TCU’s next step in securing athletics future: A heavy investment in academics | Opinion
Between the creation of the transfer portal, a young person’s Zombie-like pursuit of NIL cash, increasingly the victim in the evolution of major college athletics is college itself.
Academics has always had a fuzzy relationship with major college athletic departments, and its “student” athletes; look no further than the ugly history here at the University of North Carolina, where in the pursuit of winning, widespread academic fraud once threatened its standing as a “Public Ivy.”
In this era of college athletics what was once a nuisance and an annoyance — college classes — now often appear to not even be a part of the equation.
As TCU prepares to begin its 2025 football season on Monday with its football game against coach Bill Belichick and North Carolina, it’s easy to see how school and earning a four-year degree have no place in college sports. The pursuit of money and fame can disable any well-meaning venture.
Stuck in this slalom course are the schools themselves that have embraced the top end of NCAA sports where the value of winning is almost incalculable, while serving a mission as an institution of higher learning. It’s a tight fit.
As TCU invests and goes through a new growth spurt to strengthen its name in the current Power Four model of NCAA sports, it is banking that academics will give it a better chance to remain in that world.
“I very much believe that academics has a place in athletics,” new TCU chancellor Daniel Pullin said Sunday afternoon. “I can only speak to TCU and not other institutions. I know at some other schools, athletics is often its own silo, or on an island.
“We think athletics and academics are mutually beneficial and have a lot of opportunity to cross pollinate. We have chosen to author a plan that elevates academic prominence, and the student-athlete experience and relationship with the community and the athletic department.
“We really want and believe that the two can enhance the other. If you ask our students, what separated TCU from the pack when they decided to come here was the combination of high quality, mid-sized private school with big-time sports and amenities that bely the size of the student body.”
That is a unique, valuable hook that has served TCU well for the last quarter century. No one at TCU wants to lose that.
In an effort to maintain, or strengthen that position, one of Pullin’s primary objectives for TCU is to become an “R1” school. R1 is the highest level of research activity, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
This is a lengthy, expensive process that requires PhDs, doctoral candidates, and research dollars. The normal length for a school to become R1 is 10 years. Pullin hopes TCU can reach it in seven.
“It’s a mile marker of sorts. Why R1 matters is that it’s a signal of academic rigor for the faculty and the student,” said Pullin, who officially replaced Victor Boschini as chancellor on June 1.
“You want this because it challenges people to think differently. People sometimes think R1 just means the research the faculty is doing. It’s more than that. It’s about what both the faculty and student are doing, and it puts the student in a position that is needed by employers today.”
If/when achieved, TCU could boast that it’s a “research institution.” In the world of higher ed, that tag matters.
From any view, R1 should have no impact on a school’s standing in the world of athletics. No one who watched Notre Dame play Miami in football on Sunday night wondered, “What’s Miami’s research budget like?”
The 50,000 fans expected to attend the Tar Heels’ home opener on Monday night at Kenan Memorial Stadium against TCU are not worried about where UNC is with its latest research initiatives. Those people are worried if Belichick can flip the Tar Heels’ normal standing as a mostly irrelevant football program into a winning one.
And yet R1 has its place in college sports.
The only two schools that are not R1 in the Power Four are Wake Forest, and TCU. BYU and SMU earned that classification earlier this year, and Wake Forest is reportedly close.
As conferences, such as the Big Ten and SEC, potentially contemplate adding universities to their league, research should have no bearing on the value of a school. The metrics that really matter are students, alums, eyeballs, facilities, fan base, and somewhere in there are wins, championships.
R1 shouldn’t matter, and yet it does. The Big Ten is particularly concerned over whether a school is spending X amount on research.
Schools not in those leagues don’t want to give decision makers, such as college presidents who are concerned about perception and reputation, any reason not to consider them as a potential candidate. TCU becoming R1 takes one variable off the table.
For a long time TCU was known as a small, private school in a metro area. To continue on its path as a mid-sized private school in a metro area with a national reputation, it had to embrace research.
It’s doing that now, both as a means to enhance its stature as a place of higher learning, and to further secure its standing in Power Four athletics.
Research dollars have nothing to do with college sports, but they have everything to do with the business of higher ed, which helps maintain the relationship between athletics and academics.
This story was originally published September 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
