Army Athletics Requires Subsidies And Compromises Admissions

We turn from our regular topic of documenting USMA’s racially-preferential admissions regime to another favorite subject: its athletic program. Specifically, whether the subsidizing of USMA’s inter-collegiate athletic program is supporting or undermining its purpose of producing the backbone of the Army officer corps.

We don’t think the program is worth the cost. Below, we walk through some of the financials of the Army West Point Athletic Association (AWPAA) and examine the benefits.

We’re aware that the arguments against military academy Division 1 athletics are not new–indeed, are decades old. BG Lance Betros wrote about the corrupting influence of intercollegiate athletics on West Point. Asst Prof Dwight Mears wrote a column about it. John T Reed thinks that West Point should play down a couple divisions to maintain its integrity and standards.

What is new is quantifying the cost of the program and being able to weigh that against its purported benefits. Let’s look at some numbers.

As a reminder:

“When we use the term athletics, we have in mind primarily the physical development of the cadet. . .

Athletics do not mean the development of athletes primarily for participation in intercollegiate sports with emphasis placed entirely on a small group of students who happen to possess native athletic ability. . .

The athletes whom we develop are the by-product of our system rather than the object for which the system is planned or for which it exists. This conception of an athletic program is the only one which is consistent with the general aims and philosophy of the school. Any other would tend to defeat the purpose for which West Point exists.”

LTC Robert Richardson, commandant 1929-1933, cited in “Carved From Granite” by BG Lance Betros

Army West Point Athletic Association Mission Is At Odds With USMA Mission

The Army West Point Athletic Association is the non-profit organization that manages and administers the inter-collegiate athletics program of West Point. We’ve written about it before. (The organization has made some updates to its website to include staff directories and other facts. Thank you!)

Its mission on its website is:

And the priorities of AWPAA:

1. Competitive success
2. Extraordinary Division 1 Athletic Experience
3. Public Engagement and Revenue Generation
4. Sustainability

It’s important to note these priorities. As a quick aside, let’s look at the (new) Mission of the US Military Academy:

To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.

AWPAA’s priorities are about winning games and financial sustainability. It has a large commercial business to maintain. It has no goals instrumental to, say, winning wars.

West Point’s mission is about the Corps of Cadets and service in the Army.

The problem? They are both competing for influence over the same resources: the Corps of Cadets and dollars.

AWPAA’s website shows the sports it supports:

This is a wide group of activities, though the priorities specifically name football as the focus sport and the bulk of the funding goes to football.

AWPAA Audits Show That Army Athletics Doesn’t Survive Without Large Federal Grant Injections

We looked through the required non-profit audit reports (searching Federal Audit Clearinghouse for UEI “FUY6J8317A33”) and found AWPAA’s the US Government subsidies and PPP loan items. We consolidated the financials. Reports are available locally: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017

We found a total revenues and expenses in the years 2018-2024 as shown below.

There’s much more detail behind each of these lines. For example:

We know that AWPAA runs a complex business, dealing with media rights, game rights, managing players, infrastructure, a whole host of things, we assume related mostly to Army Football. This isn’t about their efficacy in any of that, and we assume they’re competent individuals doing the best that they can.

This is about understanding that the Army inter-collegiate athletic effort costs a lot of money every year. Specifically, grant revenues of give-or-take $12 million dollars annually. (Plus the odd $4.8 million PPP loan which was not repaid and can be seen in year 2022 above)

Most of it, again, spent on Football. This is money that, were it not spent on intercollegiate athletics, could be put to other uses.

Whether or not this is more economical to the taxpayer of what happened before AWPAA was founded, the numbers clearly show a financial hole every year requiring direct support from the taxpayer.

Without that approximately $12M annually, AWPAA would be losing $10-15M annually. We don’t know the details of the grants. It would be helpful to see the grant documentation. Historically though, AWPAA has been very reluctant to release details on its agreements or finances beyond what’s required by law.

Athletics Compromises Admissions

Regardless of the reader’s position on Army athletics (pro, con, or other), it is clear that athletics compromises admissions. Our earlier piece on Admissions’ standards for athletes (linked here ) clearly shows that there are out-of-order-of-merit admissions decisions for athletes. We’ve seen in our piece on Corps Squad (varsity) athlete test scores that lowered standards for athletes results in admitting athletes with mid-teens ACT scores.

The Secretary of War specifically made an exception for athletics in an otherwise strong stance for merit-based admissions. This is a startling admission that NCAA athletics is known to admit cadets with lower other qualifications, and that the athletics program will continue to be more important than admissions integrity.

