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Historically, intercollegiate athletic programs have been a topic of controversy and conversation within higher education. Scholars have long debated the merits of higher education’s sponsorship of, and student participation in, intercollegiate athletics. The debate around college sports has intensified as both athletic-based revenues and expenditures increased. The constraining financial resources from state appropriations and increased competitiveness of external research grants have intensified the scrutiny of athletic-based expenditures. Academic scholars focusing on the impact of intercollegiate athletics have produced mixed results. Toma (2002) found that athletics serve as a connecting point for current students and alumni, while Zimbalist (2000) articulated the exploitive nature of big-time, revenue-generating college sports.
Although the research is not conclusive on the role of intercollegiate athletics in promoting the academic core, the past 20 years of reform initiatives and calls for increased presidential oversight have produced few changes to the culture of intercollegiate athletics. This divide has permeated the academic research on college sports as little focus has been put on the potential for the academic core to leverage athletic-based decisions to increase both academic prestige and promote the “collegiate ideal” (Toma, 2002).
Escalating operating costs are at the center of the discourse on intercollegiate athletics. In fact, it was recently reported that the median operating expenditures for athletics increased 43% from 2004 to 2008, but the median revenue generated by athletics programs grew only 33% over the same period (Fulks, 2008). The Knight Commission (2010) reported that highest-spending categories...

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...bership revenue-sharing. Each of these services provides incentives for institutions looking to increase their access to athletic-based revenues to join a conference where their proportion of revenue-sharing activities and media-based dollars exceeds that in their current conference.
The predominate role of intercollegiate athletic conferences; beyond that of coordinating athletic competitions, is negotiating and distributing media rights and TV packages (Duderstadt, 2009). While conferences play a major role in facilitating athletic competition and media rights negotiations, a conference membership also facilitates academic coordination. The Big Ten has an inter-library loan program (Rooney, 1969), while other institutions have advocated that their conference peers join prestigious organizations such as The Association of American Universities (Duderstadt, 2009).