What's Happening on Campus- Part 9: Win at All Costs

College Safety
Written by Larry Betz

College Athletics and the Same Culture, With Even More Money on the Line

By Larry Betz | Prepared Not Paranoid https://www.preparednotparanoid.com/

Updated November 2, 2026


College athletics abuse cases follow a pattern most parents never see coming: when a program is worth billions, protecting it can come before protecting the students inside it. Here's the record, and where your student can go when the problem is the program itself.

The Business Side First, Because the Numbers Explain the Behavior

Everything we just walked through in fraternities, protect the group, protect the institution, keep it internal, shows up again in college athletics. Honestly, it shows up with even more force, because the money involved isn't measured in alumni donations anymore. It's measured in billions.

According to a valuation study by Indiana University finance professor Ryan Brewer, published by The Wall Street Journal in January 2026, the University of Texas football program alone is now valued at roughly $2.2 billion, with an estimated $298 million in adjusted annual revenue. Texas A&M, Ohio State, LSU, and Georgia all sit around $1.5 billion, and Michigan is above $1.4 billion. Fifteen college football programs are now valued above $1 billion each, 14 of them in the SEC or Big Ten, and the top programs' valuations jumped 46 percent in a single year. Brewer pointed to revenue sharing with players, which began after the House v. NCAA settlement, and the transfer portal as the drivers. This isn't a university club anymore. It's a genuine national media and entertainment business, operating on the same campuses where students live in dorms and attend 8 a.m. classes.

That money shows up somewhere very specific: the coach's contract. It's been true for years, and it's still true today, that in a large number of states, the highest paid public employee, higher than any state senator, any agency director, sometimes higher than the governor, is a football or basketball coach at the state's flagship university. When that much institutional money and institutional identity rides on one person and one program's success, the incentive to protect that person, and to protect the program's reputation, becomes enormous. That's not a moral judgment on any individual coach. It's just what happens when an athletic department generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year: the program becomes something the institution needs to protect, sometimes ahead of the individual students inside it.

Same Pattern, Bigger Stage

We already covered two of the clearest examples of this pattern earlier in the series. Penn State failed to act on warning signs about Jerry Sandusky for years, resulting in 11 Clery Act violations and a $2.4 million federal fine. Michigan State failed to stop Larry Nassar despite years of complaints, resulting in what was then the largest Clery Act fine ever issued, $4.5 million, on top of a separate $500 million settlement with his victims.

Those aren't isolated. Here are more, all large enough and well-documented enough that there's no reasonable dispute about what happened.

The University of Michigan, Dr. Robert Anderson. For decades, a University of Michigan athletic doctor named Robert Anderson abused patients, many of them student athletes, during what were supposed to be routine physical exams. In January 2022, the University of Michigan agreed to pay $490 million to more than 1,000 survivors, one of the largest sexual abuse settlements in the history of American higher education. The pattern here mirrors Michigan State and Penn State closely: complaints existed for years before real action was taken, and the athletic department's relationship with its own medical staff meant those complaints stayed internal far longer than they should have.

Ohio State University, Dr. Richard Strauss. This is maybe the starkest documented case of institutional knowledge outpacing institutional action. An independent investigation found that Dr. Richard Strauss, a team doctor, sexually abused at least 177 male students from 1979 to 1997, across wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, and many other sports, as well as at the student health center. The investigation found that Ohio State personnel knew of complaints about Strauss as early as 1979, the very first year, but failed for years to investigate or take meaningful action. At least 50 athletic department staff members, including 22 coaches, corroborated what victims were saying, yet those complaints never left the athletic department or health center until 1996, nearly two decades later. Athletes viewed his behavior as something close to an open secret inside the program. One former athlete later said they told their coach, believing they were doing the right thing. When Strauss was finally investigated in 1996, Ohio State removed him as a team and health center doctor, but let him keep his faculty job and retire in 1998 with emeritus status, which the university didn't revoke until 2019. He also ran an off-campus clinic. In June 2026, Ohio State approved a $100 million settlement with 279 of the 280 remaining survivors in the lawsuits. That's on top of more than $61 million it had already paid to 317 others, closing out a legal battle that ran eight years after the truth finally came out.

