Same is true of the southern schools with merit money being more likely than (lots) of athletic money for running, although some schools will combine them and can come out to a pretty nice package. Personally, I’d rather run in Utah or Colorado than the heat and humidity of a southern school, but…
My daughter went to a D2 school in Florida and was able to combine merit (automatic for grades and test score) and a pretty nice athletic award to make an otherwise too expensive school affordable. I’m more familiar with sports other than Track, but I know several schools in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and such do the same - attract athletes with pretty good merit and athletic money combos.
Her school, Florida Tech, has a good business program (otherwise STEM and psychology). St. Leo’s also big in business. Above someone recommended the Pennsylvania D2 schools (I think there are about 10 of them) as affordable and wanting to attract athletes. He could also look at the Ohio D2 and D3 schools; they offered my daughter a lot of merit but she wanted engineering so most of them were out for her.
Colorado Mesa is a great recommendation. When we lived in California we had about 10 athletes (from a small graduating class) head there as athletes - more than went to Cal or UCLA!