FAIRMONT — In college athletics, the stakes are constantly being raised in the race to be No. 1.

The battle between institutions of higher learning is being waged on two fronts. One takes place on the playing fields and in gymnasiums, while the other is fought with checkbooks.

More often than not, winning the fight on one side makes it easier to succeed on the other.

In major college sports, schools like Alabama, Texas and Ohio State are embroiled in a constant struggle to attract the top players to their campuses. The line of thinking is the more attractive a school can make itself, be it through shiny new facilities, trophy cases full of history or in some cases, like recently at Ohio State, benefits deemed impermissible by the NCAA, the more appealing it will be to athletes.

With the right coaches, which when successful do not come cheap, those elite players will win more games and attract more fans to fill their 100,000-seat stadiums.

In order to attract the top players to their teams, coaching staffs are equipped with the ability to promise media exposure on national television, playing for championships and the opportunity to use new and advanced facilities both for athletics and academics.

The same is true, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Division II athletics.

Fairmont State athletic director Rusty Elliott knows all too well the ups and downs of maintaining a college athletic department while constantly searching for ways to improve both on the field and in the race to be the most attractive option to possible recruits in all sports.

Elliott said in most cases when compared to other schools in a conference, ranking from most to least in order of money spent on that sport will closely reflect the standings for that particular sport.

“It’s what a school thinks is important,” Elliott said. “Take a school like Alabama. They are good at football and basketball because they think it’s important. Texas is good at football and basketball. They think those sports are important. Those schools think it’s important to make athletics one of their vehicles to get people to come to their school because it is a tough, cruel world out there getting people to come to schools. This conference is not different.”

Unlike Alabama, Texas or even West Virginia and Marshall, schools like Fairmont State do not have the luxury of being able to offer full scholarships or travel the entire country to turn over stones on the recruiting trail. The scope of FSU’s recruiting footprint is tiny compared to many Division I schools.

“We have a certain amount of people that graduate from high schools in West Virginia, and we’ve got to try to attract them the best way we can,” Elliott said. “We have a beautiful campus, no doubt about that. But to get them here one of our vehicles is athletics, to be honest with you.”

In other words, because athletics is a way to bring new students to campus, Fairmont State spends money on sports. Football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball are considered the major sports as far as expenditures and revenue are concerned, so there is a noticeable difference in funds devoted to those sports and other sports such as volleyball, softball or cross county.

Dr. Maria Rose, Fairmont State’s interim president, said athletics are just a part of what the university hopes potential students will find attractive.

“We as an institution value our athletic programs because they are part of this university,” Rose said. “They are part of the whole picture of what makes a student decide if they want to study here or not.”

Rose said that in some cases money spent by the athletic department has a direct and immediate impact on the student body as a whole and not just the student athletes.

“It’s about more than just the organized sports,” she said. “You walk up there (to Duvall-Rosier Field at FSU) any night and there are people walking around the track or students that have pickup football or basketball games.”

At its core, however, college athletics is still a business, and the bottom line means seeing a return on an investment.

When compared to similar institutions (public universities and colleges that compete in the WVIAC), Fairmont State turns a profit while some other schools are only breaking even. The top spenders, in most cases, finish at or near the top of the standings. The schools that spend in the middle or bottom of the pack tend to reside there in the standings as well.

According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA), FSU saw revenue of $829,621 for the 2010 football season (the EADA financial numbers are from July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011), while the program’s expenses were $805,730 — a profit of $23,891.

The same is true of the men’s and women’s basketball programs at Fairmont State for the same time period. Men’s basketball turned a profit of $16,374 and women’s basketball made $13,275. The Falcon teams from the three major sports have had moderate success on the field and in the gym in recent years, but have very little to show for it in the way of championships.

Concord University, football champions in the WVIAC this season, put the wheels in motion for this year’s title run by investing in its football program the previous year. In 2010 Concord had $1,063,516 in football expenses while reporting $1,208,280 in revenue. True to Elliott’s statement, Concord was one of the top spending football programs in the league in 2010 and finished at the top of the standings in 2011. Calls to the athletic directors at Concord and West Liberty State University were not returned.

Fairmont State has not won a conference championship in football since the 2000 season and since 1980 the Falcon football team has won just four conference titles in 31 tries.

Though being a bigger spender within your conference does appear to increase the chances that your team will do well, it does not guarantee anything. West Liberty was the top men’s basketball team in the WVIAC in 2010 with $360,314 in expenses, making the Hilltoppers one of the biggest spenders on the sport in the league.

Shepherd, on the other hand, spent $318,887 and finished ninth behind teams that spent less money like Fairmont State (fourth), and West Virginia State (second). In fact, WVSU spent just $212,010 on men’s basketball, nearly $150,000 less than league champion West Liberty.

Fairmont State ranks ninth in terms over athletic budgets among WVIAC schools, and if FSU is going to attempt to keep up with the top teams in the conference and put more money into its programs it has to come from somewhere such as donations to the athletic department and from the school.

Rose said departments at Fairmont State seeking extra funding can apply to the Board of Governors for a $500,000 strategic planning grant to help cover costs.

