Yes
When you think about collegiate athletics, the first thing that comes to mind is big-named sports like football and basketball.
These are sports that constantly make revenue for the university and force colleges and fans across the country to pour in money and resources to have the best product on the playing field.
At the University of Iowa, the main revenue-generating sports in the 2020s include football, men’s basketball, men’s wrestling, and now women’s basketball. These sports gather the most investment from the university solely because of the revenue they can generate.
Unsurprisingly, Hawkeye athletics has decided to invest more time and resources in the sports that make them the most money. But does that hurt the overall growth and development of all other Iowa athletic programs?
I believe that the overall investment in these top money-making sports can decrease funding for smaller programs. This could overall eliminate the need for sports that don’t add much revenue and lead to the abolishment of certain programs.
We have already seen this story before with Iowa sports.
In 2020, the UI eliminated four sports that were a part of their athletic program due to financial losses happening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis, and men’s and women’s swimming and diving all got the boot to compensate for the university’s loss of money.
While women’s swimming and diving was brought back due to Title IX compliance, the other sports have become a forgotten memory in Hawkeye athletics.
This shows the university was willing to cut sports when its overall revenue was in jeopardy.
The need for bigger sports like football and basketball to be successful puts stress on the university’s spending. If overall revenue was lower than it had been in previous seasons, the university needed to make sure those sports remained competitive compared to the amount of invested money.
College athletics are bigger than football and basketball. There are countless athletes at the UI that put in the same effort and get half the return from the world around them.
When the money needs to go where the attention is, it’s going away from the sports that need it more.
No
 I harken back to University of Iowa professor Charles Munro’s Business of Sport Communication class when I tell you revenue-generating sports don’t overshadow the work of others.
Indeed, one might argue the attention on football and basketball diminishes the impact nationally successful wrestling teams have had on Iowa. But wrestling is still a revenue-generating sport, albeit on a smaller scale, and it all boils down to the market and what the people want. Thanks, Charles.
Wrestling is a perfect case in point. Within its niche, Iowa wrestling is huge. It packs Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and wrestling fans across the U.S. can easily point to the legends left behind from Dan Gable to Jaydin Eierman.
The same goes for field hockey, volleyball, and track. The groups that pay close attention to these sports in this country give them the recognition they deserve here at Iowa.
But those groups are small. Football, men’s basketball, and now women’s basketball command so much of the attention at Iowa because they’re the three sports that capture the entire country — not just select groups.
The attention to these Hawkeye sports is deserved, as is attention to the small sports succeeding, but to say they’re detrimental to the latter is an unfair description. To pour more money into programs that much fewer Americans statistically pay attention to is economically unsound.
Each sport has its market that it operates in. Iowa football is so popular because the sport of football is so popular, and the market is massive. Field hockey unfortunately just cannot possibly gather enough traction in this country to compete.
In fact, that’s beneficial to the small sports when you recognize the profits from football go to funding the smaller sports, many of which — like women’s basketball before Caitlin Clark rolled onto the scene — lose money each year.
Iowa’s revenue-generating sports aren’t detrimental to smaller sports — they keep them alive.