Dr. Jeffrey Petersen used his Centennial Professor Award to travel to the University of Notre Dame, which houses the world’s largest collection of sport documents including printed media guides for NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball and football.
Dr. Jeffrey Petersen, professor of sport management and program director of the MSEd in Sport Management, received the 2024 Centennial Professor Award for summer research projects and focused his project on the finances of collegiate sports through research at Notre Dame University.
The Centennial Professor Award, created by the Baylor Class of 1945, annually honors two tenured faculty members with a $5,000 Centennial Faculty Development award for research projects that facilitate their development and contribute to the academic life of the University. These projects often include travel for study or research, the development of innovative teaching materials, or other professional development activities.
Dr. Petersen and graduate student Rachel Hickey on the Notre Dame campus.
Petersen and sport management graduate student Rachel Hickey dug into the archives at Notre Dame, which houses the world’s largest collection of sport documents including printed media guides for NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball and football. Using historical staffing levels as a proxy for athletic budget levels, their research will provide insights into the evolving landscape of NCAA sport management and operations.
The study, titled “Projecting the Future of NCAA Athletics: A Historical Analysis of Team and Athletic Department Staffing,” will analyze team and administrative staffing structures through a longitudinal analysis of media guides from the advent of television coverage in the 1950s to the present, seeking to identify shifts in support staff roles and contextualize these changes within larger societal and economic trends. Petersen also intends to project future trends based on the changing financial situation in college athletics.
Petersen said the growth that began with the introduction of television and radio broadcasts of college sports in the 1950s has expanded with today’s streaming services and large media contracts, plus the recent advent of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) athlete compensation and conference realignments. These changes, especially NIL and conference realignments, put collegiate sport on the precipice of major financial changes.
“The landscape of collegiate sports has evolved considerably,” Petersen said. “Historically, these changes include incredible growth in financial resources, accompanied by increasing complexity in administrative frameworks. This study will delve into the historical expansion of administrative staff within these sports and the athletic department, aiming to reveal patterns reflective of broader changes in sport and society.”
In earlier days, college sports teams often had larger rosters with sub-varsity squads, while staff numbers were smaller. Today, this has reversed, with fewer athletes but more staff, especially in sports like basketball. The shift highlights the evolving structure and resource allocation in college athletics, potentially impacting future trends, Petersen said.
“Despite growing athletic department revenues over the years, we still have a somewhat finite resource allocation for intercollegiate athletics,” he said. “So how does it get spent? And how is that reallocation going to play out with the new NIL and athlete compensation opportunities? What priorities will help programs still be really successful, because every school and every fan still desires to be successful in their athletic program.”
The new necessity of investing in NIL compensation could create an about face — from investing heavily in facilities to possibly reallocating resources towards athlete compensation, Petersen said. This transition raises questions about how facilities will be prioritized going forward, he noted.
The ability to fund a graduate research assistant for this project was another positive benefit of this Centennial Professor Award. Hickey said the trip offered her, as a graduate student, a lot of insight into the archival research process. She said her personal experience in college athletics, plus Dr. Petersen’s, will help them go beyond conceptual thinking to “apply the research and understand its impact on the people.” Petersen and Hickey are already planning to share preliminary findings from this research at the 2025 Applied Sport Management Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as at the 2025 College Sport Research Institute’s Conference on College Sport in Columbia, South Carolina.
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