TEMPE – Neatly inscribed across the Arizona State charter, a string of words articulates a portion of the university’s operational mission.
“ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes.”
This mission isn’t limited to academics. It also rings true with the school’s athletic department. While universities across the country have shuttered athletic programs at an alarming rate over the past few years, ASU continues to stand pat.
The average Division I school had 19 athletic teams in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the most recent data from NCAA.org. Even with a football team, Arizona State deviates from the mean, fielding 26 intercollegiate varsity sports teams.
That’s by far the most in the Big 12, with the Sun Devils maintaining one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, especially among the Power Four conferences
“To me, it aligns perfectly with the charter of ASU of creating access and opportunities for all segments of the population in the community,” Sun Devils athletic director Graham Rossini told Cronkite News. “We take that charge and responsibility very seriously.”
In a rapidly evolving collegiate landscape, where cash and resources reign king, however, the challenge is for the athletic department to sponsor 26 intercollegiate teams and provide all of them with the necessary resources to compete at a high level.
Under the guidance of former athletic director Ray Anderson, the school added multiple programs in the mid-2010s, a decision that mirrored university president Michael Crow’s vision to transform Arizona State into the “New American University.”
On the back of a significant donation in 2014, the department announced a major addition to the school’s athletic portfolio: men’s hockey.
Over the next few years, ASU added women’s triathlon and women’s lacrosse to maintain Title IX compliance, while also reinstating men’s tennis, a particular favorite of Anderson and his wife, Buffie, after an eight-year absence due to budget cuts.
“At the time, we were in the Pac-12, and we were competing against Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington,” Anderson said. “We wanted to offer more athletic academic opportunities to more student-athletes.”
Even after moving to the Big 12 Conference, ASU has managed to maintain a healthy athletic department despite fielding 26 sports.
According to athletic department financial documents obtained via a FOIA request by Cronkite News, Arizona State’s collection of sports, not including football and men’s and women’s basketball, generated a net negative of $18.5 million for the 2025 fiscal year. That’s not uncommon in relation to other schools around the country. Considering the number of sports ASU supports, it stands as a relatively manageable number.
Even though ASU’s men’s basketball team did not generate a significant amount of revenue in the cycle (about $3.3 million), the success of its football program helped the school’s athletic department finish above the profit margin line in 2025 by $1.424 million.
Maintaining that reality won’t be so simple. A major domino has knocked the system – and seemingly every athletic department in the country – for a loop: the institution of name, image and likeness.
There are primarily two ways for an athlete to profit off their likeness: revenue sharing, in which schools disseminate funds directly to players, and NIL deals procured from sources outside of the school like local businesses and NIL collectives.
Arizona State is a full participant in revenue sharing, which is hard-capped at $20.5 million as agreed upon in 2025’s House vs. NCAA settlement, distributing this amount to athletes across its entire athletic department. Additionally, its NIL collective, the Sun Angel Collective, remains active, providing many of the school’s athletic programs with another tool in recruiting. Finally, after the House settlement increased scholarship limits in a number of sports, ASU added more than 200 scholarships to support its athletes in non-revenue programs.
“We’re doing our part at the university level,” Rossini said. “We’ve made a significant investment into what we’re doing athletically in terms of our coach’s ability to build competitive rosters in this current day and age.
“We’ve got a great opportunity in the Valley, (the) fifth largest city in America, for companies big and small that are looking for a connection back to the university.”
Although NIL has allowed a multitude of athletes to benefit from their athletic performance, its explosion on the collegiate scene has necessitated having an abundance of it to consistently field a championship-level roster – especially in sports such as football and men’s basketball.
Last offseason, fellow Big 12 school Texas Tech spent roughly $25 million on its football team, as shared by Red Raiders general manager James Blanchard in an article posted by The Athletic. According to The Athletic, some teams have dished out upwards of $40 million to field a championship-level team in 2026.
While some schools, armed with giant collectives, can meet these numbers and still support non-revenue sports through revenue sharing, other institutions find themselves in a bind: either continue to supply a multitude of Olympic and non-revenue sports with revenue sharing or double down on revenue sports like football and men’s basketball in hopes of competing at the highest level.
“The concern is that you’re not going to be able to sustain the other sports, the non-revenue sports, if they keep pressing more and more dollars into NIL for football and men’s basketball,” Anderson said.
Nonetheless, Rossini maintains that the department’s other programs, outside of football and basketball, barely impact the school’s revenue sports. The athletic director, who, by all accounts, has been a major proponent for internal research since taking over the department in 2024, had his team evaluate the financial impact of the non-revenue sports in relation to revenue sports.
“A lot of people think, ‘Hey, if you just cut four sports, you can give more to football and basketball.’ I wouldn’t find that to be true,” Rossini said. “Studying the numbers, we’d have to cut almost 18 of our sports to make a meaningful difference, and that’s certainly not something that we’re interested in considering.”
But what impact does having all these sports teams have on each individual non-revenue program?