Northwestern University football, 2023. This one isn't about a doctor. It's about the team itself, and it shows the exact same "protect the program" instinct playing out among players rather than staff. Multiple former players came forward alleging a hazing culture inside the football program that included forced nudity and coordinated physical restraint by upperclassmen wearing animal or horror-movie masks, a group the lawsuits call the "Shrek squad." Other lawsuits alleged racist treatment of players of color. Longtime head coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired in July 2023 after the details became public, despite maintaining he had no knowledge of any hazing inside a program he had led for 17 seasons. Dozens of former players sued, and Northwestern settled the 34 remaining lawsuits in May 2025. Fitzgerald sued the university for $130 million and settled in August 2025, with Northwestern acknowledging the evidence did not show that players had reported the hazing to him. In fairness, the team also pushed back at first, calling the allegations exaggerated. However you read it, the hazing itself was confirmed by the university's own investigation.

Here's the record, side by side.

It's Not Just Coaches and Doctors. It's Players Too.

Everything above is about staff, a doctor, a coaching staff that looked the other way. The same pattern shows up with players themselves, and two cases in particular are worth knowing about, because they show two very different outcomes from a similar starting point.

Vanderbilt University, 2013. On June 23, 2013, four Vanderbilt football players, Brandon Vandenburg, Cory Batey, Brandon Banks, and Jaborian McKenzie, carried an unconscious 21-year-old female student into a dorm room and sexually assaulted her, documenting it themselves with dozens of photos and videos. A fifth player, Chris Boyd, was later charged as an accessory after the fact for helping cover it up. All four were dismissed from the team within a week. Vandenburg was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Batey and Banks to 15 years each. McKenzie, who testified against the others, took a plea deal with 10 years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender. This is the rare case in this entire series where the system actually worked close to how it's supposed to: real evidence, real charges, real prison time.

University of Minnesota, 2016. A female student reported that a group of players sexually assaulted her after a night that included drinking. Prosecutors ultimately declined to press criminal charges. The university's own investigation went further: its 80-page report recommended that five players be expelled, four suspended, and one placed on probation, and the school suspended ten players from the team. What happened next is the part worth sitting with: the entire team announced it would boycott practice and its upcoming bowl game unless the suspensions were lifted, explicitly to support their suspended teammates. The university didn't back down. Less than two days later, the boycott collapsed, after many players read the university's report for the first time and learned the details of what was alleged. The team played in the bowl game, the suspensions stood, and the head coach, who had publicly backed the boycott, was later fired. No player was ever criminally charged.

Put those two cases side by side and you can see the same "protect the group" instinct from earlier in this series playing out on a football team instead of inside a fraternity house, with an entire roster willing to publicly rally around the accused before they even knew what the accuser said. That doesn't tell you what actually happened in either case beyond what courts and investigations found. It does tell you how a team, not just a university administration, can end up closing ranks the moment one of its own is the one facing the accusation.

Why This Keeps Happening, Structurally

None of these cases are about one bad doctor, coach, player, or one hazing culture in isolation. They're about what happens when an institution's financial identity becomes wrapped up in a program's reputation. A billion-dollar athletic program, or even a modestly successful one by comparison, generates enormous pressure to protect its coaches, its medical staff, and its public image, because a scandal doesn't just hurt the people directly involved. It threatens donor relationships, television contracts, and recruiting, the entire financial engine we described at the start of this piece. That's the same incentive structure we described in fraternities and alumni giving, just with several more zeros attached, and a national television audience watching the version of the story the institution wants told.

