A Clarke Central High School baseball player, wrestler and track and field runner are shown standing on a football surrounded by money. Sports Editor Liya Taylor discussed that while football may appear to receive a disproportional amount of resources, the revenue it brings in ultimately makes the sport a financial backbone, not a burden. “Football’s success in the South allows athletic departments, from UGA to CCHS, to offer more opportunities, not fewer,” Taylor wrote. Illustration by Sylvia Robinson
Football is often viewed as a drain to other sports, but its revenue is what allows athletic programs to not just function but thrive.
Every year, the same argument echoes through athletics: football takes too much. Too much money, too much attention, too much power.
But financially, the numbers tell a different story, especially in the South where football isn’t just a game, but the engine keeping athletic departments running.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the Southeastern Conference. Which, has built a national reputation on football dominance and with that dominance comes high revenue. At the University of Georgia, football success hasn’t just filled Sanford Stadium, it has fueled the growth of the entire athletic department. According to a July 2025 New York Times: The Athletic article, UGA generates an average of $147 million in revenue from the schools football program alone a year.
“UGA is (a) university that consistently makes more money than it spends on college sports and the overwhelming majority of that is because of football,” Dr. Welch Suggs, an Associate Professor at the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said. “Having a football team that (brings in) a ton of money is why (UGA is) able to have softball, soccer, equestrian and why we’re able to compete in all of those sports at a very high level.”
To argue that football takes away is to misunderstand scale.
Those non-revenue sports are essential. They provide opportunities of their own, but pretending football takes away resources from those programs ignores how athletic finances actually work. Football doesn’t take, it provides.
This same pattern exists closer to home. At Clarke Central High School, during the 2023-24 school year, football brought in $47,518 in ticket sales, a number that far exceeds any other sport. And that money doesn’t sit untouched. It helps fund equipment, officials and transportation for athletes across different sports.
To argue that football takes away is to misunderstand scale. Football requires more resources because it needs more. According to CCHS Athletic Director Dr. Jon Ward, each football player’s uniform costs around $800, while uniforms for other sports, like cross country, cost closer to $85 per player.
“(Around 2005), I moved away from giving everybody the same amount of money because everybody has different needs. You can’t do the cookie cutter ‘All sports are gonna get the same,’” Ward said. “Coaching supplements, the stadium, the gym, those are provided by the district, but everything else is provided based on funds coming in. Here at (CCHS), all that goes into what we call the general fund and from that we cover all sports’ needs.”
This doesn’t mean other sports are less valuable. It means we need to stop framing the conversation as competition between programs when the reality is cooperative. Football’s success in the South allows athletic departments, from UGA to CCHS, to offer more opportunities, not fewer.
In a region where Friday nights and Saturdays are an integral part of community identity, football is more than just a tradition, it’s also a financial backbone. Until another sport proves it can generate the same impact, football should not be seen as a drain but rather a lifeline.
