In a special Contacts Coaching podcast episode, Stevenson alumna Danielle Koval—Director of Compliance for Financial Aid and revenue sharing at the University of Oklahoma—shares her path from being a swimmer and water polo player at Stevenson to swimming at Fresno State, working in student-athlete academic services, moving to UNLV, and then joining OU after taking a financial aid role just before COVID. She compares working environments across Fresno State, UNLV, and a Power Four brand like Oklahoma, emphasizing the scale of budgets, the weight of a global brand, and the constant pace of compliance changes driven by lawsuits and reactive policy shifts. The conversation explains how college athletics finances work, why most sports operate at a loss, and how football revenue and attendance underwrite broader departmental resources. Koval details how athletic scholarships and financial aid function across headcount and equivalency sports, why FAFSA and campus/college-level scholarships matter, and how tuition waivers and programs like the Western Undergraduate Exchange reduce costs. She breaks down the shift from NCAA scholarship limits to roster caps under the new landscape, including how schools decide whether to fully fund expanded rosters and how new scholarships can count against the revenue-sharing cap. The episode also covers OU’s revenue-sharing approach (six sports), Title IX defensibility pressures, preferred walk-on dynamics under roster caps, the increased role of agents in everyday issues, and how contracts are renegotiated annually amid early signing day and the transfer portal. Koval discusses the challenges of paying athletes while preparing them for life after sports, including OU’s financial literacy programming, and closes with a personal reflection on changing her mindset from perfectionism to giving herself grace as circumstances shift. 00:00 Welcome & Meet Danielle Koval (OU Compliance + Financial Aid/Rev Share) 00:33 Danielle’s Athlete-to-Administrator Journey: Fresno State → UNLV → Oklahoma 05:31 Leveling Up: What Changes from Mid-Major to Power Program? 08:34 The OU Brand & Culture of Excellence Across Sports 11:23 Money Talks: Football Revenue, Facilities, and Funding Other Sports 12:51 Is College Athletics Sustainable? NIL ‘Funny Money’ to Revenue Share 17:26 Scholarships 101: Headcount vs Equivalency (and Why ‘Full Ride’ Is Rare) 20:46 New Era: Roster Caps, Scholarship Flexibility, and the 20.5M ‘Salary Cap’ 24:30 Financial Aid Hacks: FAFSA, Department Scholarships, WUE, and Tuition Waivers 30:10 Reallocating Aid: When Top Students ‘Free Up’ Scholarships for Other Sports 31:41 The Scholarship Funding Crunch: Revenue Sports vs. Everyone Else 32:24 Tuition Waivers & Campus Support: How Schools Make Full Funding Work 34:33 OU’s Self-Sustaining Model and the ‘Front Porch’ Value of Athletics 36:13 Roster Caps vs. Scholarship Limits: Why Walk-Ons Are Disappearing 37:53 Revenue Share at OU: The 6 Sports in the Pool (and Why Gymnastics) 39:36 Preferred Walk-Ons, Practice Bodies, and Stretching the Rev-Share Dollar 41:35 Inside Football Rev-Share Tiers: Contracts, Cutoffs, and Annual Renegotiations 46:03 Culture & Pay Equity: Avoiding Locker-Room Blowups in the NIL Era 47:43 Transfer Portal Reality Check: The Grass Isn’t Greener (and Many Don’t Land) 48:52 Recruiting Goes Pro: Agents, Negotiations, and the New GM Job 50:25 Preparing Athletes for Money & Life After Sport: Literacy, Taxes, Careers 55:15 Closing Reflection: Changing Your Mind, Letting Go of Perfection
