Wren Baker Offers Honest Assessment of Financial Stability for WVU’s Olympic Sports

During his annual spring press conference, WVU director of athletics Wren Baker offered words of reassurance concerning the financial stability of WVU’s Olympic sports teams amid attempts to rebuild the two top revenue generating programs.

Under the current revenue-sharing model, the four teams who primarily receive the most money are football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball, with a heavy  emphasis on football and men’s basketball since they generate a significantly higher portion of revenue compared to the others.

“All of the revenue-producing sports some amount of revenue share. So if it’s a ticketed sport and they’re selling tickets, they get kind of a corresponding percentage back, so they have a little bit of money to play with there,” Baker said on Tuesday. “But most of our revenue share is going to football, men’s basketball, and then, baseball and women’s basketball get some as well.”

A portion also goes to the Olympic sports on campus, whether or not they primarily produce revenue. However, despite an underwhelming season in football and the men’s basketball team’s third straight year missing NCAA Tournament, Baker stated funding for Olympic teams won’t be sacrificed so that the school’s more profitable teams can reclaim their status as national contenders.

“I’ve not gotten to a point to where I think we have to choose to downgrade or tier those other sports to be successful in the top two,” Baker said. “I think the last two to three years where we haven’t achieved what we would like to in football and basketball is more of an issue with just transition.”

Baker has a point, as the men’s basketball team returned no players who saw any minutes the year prior and football had plenty of new faces last season. The football program transitioned from Neal Brown to Rich Rodriguez and Ross Hodge became men’s basketball’s fourth coach in as many seasons. Both Rodriguez and Hodge have also used an increase in NIL money to build two of the best recruiting classes, high school and transfer wise, in school history.

“Every time you transition head coaches in football or men’s basketball, you’re gonna completely flip that roster, and we’ve seen that,” Baker said. “Then you bring people in. They miss the high school recruiting cycle entirely. They’re having to get everybody from the portal. The price in the portal, especially the later you go, the lesser the return is, I would say.”

Now, with Hodge and Rodriguez settled into their positions and in their second years at the helm, Baker says the result of revenue and building a culture can be seen.

“They both have their highest rated recruiting classes, portal and high school in many, many years,” Baker said. “And I think that is probably, you could contribute that to both better resources, but also more time and a refined process for them to spend a year getting ready.”

Find more coverage of WVU football, WVU basketball and Wren Baker at WV Sports Now.

For a related story, Wren Baker confirms West Virginia’s answer to the Big 12 about a loan.