How are schools divvying up money between sports in modern era? Here's an inside look at Duke's approach
How are schools divvying up money between sports in modern era? Here's an inside look at Duke's approach
Ross DellengerThu, March 26, 2026 at 3:10 PM UTC
0
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For the last three years, before or during the opening of the men’s basketball transfer portal, coach Jon Scheyer frequented the office of his boss, Duke athletic director Nina King, to discuss the cost of basketball prospects as he prepared for recruiting.
Surely, he’d tell her, the prices won’t get any higher.
“I’d go to Nina and say, ‘I think we’ve reached the peak,’” says Scheyer. “And then I’d feel like a complete idiot.”
But as costs climbed, so did Duke’s increases in resources for its athletic programs, most notably men’s and women’s basketball and football. The men’s hoops team currently has the top-rated recruiting haul following consecutive years of finishing with the No. 1 class; the women’s program signed three top-30 players this year; and the football program had enough investment to sign, a year ago, a quarterback to a two-year contract worth nearly $8 million.
The investment rebuffed a narrative that emerged in this era of direct athlete compensation — that small, private universities, with budgets dwarfed by fellow football powerhouses, might slip into irrelevancy.
In fact, King heard the doubts enough to utter during a 2024 interview the words, “We do not want to be left out.”
Months later, the Blue Devils are in the midst of one of the most successful athletic seasons in the modern history of college sports.
They became the first school in ACC history to sweep conference championships in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball — a rare triple crown in an era where richer rivals like Clemson, Florida State and Miami often hold a decided financial advantage.
Jon Scheyer, Cameron Boozer and the Duke Blue Devils will meet St. John's in the Sweet 16 on Friday. (Brian Rothmuller/Getty Images) (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In fact, according to data from Truemedia, the Blue Devils are the only power conference school to claim college athletics’ triple crown in the history of the industry — at least since conferences began holding championship football games.
“Maybe people had doubts about a high-academic institution being able to do this,” said women’s coach Kara Lawson, “but I never had doubts that there are enough families and student-athletes that want the high-academic experience.”
On Friday, the school’s men’s team tangles with St. John’s in the Sweet 16 here in the nation’s capital and its women’s team meets LSU in Sacramento, California. Only four schools have advanced their football team to a bowl game and their basketball teams to the Round of 16: Texas, UConn, Michigan and … Duke.
How Duke competes with big-spending schools
How did this all happen? Those within the program — and some outside of it — describe a concoction of ingredients that may provide a recipe for other small private schools to succeed in this era.
In a world of more transactional and monetary relationships, Duke’s recruiting efforts often lean on the school’s elite educational experience (annual tuition is more than $90,000, for instance), as well as post-graduate career opportunities in industries like Wall Street and other relationships with some of the most powerful businesspeople in the country.
After all, Duke’s board of trustees includes the commissioner of the NBA, CEOs of General Motors, Ally Financial and Apple, a retired partner from Deloitte, multiple partners in private capital firms, even a retired Methodist bishop and the sitting governor of the state of Illinois.
During conversations with King and president Vincent Price over the last two years, this same board provided a path for an increase in athletic investment to match the big-spending evolution of the industry. Duke’s athletic brand — especially the historic success tied to the men’s basketball program — provides the university with, perhaps, its greatest marketing arm.
What if that disappeared?
“Everybody agreed that we don’t want to move backwards,” King said.
And, so, the investment began. A swell of booster dollars and an increase of appropriations of university funds — approved at the board and presidential level — arrived at King's department and then, individually, were distributed to three of the most respected coaches in the country: Scheyer, Lawson and football coach Manny Diaz.
As a private school, Duke’s financials are not publicly available, and university officials decline to reveal specifics. But King makes clear that the university investment — a "significant part” of the department’s revenues, she says — provided a necessary path for her teams to adequately compete in recruiting, even if their roster spend fell short of the highest-paying programs in the country.
“There’s been multiple pressure points where you could flinch, but we’ve marched forward every time,” Diaz said. “You had the opportunity to say, ‘This might be too much for us.’ We haven’t.”
But a question looms for King and so many others: How long can they continue doing this if costs continue to rise?
Revenue streams aren’t necessarily growing at the levels that new expenses are, she says, especially at a place where ticket sales — any athletic department’s chief revenue generator — is a fraction of its peer schools. For instance, Cameron Indoor Stadium only seats 9,300 people and football’s Wallace Wade Stadium holds less than 40,000.
“I was hoping football coaching salaries in this last round would stabilize now that we are focused on paying players. Oh no, they have not,” she said with a laugh. “During my time, I’ve gone back to the [university] well and have received great support. But there aren’t unlimited funds. As the cost of everything continues to go up, how do we continue to fund the whole enterprise?”
Manny Diaz and the Duke Blue Devils hold up the championship trophy after the ACC title game on Dec. 6. (John Byrum/Getty Images) (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
She’s not the only one asking such a question amid an industry that finds itself strained financially with the onset of athlete compensation — a move that took the settlement of an antitrust case for college executives to, finally, agree to share the wealth with athletes.
