I don’t really care about University of Northern Iowa athletics, or any college athletics, for that matter. I went to a couple of football games and a basketball game my freshman year so that I could check it off my college bucket list, but other than that, I haven’t paid much attention.

Aside from my personal feelings of apathy, I also don’t think athletics is essential to the mission of a university. While I agree that a university should try to foster feelings of camaraderie and belonging, I think this can be accomplished through means that are more academically and socially enriching, such as student organizations, events at the GBPAC, etc.

I’m not saying all this to convince you that you should feel the same about athletics; I know my views are unpopular, and yes, if I took the time to sit down watch more games, there’s a good chance I would like them more than I had originally thought. However, I think my opinions on the matter are important to consider given the assertion I’m about to make:

I think UNI should continue funding athletics.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard countless people say that in the face of these cuts, we should just ditch athletics entirely. “Academics are what should come first, not athletics.” “Athletics shouldn’t continue to exist while majors are getting cut.”

While I completely agree with these sentiments, the fact of the matter is that despite its limited academic value, athletics provides a lot of side benefits for the university.

Several studies have found that well-performing athletics teams have a monetary payback for the university. For instance, one by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “when a male graduate’s former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes increase by about 7 percent and his donations to the athletic program increase by about the same percentage.”

In addition, several studies have found that successful athletics programs draw more students to enroll at universities. One such study by California State University-Sacramento found that local high school students of CSU branches enroll at a higher rate when teams are doing well. This is especially applicable to UNI, being that 92 percent of our students are in-state.

Another point to consider is the fact that not having an athletics program might deter certain students from attending UNI entirely. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be here if there weren’t an athletics program. This obviously isn’t because I care at all about college sports, but because as a high school senior, not having a football or basketball team carried a certain stigma (though I no longer agree with that). From talking to other students, I know I’m not by any means alone in this. As much as we all would like it not to be this way, our reputation to prospective students does matter; academics may be far more important than athletics in a university, but you need enough students in order to have a university at all.

My central point is this: I don’t care about athletics, but if we want to stay competitive as an academic institution among other universities of a similar caliber and size, we need to keep them. The assertion that athletics sucks up too much of our money compared to academics is probably correct, but that’s not something UNI alone can fix; having athletics is something too ingrained in what makes a university a university today. The call to ditch athletics is mistaking something that’s a societal problem for a UNI problem.

While I would be a proponent of something similar to the Ivy League agreement for UNI and comparable institutions, where scholarship athletics are a thing of the past, the fact of the matter is that UNI cannot make that move unilaterally without facing serious consequences in terms of reputation and enrollment. Until society values college athletics less or a larger agreement among universities is made, I’m afraid UNI is stuck funding something that does little to progress its core mission.