The Daily Iowan interviewed University of Iowa Director of Athletics Beth Goetz about the looming House settlement and its implications across Hawkeye sports.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Daily Iowan: Your predecessor cut four sports here in the wake of financial challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. Have you been able to guarantee to your coaches that Iowa won’t have to cut any of its 20 DI sports in the wake of the House settlement?

Goetz: Well, first of all, I wasn’t here during the last adjustment, so I wasn’t a part of how that had to be evaluated and how that went down. But certainly from the start here, as we’ve sort of hit this new era of college athletics, that’s certainly been a conversation we’ve had on campus and within our department, and that’s not a discussion that’s even been on the table. So Iowa has no plans to adjust our current support offerings.

How will Iowa ensure equity between high-profile sports and less-visible teams under a shared revenue model?

I think as we look across our spectrum of 22 sports, our goal is to ensure that we’re continuing to be as competitive as we can within our peer groups, and certainly that’s the Big Ten and nationally, but each of our sports can compete in a little bit different way, some based on our history of success here in tradition, some based on geography and what sort of weather allows us to be successful. And obviously we have sports where there’s been a significant amount of interest in our state that might be unique to others, a little bit like wrestling, right, certainly with the men’s long-time success and tradition and most recently with our women.

Really, as we look at everything sport to sport, it’s making sure that, as we evaluate them individually, they have what they need to be competitive across the board. And so we work directly with our teams to try to figure out exactly what that will look like. And while each sport has unique needs, and they’re not always going to look the same, but we want to support them in a way that allows them to compete with their peers.

How do you anticipate the settlement will affect Iowa’s ability to remain competitive in the Big Ten?

This is one of those things that I think is interesting because it impacts everybody. So it’s different than an institution having to deal with something that maybe has hit them financially or has changed something at your own university. But since this is impacting everyone, we’re all making some decisions and adjustments as we go. And I’m just incredibly confident that Iowa is really well positioned to compete in this new environment. The reason that is is because I think we’ve got great alignment on our campus about what the role of college athletics is, certainly to serve our student athletes, but also the role that athletics plays on our institution, to make sure that we’re acting as a place for engagement for our students or alums that come back on campus or for our community and people across the state.

It also is an avenue to serve the mission of the institution. We’ve got a great platform, and that platform doesn’t just help us tell the story about what’s happening on the fields of competition: It gives a platform to talk about the great things that are going on at UIHC or in the Tippie College of Business. And so because of all of that, we believe that athletics is going to continue to have an opportunity to be successful because there’s just great alignment and understanding what that value is. We’ve got a passionate fan base with great leaders that are serving our teams across the board. And while I have to make some adjustments, we think we have the ability to do that and are excited about what the future will look like.

How could the settlement impact funding future projects, namely renovations to Carver?

I think with any sort of philanthropic project that we might have, and we always approach our projects in that way, you’re always a little bit tied to what’s going on in the environment around you, and some of that might be true and impacted via some decisions we make with the settlement. Some of them might be about where the economy is and where people are in terms of feeling like they have the ability to support those projects. 

So we don’t know. We’re still in the feasibility stage of that project, and so we’ve started to talk with some architects about what that would look like and have talked with some leadership donors that may have an interest in considering support in that project, so time will tell. But I think everybody’s going to keep an eye on mostly the economy in addition to what’s happening across our landscape to sort of see where that takes us. And with a lot of our facilities, and Carver[-Hawkeye Arena] in particular, it’s not going to get younger, and so whether or not we have the ability to do that project in the short term or near term certainly would be a question. But we know there’s some improvements that we’ll need to make there.

What core values or traditions of Iowa Athletics are non-negotiable, even amid massive change?

I’ve said this probably a handful of times publicly, and it’s one of the things — as I arrived here, I got such a real sense of identity, and [Iowa] knows who it is, and we embrace that. When we talk about what that culture and what those values are, it’s really about the people, about trying to do things the right way, about understanding how we give our students an opportunity to grow into who they are as athletes, as people, as students across the board. And I think, because we’re not trying to be somebody else, we’re trying to be the best version of who the Iowa Hawkeyes can be. I think that gives us something that sort of grounds us. And it doesn’t matter what our next goal is. We’re going to do it in a way that’s in our likeness that best serves the traditions that mean the most of people that were here before us and the people that are going to come behind us. And because of that, I think we’re going to be able to really be successful across the board.

