Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) athletics boasts some of the most competitive teams in Division III. Across 21 different teams competing in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), the Sagehens have earned 48 individual national titles and four team championships throughout their history.
To better understand the costs and factors that fuel a DIII powerhouse like Pomona-Pitzer, TSL researched and analyzed funding data for each of the 21 teams, including comparisons of funding fluctuations by year and disparities in funding between men’s and women’s teams.
A great deal of data can be accessed through an open-source database called Equity in Athletics Data Analysis. Powered by the U.S. Department of Education, the tool compiles funding data submitted annually by co-ed, postsecondary institutions that receive Title IV funding and have intercollegiate athletic programs. As required by the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, this data includes statistics on team expenses, coaching salaries and participation by sport and gender for a comprehensive look at how colleges allocate resources nationwide.
The collected data showed significant shifts, both in cost changes over two seasons and in the split between women’s and men’s programs of the same sport.
As for the cost of men’s sports expenses between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, football, basketball and baseball report the biggest gaps.
Football saw a decrease of $241,340 from one season to the next. The 2022-23 season’s expenses were $419,976 compared to the 2023-24 expenses of $178,636. Basketball’s expenses decreased by $215,408 in the same time. The 2022-23 expenses were recorded at a whopping $237,218, while the 2023-24 season’s expenses were just $21,810.
Football’s decrease was likely due to their extended postseason run in 2022-23, which included higher travel and lodging costs. In 2023-24, without a postseason appearance, expenses were significantly lower.
Baseball, however, saw a drastic increase. The 2022-23 season’s expenses were recorded at $36,485 compared to the 2023-24 increase to $169,505. The spike was mainly due to the team’s qualification for the College World Series, the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship. The postseason brought additional travel costs, such as flights, lodging, meals and other expenses, which contributed to the overall expense increase.
Overall, of the ten men’s programs, five programs saw a decrease in expenses, and the other five saw an increase. The average increase in expenses was $38,787, and the average decrease was $105,538.20. This division highlights the varied financial impacts across different sports, suggesting that a combination of factors, such as postseason performance, travel costs and roster size adjustments, drive changes in funding.
The women’s programs experienced less dramatic expense changes over the two seasons. One spike catches the eye, however. Women’s basketball saw a significant decrease in expenses, from $146,793 in the 2022-23 season to $21,801 in the 2023-24 season. This notable drop contrasts with the men’s teams, which experienced larger fluctuations ($237,218 to $21,810), particularly in football and baseball.
Of the eleven women’s programs at Pomona-Pitzer, five programs increased their expenses, and the other six programs decreased. Golf, lacrosse and basketball had their expenses cut by at least half. Track and field was the only program to double its expenses compared to the previous season.
These changes across men’s and women’s sports have multiple possible explanations, one of which is changes in roster size.
On the men’s team side, changes in roster sizes had mixed results that were not conclusive enough to explain drastic shifts in expenses, besides football. Football reduced its roster size by 19 athletes, which may partially explain the $241,340 decrease in expenses.
However, despite reducing its expenses by over $200,000, the basketball team’s roster size remained the same at 15 players. The same went for baseball — they held 35 players on the roster for both seasons despite a jump in expenses of nearly $130,000. This further cements that factors outside of roster size impact team expenses.
Some other noticeable roster size changes included cross country’s reduction by six runners and soccer’s increase by ten players. These changes do reflect changes in expenses — soccer’s expenses almost tripled in 2023-24, whereas cross country’s dipped by $5,560. The increase in soccer’s roster size led to additional logistical challenges, particularly with travel. Nicholas Mikhail PO ’25, a player on the team, reflected on how travel conditions changed between his sophomore and junior years.
“Comfort on the ride to a game is pretty important. A lot of people’s pregame routines start on that bus ride over,” Mikhail said. “We were all kind of used to getting our own seats for the most part. So being crammed for every away game — it was a big deal for a lot of people.”
He highlighted how the team downgraded from the charter buses to the Sagecoach bus, which required players to sit next to each other with less personal space. This change, along with the increased roster size, added to the team’s logistical challenges and contributed to the sharp rise in expenses during the 2023-24 season.
However, the program with the most significant decrease in expenses, basketball, did not show a significant change in roster size. In fact, despite reducing their expenses by over $110,000, the team added two additional players to the roster.
