“Mission Impossible: Maintaining Higher Education’s Purpose in an Age of College Sports Revenue Sharing Through a Student-Athlete Holistic Development Framework”

Amidst recent legislative changes that have transformed and further commercialized the Division I (DI) college sports industry, researchers and institutions have begun to emphasize the importance of student-athlete holistic development. This shift toward holistic development attempts to counteract claims that the college sports system prioritizes athletic success at the expense of student-athletes’ holistic development. Existing theories help institutions understand the factors that contribute to student-athlete holistic development, particularly for Black student-athletes (BSAs) playing at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). The purpose of this paper is to expand existing frameworks by exploring the role that institutional culture and mission play in student-athletes’ holistic development using grounded theory.  Semi-structured interviews with 20 Black former DI football and women’s basketball players and 12 DI football and women’s basketball coaches revealed three primary themes: 1) goals influence HIP participation, 2) HIPs occur outside athletics, and 3) messaging reflects institutional values. The findings present implications for PWIs looking to improve retention and belonging of their BSAs through an emerging theoretical framework.