“We give them the resources to be successful,” Rose said. “That competitive process helps a lot because obviously everything can’t be funded, but it gives us at the university a chance to see what the needs are in athletics as well as the other departments on campus.”

Elliott said his job is made much easier because of the solid support and open lines of communication Rose and the Board of Governors provide for Falcon athletics.

“I think that we are a team here on this campus,” Elliott said. “We all get along well. I get along well with the president and we communicate back and forth and are very open.”

That means if he needs something — if a scoreboard suddenly breaks and there is not money in the budget to fix it — Elliott turns to Rose and the Board of Governors.

“(A scoreboard) is a need you have to have to be able to play the game,” Elliott said. “If I go and say I want new bleachers I probably don’t get that.

“You’ve got wants and you’ve got needs. You’ve got to cover all your needs first and if there’s any money left over you cover some of your wants.”

The ultimate goal, Elliott said, is to be able to fully fund most athletic scholarships. Currently, he said, the vast majority of FSU athletes are on partial athletic scholarships.

“They all want full scholarships,” Elliott said. “It’s very difficult to do that with our money. That’s a want.”

According to the EADA statistics, which are filed with the government each year by colleges and universities, Fairmont State provides $1,091,636 in athletically related student aid on a total of 277 participants in all of its men’s and women’s sports. Men’s teams received 67 percent ($734,711) of that money while the other 33 percent ($356,925) went to women’s teams. FSU has 201 participants in its men’s programs and 76 in its women’s programs.

Rose said Pierpont Community & Technical College is phasing out its fee for the athletic department as part of tuition over the course of the current school year and the next two to have less of an immediate financial impact on FSU.

“We’ve been meeting with our Board of Governors’ Finance Committee to determine how to fill that gap with the loss of those student fees,” Rose said. “We will not be raising the Fairmont State student athletic fees. We will find a way within our budget to manage that loss.”

Though how much of an impact that loss will have is debatable, one thing that is not up for debate is how difficult it is for student-athletes to manage their time between school, academics and, in many cases on the Division II level, a job.

Jessica Seevers is a senior at Fairmont State who in May will receive her degree in Spanish. Seevers, a native of Ironton, Ohio, was also a second-team All-WVIAC setter for the Falcon volleyball team.

As a student from outside West Virginia, tuition costs more for Seevers than it did for her peers from the Mountain State.

“When I was asked to come here I was guaranteed a certain amount (of scholarship money),” she said. “Each year it progressed. The more you play the more money you’re given. I did have to take out a certain amount of loans because I am an out-of-state student.”

Tyler Barnette, a junior at Fairmont State, is a starting outfielder for the Falcon baseball team from Core in Monongalia County. He said that despite receiving the PROMISE Scholarship he has had to work jobs in the past to help himself financially while playing baseball and going to school.

“I’ve got the PROMISE Scholarship, so that helps out a lot,” Barnette said. “I’m in my last year of that though. You’ve got to focus on academics in Division II. You can’t get by on athletics. You have to focus on your school work.”

Barnette, who also serves on the FSU Student Athlete Advisory Committee, said that being relatively close to home helps, too.

“It’s a 30- to 45-minute drive away from here,” he said. “I am real fortunate that I can call (my parents) up and get a little extra funding in that bank account.”

Seevers said that during her time on the volleyball team at FSU her family was facing difficult times financially. She had to go to the athletic department and ask for more scholarship money.

“I didn’t know how much funding we had,” Seevers said. “I don’t know what each member of the team was getting but I didn’t know how much finances the volleyball program itself had. I attempted to apply for another loan during one of my semesters to help with school, but luckily it was there (in the athletic budget). That definitely helped me out for that semester.”

On average, male athletes at Fairmont State receive $2,655.28 in athletic aid and female athletes get an average of $4,814.80. However, not all scholarships are created equal, with each athlete being a different case. According to the Fairmont State website, the estimated cost to attend FSU for in-state students is $15,958 while students from outside West Virginia should expect to pay $22,162.

“Your No. 1 goal is to win a national championship, and I don’t know if that can be done here or not,” Elliott said.

The challenge will be on the athletic director to keep FSU with the pack both in the standings and in the arms race of building facilities and providing scholarships that goes on off the field.

“A big part of it (is on us),” Elliott said. “That’s a challenge we want to take. It’s part of the deal and we all work together. The school helps us but we also have to help ourselves.”

Rose said part of what Fairmont State plans to do to keep up with the trends in athletics is to bring in athletic advisers to look at the athletic department and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses.

“Those folks are going to come in to campus and give us a realistic assesment of our athletic programs,” Rose said. “They will talk with the Fairmont State Athletic Association, coaches, the Board of Governors, faculty and students and what we want to get from this is a 20-year plan for moving athletics forward because everything is incredibly expensive.”

Rose said the school wants to plan ahead and know what major repairs will need to take place and when.

“We want an objective third party looking at our programs and how we fall with other WVIAC schools and other schools of comparable size,” she said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to the Joe Retton or Deacon Duvall days of being a powerhouse. There are a lot of myths out in the community about what’s going on or what should be going on. That’s why we thought the athletic consultation would be a good, objective way.”

Email Tom Bragg at tbragg@timeswv.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/TomBraggTWV.