What Does It Cost To Be in the NEC?

It might be less than you think.

I think instinctively we all know that there are costs to pay as a member of any athletic conference, including the NEC. An athletic conferene is a business, after all, and businesses require funding to run. We first confirmed the existence of annual dues in the league when we received the Chicago State NEC agreement to join the league, but those numbers were not yet available to us. Today, they are.

This document (and all others we reference) will eventually be available via an online library we will launch within the next year.

To be an all-sports member to the league, a school has to pony up $40,500. I’m not familiar with the sum you pay in other leagues, but it doesn’t strike me as exorbitant.

We also learned about football specific dues when we received the Chicago State documentation. Those dues are $3,000 with an “assessment fee” of $5,000. So if you’re a football playing all-sports member of the league, it’ll only set you back $48,500. This seems to imply that a football-only member like RMU or Duquesne is only on the hook for $8,000.

The membership dues don’t appear to have been raised in the past several seasons. At least something is inflation proof.