Retired general and historian Lance Betros points out that Athletics, specifically football, is a danger to the integrity of the Academy:

“The negative effects of intercollegiate athletics have been especially noticeable since 1970, as Academy leaders have struggled to succeed in an athletic environment governed by business principles…”

“The overall failure of this endeavor has yet to inspire a rethinking of the assumption and goals that govern intercollegiate sports at West Point. Until that happens, the Academy will continue to fritter its resources in areas tangential to the institution’s core mission.”

We can draw one conclusion from this set of facts. Army inter-collegiate athletics compromises admissions quality. Quibble about to what precise degree, dispute the value of pure merit-based vs mono-dimensional talent, or argue that athletics is important for recruiting: none of it gets around the fact that merit is compromised for athletics.

So we must examine the tradeoff: is the athletic program worth it?

The Value of Inter-Collegiate Athletics to West Point, the Army, and the Citizen

Athletics are part of the USMA culture. Every cadet must participate in athletics, at the least at intramural level. A Bugle Notes plebe-knowledge favorite is:

“On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.” – General Douglas MacArthur

And this is another favorite:

“I want an officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.”

Attributed to General George Marshall (though we understand there is no proof he actually said it)

And West Point has a long history of playing against Navy. There is a tradition which many grads remember fondly and use as a center of gravity for socializing and bonding.

However, pithy quotes from generals aren’t a substitute for critical evaluation.

We should consider: what is the value of persisting with a program?

Does it help recruit better candidates?

It’s unclear that this is the case, unless you want to talk about recruiting more inter-collegiate athletes. But playing football to recruit football players is circular logic. John T Reed, again, notes many of the challenges Army football recruiting already faces and outlines the extraordinary measures it would have to take to be competitive. What these difficulties should tell us is that Army Football qua Div 1 football is incompatible with West Point’s mission.

And let’s not forget opportunity costs. By admitting out of merit order, USMA is deliberately choosing candidates of lower quality, by its own metrics, than it could. This means that the class quality is lower than it could be. And this, in turn, means that the Army gets a lower-quality West Point class than it could.

This, by the way, is not anti-football-player. They’re welcome to apply if they want to be officers. If football players want to go into the Army, they should be able to compete equally for appointments, or go to an ROTC school and play football there. But the recruiting program for football should not take precedence over the mission of the Academy.

Is Army Football popular with the rest of the Corps of Cadets? Maybe. We suggest making attendance at home games non-mandatory to get a good gauge of interest.

Does it turn out better officers?

Some studies say Football players are more likely to become generals. But there are many confounders in the data. And our findings showed higher attrition and lower CQPAs for the varsity athletes. This means that for the “better officer” argument to be true, West Point’s methods of measuring performance must be wrong.

Is the value only in the feelings of the graduates?

This is probably the most likely and valid source of value. If it doesn’t help the quality of the Corps compared with available alternatives, and it doesn’t clearly help produce more better officers than the alternative, then the reason to continue is Tradition. In other words, helping Old Grads feel good, and helping as a fundraising aid for AOG and AWPAA. (Remember, AWPAA has financial goals in its priorities, while it has no war-winning goals.)

And this brings up a principal-agent problem: Supporters of the Athletic program are happy to support it as long as they’re not the ones paying for it or all of its opportunity costs.

Let’s take it a step further:

Is the value of inter-collegiate athletics to West Point worth compromising on the quality of cadet classes, sucking up considerable individual and institutional capital and attention, plus $12M / year of grants from the Federal Gov’t, plus additional donor resources, to continue?

We think not. Taxpayers are paying for a lot of nostalgia, but not a lot of results.

What Can Change

Ultimately, we’d like to think the program supports the mission of USMA. But we conclude it does not and should be ended.

These arguments have been advanced before. No results. We expect that tradition and fond feelings for Army-Navy football games will perpetuate the program, and we have no expectation that this piece will cause any interruption to AWPAA or Army Football’s negative effects on the Academy.

What we do hope for is the removal of the athletic exception in Secretary of War Hegseth’s merit-focused admissions memo, perhaps by measures such as Nancy Mace’s “Restoring Merit In the Service Academies Act” or by SecWar Hegseth’s update to his guidance.

This is another step in the way to ensuring we get the best cadets we can, and help them get into the Army. West Point is compromising its very important mission for commercial purposes. It shouldn’t be doing that.

As always, factual corrections & thoughtful criticism are welcome.