For many schools, this is a “decision point,” says Kevin White, the retired former Duke and Notre Dame athletic director who is now consulting with dozens of Division I programs. If schools want to continue having success athletically, universities must increase subsidies to athletic departments that, at the major conference level, have for years operated as, mostly, self-generating entities.
“Its never been better understood what the institutional value is for athletics,” he said. “It is a conduit to alumni, admissions and the quality that apply. Athletics has never been seen to a greater degree as a marketing commodity.”
Advertisement
For ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, Duke’s success sets an example to the other seven private institutions within his league. “It’s reassuring to those privates across the country as well,” he said. “That provides some wind behind the sails that it can be done and here’s a perfect example.”
But how much is too much for a university to invest in a department solely for its branding and marketing capabilities? Is there return on this investment?
In an email, Duke’s president, Price, responded to questions from Yahoo Sports about the athletic investment at such an academic-forward place, mentioning in his response an engagement with the university’s faculty related to the spending — a key component (approval from faculty) at high-academic institutions that are now significantly increasing funding to sports.
“It’s well known that models for funding and managing intercollegiate athletics have shifted quite dramatically in recent years, making this an unusually uncertain and challenging time,” he wrote. “We’re committed to work at finding sustainable, value-guided solutions to these challenges, and to this end we’ve engaged Duke faculty, board members, and other experts in ongoing discussions as we pursue continued excellence.”
Rising costs in modern era
Without the additional funding, some university athletic programs like Duke risk falling behind. In fact, in an interview in 2024, King expressed her confidence that the university, with the increase in subsidies, will “be able to go in with that next group of schools, whoever they are and break off” — a nod to potential future fracturing of bigger spending power league schools from all others.
The current state is costly.
Football budgets are soaring well above the House settlement’s annual, per-school $20.5 million cap as schools devise circumvention tactics while enforcement remains somewhat absent.
“We’ve heard rumors of $40 million for a football roster. That’s not us,” King said, “but we have an idea of what it will take above the [new cap of] $21.3 million next year. Not everybody gets what they want. The conversation with our coaches is, ‘Tell me what you have to have to build a national championship team.’ We work back from there.”
For basketball, that number is increasing by the year. In fact, most industry insiders believe that roster values have doubled each year — from rosters worth $2-3 million three years ago, to $4-6 million last year to more than $10 million this year. Most believe Duke men’s basketball is in that neighborhood.
Next year, one agent expects the number of programs spending at least $10 million to reach 50 and the top recruits to command at least $3 million each.
“I tell our players all the time in our games to expect the expected,” Scheyer said. “You’re going to turn the ball over and miss shots. My philosophy with the portal is to expect the unexpected.”
Scheyer believes Duke is done playing “catch-up” in the athlete-compensation race and now can “get ahead.” After all, the compensation changes took an adjustment for most people in Durham, where school officials grew accustomed to leaning on the program’s historic success to land prospects.
Now?
“It’s impacted us as drastically as any program,” Scheyer said. “If all programs are equal with no money involved, we have an advantage. Bring money into the equation and we have less of an advantage. You’re not going to have an advantage in tradition and history. That doesn’t matter as much anymore. It's an investment in the program, in athletes. Recruiting has shifted.”
In accepting the football job two years ago, Diaz’s fears of splitting resources with a historically successful basketball program were put at ease during a conversation with the university president. Price told him, flatly, that “Duke is absolutely committed at the highest level of football.”
Does the Duke football program have the gobs of money that some others do? Not necessarily. But perhaps it doesn’t need it.
“Our total rev-share pie is a bit less, but people understand the value of Duke and the network and the opportunities with alumni and by being here there being more marketability,” said Binuk Kodituwakku, the team’s general manager. The basketball team gets a lot of genuine third-party deals. There is a brand attachment that we benefit from.”
An example of that happened this past week, in fact. In a graphic posted on social media, Duke men’s basketball drew the most viewing minutes of any team across the regular season and conference tournaments, at 5.93 billion viewing minutes. The next program was Michigan at more than a billion less.
“For as valuable as a national brand Duke basketball is, Duke football has to keep doing its job. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two of us,” said Diaz, who’s led the program to consecutive nine-win seasons.
David Cutcliffe treated the position the same way during his 14-year tenure as the football coach in Durham. In fact, when interviewing for the Duke job in 2007, he requested a meeting with basketball coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski. The two talked far longer than the short window originally reserved.
Krzyzewski told Cutcliffe something that he has passed on to Diaz: Don’t view the high-academic standards as a negative; don’t run from it, he says, run to it.
In fact, Duke’s requirement of in-person class attendance while most of its competitors are using the ease of online learning should be seen as an actual advantage. It has its perks. For instance, the Duke men’s team — many of its players committed to earning a Duke degree — lost no one to the transfer portal last season.
However, in less than two weeks, one day after the national championship game, the basketball transfer portal opens.
Scheyer will walk into King’s office for their annual conversation. And perhaps that discussion will be as difficult as ever. After all, she’s got three reigning conference championship teams for which to provide.
“That’s our biggest challenge: resource allocation. How do you stay elite in multiple sports when the pie is being divided?” she asks.
“Throw darts at a dart board? Sometimes it feels like that.”
Source: “AOL Sports”
