University sports have grown and become bigger throughout their existence, creating an industry that is profoundly involved with revenue, making it difficult to manage and maintain. This created different levels, rankings, and divisions within sports to separate large and small scale universities. This created a gap and discrepancies between well-off schools within the same levels and divisions. However, some schools that are not well off have been able to thrive and continue building up their athletic programs while others have continued to struggle. It is important to understand what factors separate one from the other so that more schools can have and build successful athletic programs. This paper will outline how these factors operate and then discuss how having a strong college sports team built on these factors help the university as a whole because they expose the university to the public, generate revenue, bring a sense of community to universities and towns, enhance student recruitment and create a sense of prestige for any university.