What This Means for Your Family

I'm not telling you to keep your kid away from college athletics, whether they're playing or just cheering from the stands. What I am telling you is that when a program generates real money for a university, that program earns real institutional protection, and that protection has, in case after documented case, outlasted years of warning signs before the truth got out. If your student is involved in college athletics in any capacity, knowing that this pattern exists, and knowing where to go if something feels wrong that isn't the athletic department itself, is part of protecting them going in, not something to figure out only after something's already happened.

Here's where to go when the problem is the program.


The Prepared Protector Knows Who Works for Whom

The Prepared Protector understands that the team doctor, the trainer, and the coach all work for the program. That doesn't make them bad people. It means your student needs at least one place to turn that doesn't answer to the athletic department, and needs to know where it is before they ever need it.


What to Say

Before the season starts

  • "If anything a coach, trainer, or doctor does ever feels wrong, you're allowed to say no and leave the room."

  • "You can always get a second opinion from a doctor who doesn't work for the team."

About telling someone

  • "If something happens, tell me, even if the team says to keep it in-house. You will never be in trouble with me for telling the truth."

  • "Your scholarship is never worth your safety."

About teammates

  • "Being a good teammate never means covering for someone who hurt somebody."


5 Quick Wins You Can Start Today

  1. Find your student's Title IX coordinator and save the contact info in both of your phones.

  2. Find an off-campus doctor or counselor near your student's school, just in case.

  3. Tell your student out loud that they can always leave an exam or a room that feels wrong.

  4. Save the National Sexual Assault Hotline, 800-656-4673, in their phone.

  5. Read Conversations 2 and 19 in the free College Safety Conversation Guide together.

Ask Yourself

  • Does my student know where to go for help that isn't the athletic department?

  • Would my student tell me if a coach, trainer, or doctor made them uncomfortable?

  • Have I made it clear that their safety matters more than their spot on the team?

Remember

When a program is worth billions, protecting it can come first. Your student needs at least one door that doesn't lead back to the program. Make sure they know where it is before move-in day.

Get Started Today

Get the free College Safety Conversation Guide. It includes the conversations this post is built around, "Reporting, Silence, and Trust" and "Documentation and Reporting Options," with the actual words to start each one, plus the rest of the conversations every family should have before move-in day. DM the word [KEYWORD] on Instagram or Facebook and I'll send it to you. [Get it here: LINK]

Go Deeper

Navigating the Red Zone and Beyond. This post shows you how the money protects the program. The book shows your family how to stay safe in the situations where it matters most: party and drink safety, the Designated Steward and group plans, how manipulators use trust and pressure, boundary scripts, situational awareness with SCAN, how to support a friend, and what to do if the worst happens. [Get it here: https://link.amazon/B030JRBPp]


Tools I recommend: The dorm and safety gear I recommend for your student's first year is in my College Dorm Room Essentials Amazon store. https://link.amazon/B061T3Evk


Related reading:

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 2: Why Reporting Is So Hard [LINK]

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 4: Who Campus Police Actually Work For [LINK]

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 8: The Code of Silence [LINK]

  • College Safety Resource Center [LINK]

References

Disclaimer

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and is meant to start conversations in your family. It is not legal or medical advice. Laws on sexual assault, hazing, and reporting vary by state and change over time, so check your state and county for the exact laws where your student lives and goes to school. Settlement amounts and case outcomes are based on public reporting. If you suspect abuse, assault, or hazing, contact a professional or law enforcement immediately. Prepared Not Paranoid and Larry Betz are not responsible for the content of third-party websites or resources linked here. Affiliate disclosure: I've linked to products from my Amazon store that I personally recommend. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work.

If you or someone you love is in danger, call 911. For confidential support after a sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 (800-656-HOPE), any time, day or night.


Awareness gives you time. Time gives you options.


The Prepared Protector is someone who's decided that loving someone means being ready for them, not just hoping things go fine.


Prepared Not Paranoid. Protecting the Most Vulnerable Among Us.

Larry Betz https://www.sedonastrengthandmobility.com
Previous

What's Happening on Campus- Part 8: The Code of Silence
Next

What's Happening on Campus- Part 10: The Full Picture