Women’s water polo and volleyball each added five more athletes, and cross country reduced its roster size by six. For water polo and volleyball, expenses increased by $5,798 and $14,219, respectively. Cross country also reduced its expenses by $8,239. For these three programs, a change in roster size also partially explained the change in expenses.
The respective changes in roster size and expenses by season allowed for a comparison of funding proportions between men’s and women’s teams for each sport. Lacrosse, softball, baseball and football were excluded from the data due to the lack of gender-equivalent programs.
The 2022-23 season features a greater imbalance in funding proportions, whereas seven of the eight teams in the 2023-24 season equally split the funding, with the only exception being cross-country.
The 2022-23 season saw a significant shift toward a 50-50 split in funding between men’s and women’s teams, with sports like basketball, soccer and track & field benefiting from this balance.
“In 2021-22, we were still managing the aftereffects of the pandemic,” Athletic Director Miriam Merrill said in an email to TSL. “In 2022-23, it was the first year of full academic-year play; we could right-set spending in a more equitable way.”
This indicates that after the financial disruptions caused by the pandemic, the department took steps to ensure more balanced funding across all programs. However, according to Merrill, funding given to a team has no direct impact on the funding of other sports teams.
“No, NCAA tournament-related travel does not impact the budgets of other teams,” Merrill said.
In the 2022-23 season, the women’s team was allocated nearly 80 percent of the funding for soccer, and the men’s water polo team received around 75 percent of the funding. The three sports with funding closer to a 50-50 split were track & field, swim & dive and tennis. Despite the women’s success, these funding discrepancies reflect factors like discrepancies in roster size as the department continues its efforts to address equity across teams.
The presented data poses several questions.
Why did the football team’s expenses drop by more than half over the course of a single season? And why did baseball’s expenses increase by over 364 percent in that same timeframe?
Additionally, why did the men’s water polo team’s expenses equate to nearly 75 percent of all funding for water polo in the 2022-23 season, and how did such a polarizing split even itself out to 50-50 in just the next school year?
To explain the puzzling patterns of Pomona-Pitzer’s funding and expenses, Merrill was able to answer some questions and provide possible explanations for these developments.
“The overall differences can be pinpointed to travel and post-season play,” Merrill said. “Football took two overnight trips, which involved flights and lodging in 2022–23. They also made it to the NCAA postseason, which equates to another overnight trip. The following year, they only flew once and did not make it to the NCAA postseason.”
In addition to the explanation received for football’s decrease in expenses, baseball’s spike in funding was supported by their performance in the two seasons. The team had no travel or postseason in spring 2023. But in spring 2024, they took an overnight regular-season trip and qualified for the College World Series.
Logistically, funding a trip to the College World Series can explain the increased expense for the program. In addition to flights for everyone on the travel roster, Pomona-Pitzer also provided support for additional gear, food and housing.
“For the Super Regional, we went to Texas and we had to pay for flights, hotels, food and the further we got, we got like 200 bucks to spend for food over there,” Hannoh Seo PO ’26, a pitcher on the baseball team, said.
That same line of reasoning applies to basketball — their most expensive season came with a deep postseason run. The 2022-23 season saw them take two trips: one to St. Louis, MO, and another to West Hartford, CT.
Disparities in performance can partly explain why certain teams received more or less funding on a season-to-season basis. But it would be quite a coincidence for men’s and women’s basketball to go from about a $90,000 gap in 2022-23 to exactly matching the expenses of $21,810 in 2023-24.
The same goes for soccer: Both the men’s and women’s teams had a $50,000 difference in the 2022-23 season, but both coincidentally landed in the $38,000 range in 2023-24.
With such precise dollar amounts resulting in 50-50 splits for seven of eight Pomona-Pitzer programs across the men’s and women’s teams, it may be reasonable to wonder if any policy or regulation changes have led to such a drastic shift in funding allocation.
Regardless, both the data and Merrill’s responses seem to support the claim that postseason success and travel have a significant impact on funding. Teams that qualify for NCAA tournaments typically incur higher expenses for flights, hotels and meals.
Regular-season travel costs vary depending on whether teams take local bus trips or require flights. Sports with extended postseasons, such as baseball’s College World Series and football’s NCAA bracket, consequently receive more funding.
While the EADA data highlights key factors like travel, postseason performance and roster size changes, there are other variables, such as fluctuations in equipment costs, that are harder to capture. Merrill’s insights, along with these broader factors, explain most of the changes in Pomona-Pitzer athletic expenses, though some elements remain unclear.
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