The House v. NCAA settlement has fundamentally changed the way college sports will function. College sports have left amateurism behind for good, and right now, questions seem to outnumber answers.
How does the House v. NCAA settlement change college sports?
The House settlement, which began as a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA and five collegiate conferences profiting from a former Arizona State swimmer, a TCU basketball player and others, sets up direct payments from schools to athletes for the first time. People across the country are actively debating how this new paradigm will affect universities and their athletic programs. Officials have introduced some new rules, with more on the way, but they have not yet been fully tested. Some suggest that the same issues college athletics faced before the settlement may have simply shifted focus.
Each school participating will now have a $20.5 million yearly cap to spend on its athletic programs. Football and basketball will see the vast majority of that money. NIL payments will also continue to exist in addition to the direct payments. During an interview with Panther Insider, Pitt Athletic Director Allen Greene said this is just the first step in reforming what was a broken “amateur” system.
“I think student-athlete employment is still a topic of conversation that’s going to occur,” Greene said. “I think rule setting is going to occur still, in just how we are applying all the various rules in our industry that govern what we do. And I think there’s still going to be conversations around congressional engagement, congressional involvement.”
What if schools don’t have the pool of money to pay players?
Many schools will continue to depend on wealthy alumni for support as their athletic budgets remain under pressure. Adding another $20.5 million in expenses means schools will have to make tough choices. Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard was blunt in a recent interview.
“Iowa State does not have that $20 million,” Pollard said. “But if we don’t pay it for this coming year, we have big problems, right? So we’re going to pay it.”
It’s also bigger than college athletics. Towns like Ames, Iowa, depend on college athletic programs and the tourism dollars they generate.
“Iowa State University will be faced with an athletics program with a huge annual deficit if it wants to stay in the Big 12 and if it wants to have a P4 (Power 4) athletics program,” Pollard said. “Now, we can decide we just want to have an athletics program like Northern Iowa, but that’s going to have a huge economic impact on the state, on central Iowa, on the city of Ames and on this institution.”
What will happen to NIL payments?
Those issues also don’t account for NIL payments. That money will still be available to athletes in addition to the $20.5 million pool. Just hours after the settlement received approval, leaders formed a new College Sports Commission. Bryan Seeley is the man in charge. The former MLB executive and his team will review each NIL transaction to ensure it serves a legitimate business purpose and is not merely “Pay for Play.”
There will be a lot of gray areas to sift through because, up to this point, there were no rules for why a business or collective could pay a player. Conference athletic directors say it will be incumbent upon everyone to follow the rules when they are set up. Penn State head coach James Franklin said this does nothing to address the moral issue surrounding football programs, where it’s all about the dollars.
“I worry a little bit now that because of how the sport has changed,” Franklin said. “There’s people being attracted to the sport for the wrong reasons and the way the sport has changed from a transfer portal perspective and from an NIL perspective. I think there’s also young people and families that are making decisions based on a transactional experience rather than a transformational experience.”
Will the House settlement create a football arms race?
There’s also nothing stopping a Penn State, an Ohio State or an Alabama from using the majority of their $20.5 million on their football program in addition to another $20-30 million in NIL payments. That could create an arms race that the whole settlement intended to curb. Without stronger guardrails, the gap between well-funded programs and those with fewer resources may continue to grow.
“You watch Ohio State in the men’s football game, national championship game, you don’t hear any announcers talking about NIL,” Texas Tech softball coach Gerry Glasco said. “They just don’t talk about it. And yet, Ohio State had one of the highest two or three NIL payrolls last year in college football.”
Glasco, whose school’s collective announced a second million-dollar payment to star pitcher NiJaree Canady one day before they lost in the championship of the Women’s College World Series, knows his “non-revenue” program will have to continue raising money outside of the $20.5 million. Paying a player like Canady through NIL is worth it if they want to remain relevant.
“I think it was three days after she signed, somebody told me there was over 700,000 Associated Press type articles where they said Stanford, Texas Tech and NiJa Canady and softball all in one,” Glasco said. “Seven hundred thousand times you got mentioned. Then you look at the exposure she brought to us. I think we now played 10 or 11 games on national TV.”
What will happen to “non-revenue” sports?
Whether non-revenue sports are left behind in this new college landscape is one of the many questions left unanswered in the aftermath of the settlement. It will depend on how each school divides the $20.5 million in payments and how schools chase the NIL opportunities.
Schools without football, like Gonzaga University and many others in the Big East Conference, will be flush with cash to spend on their 12- to 15-member basketball teams and their non-revenue sports teams. That could open the door to another gap between “haves and have-nots” in their respective situations. The catch is not having a football team makes it a bit harder to find that $20.5 million in a school budget.
There may also be more litigation in the near future as challenges to upcoming NIL payments make their way through the College Sports Commission. What comes next will largely depend on what rules are put in place and how they’re enforced.