With NIL starting to trickle down to these sports, it’s becoming an increasingly paramount asset to have. Most of these athletes within these programs won’t have the opportunity to seek NIL deals through a collective, and while some find ways to partner with local businesses, it’s not an easy process for most. So, with ASU sponsoring 26 teams, the school’s non-revenue sports must all vie for a limited pool of revenue-sharing funds to keep up with the competition.
Through a broad lens, the Sun Devils’ athletics programs haven’t been hindered so far in the NIL era. Over the last few years, multiple high-profile athletes in non-revenue sports decided to build a legacy in Tempe, possibly turning down large sums of money if they chose to compete elsewhere.
French Olympian swimmer Léon Marchand raced past the competition to help spearhead a men’s swim and dive national championship in 2024. Arizona State volleyball coach JJ Van Niel collected a wealth of talent to build the Sun Devils into a powerhouse, claiming back-to-back Big 12 championships.
Most recently, first-team NFCA All-American senior right-handed pitcher Kenzie Brown earned a rare invitation to the Athletes Unlimited Softball League following a pair of stellar seasons in the circle, placing Sun Devils softball in the spotlight.
The efforts of athletes in these sports contributed to ASU capturing the Big 12’s first Commissioner’s Cup in the 2024-25 season. The award recognizes a high-achieving athletic department based on performance on the field, such as postseason titles, and excellence off the field, like its NCAA Graduation Success Rate.
In the past academic year alone, ASU claimed five combined regular-season and tournament Big 12 championships, the most conference championships for the school since 2007-2008. Most recently, the Sun Devils’ softball team, on the back of Brown’s arm, earned three straight wins en route to a Big 12 title, including over No. 1 seed Texas Tech. The Red Raiders’ star pitcher, Nijaree Canady, earns more than $1 million annually through Texas Tech’s NIL collective.
It’s an area in which Rossini, who sees the value in all sports across the department, takes pride.
“Even though the climate in college sports has changed, this is still about talent development,” Rossini said. “The reality is we have 600 athletes from 44 countries who picked ASU. They picked our coaches, they picked our university, they picked our marketplace, and so we’ve got the responsibility to figure it out and go deliver them an incredible ASU experience.
“And again, as we’re collecting resources, all 26 sports play a role in that, and we have 26 that act as these incredible capture tools for the department.”
Not all has gone smoothly, however. For some programs, it has taken time for coaches and their staff to adapt and build up financial backing outside of revenue sharing. ASU wrestling coach Zeke Jones experienced it firsthand.
After a string of successful seasons for ASU wrestling in the late 2010s in which the program won multiple Pac-12 championships, it hasn’t produced the same results in recent years, partly due to the sudden shift with NIL. A number of ASU’s top athletes left for more lucrative NIL opportunities at other schools, including 2024 national champion Richard Figueroa, who transferred to Oklahoma State.
Compounded with other factors such as the closing of the Sunkist Wrestling Club, a training center for young wrestlers that acted as a feeder to ASU, the program endured a few difficult seasons.
NIL and revenue sharing provide a measurable advantage in wrestling, where few programs are equipped with boosters who can cultivate financial support through a collective. The gap has grown between the top few teams and the rest of the pack.
ASU is starting to turn a corner and ascend into this echelon as Jones has rounded up more NIL support recently. Still, the deficit remains noticeable.
“Iowa, Penn State, they can buy the first kid so they get the first choice,” Jones said. “You go ahead, you get your million-dollar kid, but you can’t buy them all. So there are going to be others that will be good. We’ll be good, and we’ll be able to adjust. And obviously, you don’t have to pay a million bucks.
“You give them a great experience. And then, if they do well in our program, there will be NIL opportunities. There are more now than there were before. In the moment, they weren’t there. Now we have them.”
Jones still preaches to recruits the importance of the aspects outside of NIL that a school offers such as Arizona State’s huge alumni network and a premier location in a big market with warm weather.
“You still have to factor in the schools that you want to go to, and then money’s just a factor like location or education, or fit,” Jones said.
It’s not just the wrestling program that’s dealt with the effects of NIL. ASU’s hockey team saw its roster stripped by the transfer portal this spring. Star sophomore forward Cullen Potter, the Calgary Flames’ first-round draft pick in 2025, left the Sun Devils for Michigan State.
While a bump up in pay likely wasn’t the only factor, his departure, amid many other portal exits, raises glaring concerns for ASU hockey. The program’s recent move to the NCHC now places it among schools like Denver and North Dakota, where, unlike ASU, hockey is the primary showpiece and economic driver for the department.
To compete with these schools and the other perennial powers in college hockey from conferences like the Big 10, the Sun Devils will need to acquire top-end talent – a difficult proposition for long-time coach Greg Powers if the program can’t garner financial support from resources outside of the school.
Ebbs and flows may become the norm as each program works to build a solid financial pool for its players outside of revenue sharing. For now, Rossini remains confident that ASU can make it all work.
“I don’t look at 26 sports as an impediment,” he said. “I think that’s a unique advantage that we’re starting to figure out how to harmonize and how to really utilize in the spirit of how we just run the business unit of Sun Devil Athletics.
“We take that responsibility very seriously.”
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