What are you hearing from current Iowa athletes about the settlement and what it means for them?

It’s really been interesting in this process and hard for all of us to navigate because they are the plaintiff class, right? And institutions in the Power Five are the defendants. And so this isn’t a topic that we’ve been able to talk very openly about from a legal standpoint, and so while we’ve received some questions, some we are allowed to answer, and some we’re not. We’re trying to communicate as much as we are permitted to do so in this current environment, but we try to be as transparent with our staff and student-athletes as we can. We have our Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. We engage with them quite a bit, and I think as this becomes a reality, we’ll be able to provide even a more clear definition of what it means broadly and certainly what impacts they might feel depending on which sport they’re in here at Iowa.

Do you anticipate any changes in how Iowa recruits high school athletes now that direct payments are on the table?

It’s going to be an interesting process. When you have an opportunity to enter into an agreement that compensates them for their NIL, which is what this will look like, it’s going to run a gamut. As we’ve been in this first sort of phase of that, even though the settlement hasn’t been approved, we’ve been through a couple of recruiting cycles since the portal opened in January for football, and now we’re obviously in basketball season. And so some students and their families sort of navigate that on their own. Sometimes they have representatives; some have formal agencies. And so it changes your dynamic in terms of conversation with them a little bit. But I think for our coaches, it’s really a question you’ll have to ask them.

But it kind of goes back to us knowing who we are, and I’ve just been really impressed that as they’ve navigated that process, this isn’t about, “How do I go out and buy the best player I can find?” It is, first and foremost, “Is this individual going to be a culture fit on our program? Are they going to fit on our campus? Are they a good representative? Will they be a good teammate to the rest of the group we’ve had?” And then you sort of enter into what that financial agreement might look like, whether that’s directly with them, with their families, or with an agent through the process. And so it’s a new world in that sense that everybody’s got to learn to navigate a little bit. We’re not going to compromise on these values about what type of student best fits into what they do. I think we’ll figure this piece out as we continue to move forward.

How is Iowa maintaining its commitment to educational opportunities for athletes in this new era?

Well, that’s always, first and foremost, the commitment. We’ve got the highest, I think, graduation success rate that we’ve had on record — 89 percent. Our overall GPA across all of our students is above a 3.2, and so it’s just a continued commitment to making sure that we recruit students that want to be successful in whatever their chosen field of study is. We have support in place for them from an academic standpoint should they need that.

And that’s not just about, “Hey, if you need some success because you’re worried about failing in class.” It’s about being the best student you can, so if I’m getting a B, and I feel like I need to and should be achieving an A, how do I have that support process in place? And so I think that mechanism has been a standard here for a long time, and there’s nothing about the new environment that’s going to impact our commitment to academics, first and foremost, and we want them all to get a degree from the University of Iowa that’s going to serve them well. And it’s not about the four years or five years that they’re all on campus. It’s about the next 40 years. And how do we prepare them for that?

In this evolving landscape, what are the biggest challenges you hear that your coaches are struggling with?

I think, from a coach’s perspective and particularly in sports like football and basketball where everybody is what we call a headcount sport — so everyone on those teams who received a scholarship received a full scholarship — [whereas] in an equivalency sport, they’ve always been making choices because not everybody on the team has the same amount of aid. And so even now, we’re speaking in terms of revenue shares, feels a little bit different to say, “Hey, now I’ve got to decide how I want to distribute those dollars and what that looks like.”

And so I think that’s one of the components is trying to determine how you build a roster, and they’ve done a great job in a lot of research, trying to understand how that’s done at different levels and in different models and to make sure they do it in a way that still allows them to create a culture that’s really positive. So that would be one component. We’ve got a lot of third parties in our space right now, whether that’s agents and collectives and other voices in the system that they’ve had to learn to navigate with as well and try to find a way to make sure that this all starts with relationships. I think that’s the special sauce that I always have. It’s about that people connection and making sure with all these other third parties involved that they still have the ability to build a real relationship on the front end because I think that’s ultimately, when a student chooses us and we choose them, it’s because we can sense that that’s going to be a really good fit. So I think that’s the other piece of the puzzle.