States are funneling millions in taxpayer dollars to college athletic departments already bleeding money, while universities slash staff positions and families struggle with tuition — a bipartisan subsidy for the college sports industrial complex that prioritizes entertainment over education.

Wisconsin lawmakers approved $15 million for University of Wisconsin athletics. North Carolina earmarked $3 million in sports betting taxes for UNC Chapel Hill's athletic program. Connecticut and Louisiana are also directing tax dollars to college sports, NBC 5 Chicago reported. More states have considered it. Meanwhile, universities cut full-time staff by 6.6% and part-time staff by nearly 24% in 2025 alone — the steepest declines in a decade, according to a CUPA-HR national survey covered by Forbes.

The athletic subsidies are driven by a spending arms race triggered by legal changes allowing athletes to be paid. The NCAA in 2021 opened the door for name, image, and likeness payments. A subsequent legal settlement let schools pay athletes directly — up to $21.3 million this year, on top of scholarships and private NIL deals. Athletic operating expenses at public Division I schools shot up nearly a third over four years, outpacing revenue and running up deficits.

A pending Senate bill called the Protect College Sports Act would let institutions pay up to an additional $27.5 million annually to retain players, pushing the athlete payment cap near $50 million. Promoted as putting "guardrails" on spending, the legislation contains no provision restraining increases in state and institutional funding for athletics, according to Amy Privette Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. "Without some restraint on the underlying spending competition, additional public funding could simply finance" the arms race, Perko told NBC 5 Chicago.

Daniel McIntosh, faculty director of Arizona State University's sports business program, explained the domino effect: once one state provides assistance, schools in competing states argue they're at a competitive disadvantage, "which could create additional pressure on legislatures to respond."

On the academic side, the CUPA-HR survey found a surprising 7% increase in tenure-track faculty in 2025 — the largest in a decade. But Forbes noted that whether this marks a genuine shift toward investing in teaching or is an anomaly remains unclear. What is clear is that the staff who actually keep these institutions running — administrators, professionals, hourly workers — are being shed at record rates, driven by cutbacks in federal research support and administrative reorganizations to cut costs.

So the picture comes into focus: Republican and Democratic legislatures alike are bailing out athletic departments that can't balance their books, while the academic workforce gets hollowed out. The Protect College Sports Act, if passed, would accelerate the flow of public money into an enterprise already awash in television revenue and corporate sponsorships. Every dollar a state legislature directs to a football facility or athletic administrator is a dollar not available for the classroom — and a dollar extracted from taxpayers who may never set foot on campus.

Perko's warning cuts to the heart of it: without restraint, public funding doesn't solve the spending competition — it feeds it. The only question is how long taxpayers will keep paying for a game they're already losing.