I spent the last two weeks diving into the data - researching, writing, and putting together a thorough analysis on why Arkansas cut their tennis program. I just set it last night to publish on Monday morning. Then this came out:

Instead of scrapping it, I ran to publish as soon as possible. I’ll leave it to you to tell me if you think I was right on or had foreshadowed what was to come. Hope you enjoy.

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News broke a few weeks ago that Arkansas was cancelling its tennis program. Part of the official release read:

That last part bothered me. Data informed decisions. So I decided to do what any self-respecting data analyst would do — go find the data.

Spoiler alert: I don't see it.

I pulled the latest MFRS data (FY 2025) on every school I had available. Arkansas spent $2.4 million on tennis, dead last in the SEC. Of course, being last in the SEC isn't the same as being cheap. That $2.4 million still exceeds every program in the Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA, and MAC — and all but two in the Big 12 and one in the American. For context, the median FBS tennis program runs about $920K.

So Arkansas' tennis program isn't a runaway expense — not when you compare it to Texas A&M's staggering $9.8 million — but there are clearly cheaper ways to operate a tennis program.

The budget history tells its own story. There's a pre-COVID high of $2.1 million in FY 2018, a pandemic dip, and then a sharp rise through FY 2023 to $2.6 million. Interestingly, expenses dropped to $2.4 million in FY 2025. We won't have the latest fiscal year's financials until next January, but the decline raises a question worth asking: was Arkansas already winding down the program before officially cutting it?

Raw dollars only go so far. When you look at what share of the total athletic budget each SEC school allocates to tennis, Arkansas doesn't even rank last. They come in ninth out of 13 schools at 1.3%.

A few things jump out. Texas A&M leads on both an absolute and percentage basis at 4.3%. Meanwhile, Texas — third in raw spending at $3.9 million — drops to second-from-last at just 1.0%. The takeaway: Arkansas spent the least on tennis in the SEC, but it wasn't the school prioritizing the sport least relative to its overall budget.

This is where it gets ugly.

In FY 2025, the Arkansas Razorbacks generated $3,284 in tennis-related revenue. That's less than the cost of an on-campus meal plan ($5,368). Less than what the volleyball team earned for out-of-conference games ($3,500). Less than a mid-range tennis ball machine.

That $3,284 is the third-lowest figure I could find across all of FBS — ahead of only Kennesaw State ($145) and Cal State Fullerton ($1,560). Among Power 4 and Group of 6 schools (Kennesaw excluded), nobody generated less. This is a program whose facility received a $2.8 million renovation in 2008. Generating $3,284 in revenue from that investment is, frankly, startling.

Last year, Arkansas carried 20 players across men's and women's tennis and offered 18 scholarships — though not all were full rides. Out-of-state tuition, fees, room, and board run just over $40K per student. At full value, 18 scholarships would cost over $800K, but the reported scholarship total was around $700K, leaving roughly $100K in tuition revenue driven by the team.

That scholarship count also puts Arkansas on the high end nationally. A majority of FBS programs (22 schools) award just eight tennis scholarships. Could Arkansas have simply reduced its scholarship allotment rather than cutting the sport entirely?

There's another dimension worth noting, as Matt Brown of Extra Points reported: a majority of the players were international. It's fair to ask whether that made the program politically easier to cut — fewer local constituents, fewer alumni connections, less public pushback.

Let's review the evidence:

Arkansas spent the least on tennis of any SEC school but didn't allocate the highest share of its budget to the sport. Revenue was essentially nonexistent — near the bottom of all FBS. Scholarship counts exceeded peer norms. And the competitive results were modest: the men went 18-14, the women 14-14, and neither program has ever advanced past the Round of 32 nationally.

On one hand, there were levers available short of elimination. Cutting scholarships from 18 to eight — what Rutgers and Minnesota offer — would free up roughly 10 roster spots, potentially converting them into tuition-paying students at $40K each. That alone could reshape the program's financial profile.

On the other hand, there's clearly no institutional appetite for further investment in a sport that doesn't move the needle competitively or financially. A post-House world demands significant resources, and Arkansas' statement acknowledged as much: the department concluded it could not provide the investment necessary for tennis to compete at the standard its stakeholders deserve.

Was this a data informed decision? The data tells me it was a resource allocation decision — a choice to consolidate limited dollars into higher-priority programs. That's a defensible position. But calling it "data informed" implies the numbers left no other option, and the numbers tell a more nuanced story than that. There were alternatives. Arkansas chose not to pursue them.

That distinction matters — especially as more schools face these same decisions in the post-House era.

NILnomics is an independent data-driven newsletter uncovering the real numbers behind college sports finances with sharp insights, clear visuals, and exclusive datasets. Please send any thoughts, questions, or feedback to me at [email protected] and please follow me on X @NILnomics. Don’t forget all our data is available on Kaggle, code on GitHub, and FOIA documents on GoogleDrive. See you next week!