Hi, I’m going to take a shot at trying to simplify where colleges and universities are in this new paradigm of college athletics. I may make some errors bur will do my best. It’s not real simple. I hope
@taknobbe reads this and corrects any errors or misstatements I make.
1. These rules are the result of lawsuits. The Alston case was the lawsuit decided that legalized NIL, subject to various state laws that had begun to regulate it. This case effectively overrode those laws and said college athletes were entitled to earn whatever dollars they could from the exploitation of their name, image and likeness. NIL funds are separate from university funds and are outside the university.
2. Recently a settlement was reached with the NCAA and the P5 conferences (count the PAC 10 as one of the P5 for this settlement) with a group of student athlete plaintiffs from a consolidation of cases now called the House settlement that mandates colleges pay their student-athletes from university funds that are generated from ticket sales, tv money and sponsorships. Not from donations.
3. Part of this settlement will be $2.8B going to former student-athletes who played from 2016-2023. The NCAA will kick in about half of this and the rest is the amounts of salary that will be paid from revenue sharing.
4. These rev sharing is mandated to be up to 22% of the schools university funds from tv, sponsorships and ticket sales as an average of the P5 conferences. This is expected to be $20M or so now and will go up as those amounts increase.
5. These amounts will and must go all student-athletes, amounts as determined by the school. It is to reflect the value of the athlete to the school in their sport. It is not to be equal across all athletes.
6. Most schools for now expect Title IX to apply to these payments.
6A. I failed to mention this settlement also has some restrictions and rules on NIL payments that provide rules trying to avoid “pay for play” as opposed to deals that are more fair market and reflect true value of payments for the services provided by the students.
7. So from now on student-athletes have 3 sources of compensation—-first, regular scholarship monies for tuition and room and board (I don’t read this as athletic scholarships but could be wrong about that—unclear to me); second, their salaries mandated by the House settlement; and third, NIL monies they get, if any. Seems like the NCAA may step in and try to mandate some rules on NIL though time will tell. The Alston case still rules on NIL.
My best shot for now. A lot of this still evolving. I am trying to find out if the scholarshipping includes athletes’ tuition, Tom and board and the like.
No one knows what this means for schools that can’t or won’t pay the full revenue sharing (for now about $21-$22M). But it can’t be good. Wren said we would use full amount. And what about D1 or D2 schools?
