s triathlon, women’s flag football, fencing and more:

You might want to add women's triathlon. Here’s why:

The equipment costs are lower than you’d think: I assumed triathlon programs would need to have access to large bodies of water for swimming year-round. But the folks at USA Triathlon told me that actually, college practice and competition can be done indoors. The only physical infrastructure a program really needs is access to a pool, some wetsuits, some bikes and a place to run. I’m told a D-I program could easily run on under $200,000 a year, and a Division III program could cost less than $60,000.
The potential athlete base is larger than you might think. There aren’t that many high school athletes specializing in triathlon, although they do exist, especially internationally. But athletes who are already elite runners or swimmers, but not quite elite enough to be high achievers at the D-I level, could train in biking and swimming well enough to be competitive, USA Triathlon told me. Some programs have had success training athletes who weren’t even swimmers! Some smaller colleges have had success training soccer players, for example.