Sunday reader: Thoughts on MSU's revenue quest as a microcosm of college athletics’ unsustainable moment

Detroit — During their appearance at a Detroit Economic Club event on Friday, which the author of this covered that day for The Detroit News (read more here and here), Michigan State athletic director J Batt and president Kevin Gusciewicz spoke about the changing environment for colleges and, more pointedly, college athletics. 

The main thrust is that in a world of college athletics where the House settlement ushered in revenue sharing, on top of getting NIL efforts aligned in order to be competitive, the cash must flow to keep the present NCAA model intact. 

“And the model of college athletics, it's never been more stressed,” Batt said on Friday at the podium. “And so it's creating an inordinate amount of pressure to drive revenue, to find new and different streams of revenue, to be creative with structures and other things. To be able to keep that model in place.”

For Batt and Gusciewicz, their main effort at MSU has been Spartan Ventures, a 501c3 spun off from the athletic department to act as a corporate revenue-generating arm. It also is benefitting from a $100 million from Greg and Dawn Williams, part of the $401 million they’re gifting MSU. The $100 million will become an equity stake in Spartan Ventures for the Williamses. 

This all fits in a broader athletics effort — the For Sparta capital campaign — to raise not millions, but one billion dollars by 2032, to pay for things like the planned $500 million Spartan Stadium renovations and other facilities upgrades. 

There’s been some pushback with respect to Spartan Ventures, namely from MSU trustees over transparency, though the board did approve the affiliation agreement in December. 

But the focus herein is less about the machinations of getting Spartan Ventures, one of Batt’s early signature moves, off the ground, but the tacit underlying admission that comes with forging an athletic department focused on sustainable revenues to pay athletes and coaches to field competitive teams: Big time college athletics is a form of professional sports now. 

And really, it has been for some time insofar as how much money it produces and how it’s functioned. The Spartans are ultimately a microcosm of how a changing ecosystem has affected nearly everyone in the power conferences.

The reality is, to be competitive in football, men’s and women’s basketball and, in certain cases, some other sports, athletic departments need to be competitively paying athletes for their services. Just like any other job, the best compensation package (revenue share, NIL) is the main consideration, as are the workplace (facilities, arenas) coworkers (teammates) and bosses (coaches). 

Batt has consistently touted that Michigan State is a Top 10 athletic program in the country. That will require swinging a big financial bat. 

Being in the Big Ten is a good start, as the league distributed a cool $1.37 billion across the 18 league members for the 2024-25 season. The top performing programs took home around $90 million, while most full league members (anyone but the four West Coast schools, basically) were in the $75-80 million range. 

With Spartan Ventures leading the way, Batt and Co. want to create their own warchest to supplement their league revenues and find championship success across the board. He evidently views it as something of a necessity to find stability within the current model. 

He emphasized on Friday that he views the mission of college athletics as still being about providing broad-based athletic opportunity to a number of teams. That means making sure there’s enough money to go around not just for competitive football and men’s basketball teams, but to sustain field hockey, tennis and various other programs that don’t produce massive revenues. 

And there is where the tension lies. 

The model, which Batt on Friday said is under “pressure,” is predicated on athletic departments controlling revenues, mainly produced by football, and using them to support a broad-based athletic program. That was easiest when the NCAA had its way with its notion of amateurism. And the main source of strain on the model is the House settlement opening the door for revenue sharing with athletes, straining budgets that now need to account for tens of millions of dollars getting distributed across various rosters.

While revenue generation is one salve to these budgeting strains, trimming spending is another, though a difficult sell while trying to thread the needle on being competitive, too. 

“Ultimately, if we're going to continue to be focused on the opportunity mission, it's gonna take both sides of that thing to get us to a place where for the next 100 years for college athletics, it makes sense,” Batt said when asked about limiting spending during a brief media scrum after the event on Friday. 

All of this ultimately leads to some bigger questions, questions that supersede MSU athletics or even the Big Ten. This is also not an indictment of Batt or Gusciewicz, either, who are mainly trying to get the cash flowing to make sure the Spartans can keep up with the Joneses and bring trophies back to East Lansing in the increasingly cutthroat world they find themselves in. Agree or disagree with the tactics or their opinions on the NCAA model, the strategy is sound if they plan on winning in the near term. 

But it all leaves one to wonder about where this is all headed. The hypotheticals are starting to feel more prescient. 

Do colleges need what are ostensibly professional sporting enterprises in football and, to a lesser extent, basketball? Can there be breaks between football, basketball and other sports from under the NCAA? When does the tension give way on football and basketball effectively subsidizing other sports? 

When everyone is nakedly pursuing their individual or group interest, does anyone look out for the whole of the enterprise of college sports? 

The answer to that last question, increasingly, seems to be no. Not even the NCAA is really considering the whole before it serves the schools, which give it its power to begin with. 

The structural forces of 18-to-21 year olds needing some place to play football between high school and the NFL means that an intermediate league will always exist, and college football is not going to be usurped by anything else any time soon.

But it does seem like something big needs to shift to find a better balance and not continually be sending administrators on an endless quest for more money. 

"The way in which that becomes governed, regulated, whatever the right answer to that is, those will have to evolve," Batt said when asked about college athletics being in an unsustainable spot. "And those things will create, too — hopefully bring some sustainability, long term, but also opportunity."

MSU lands a pair of Friday games for 2026

The opener for the 2026 season got shifted to what has become a traditional Friday night opener for the Spartans. Toledo will now face the Spartans on Friday, Sept. 5.

That Friday opener has been popular amongst fans, as many can still take the long Labor Day weekend to get out of town, something not really doable with a Saturday game. It also means the Spartans get into a better television slot for the opening weekend. 

The other Friday game for MSU in 2026 might not be as popular. The home finale against Oregon for senior night will now be on Friday, Nov. 20, at Spartan Stadium. That game is part of the deal between the Big Ten and FOX to air a number of games on Fridays in a national television slot. 

At the Detroit Economic Club on Friday, Batt said moving the game to Ford Field — where MSU finished the 2025 season against Maryland — is not in the cards. He seemed generally mum on playing many future games there. 

“Certainly not for next year, no,” Batt said about playing at Ford Field in 2026. 

MSU also adds a bunch of future games

The Spartans also sorted out a number of future non-conference matchups in football late last week. 

MSU added a home-and-home series with Oklahoma State and a home-and-home series with Cincinnati. MSU also added a home game against Duquesne. 

MSU will play the Cowboys in Stillwater on Sept. 16, 2028, with the return game on Sept. 15, 2029 at Spartan Stadium. The Spartans will travel to Cincinnati on Sept. 14, 2030, and host the Bearcats on Sept. 13, 2031. 

The Duquesne game is set for Sept. 4, 2027. 

MSU has never played Oklahoma State or Duquesne, and hasn’t played Cincinnati since the early days of Harry Truman’s presidency. 

And the Cincinnati series should get named after Mark Dantonio, in a just world.