A federal judge has granted final approval of the House v. NCAA settlement, an agreement in college sports that for the first time permits schools to directly pay college athletes.
The settlement, which resolves a trio of antitrust cases against the NCAA and its most powerful conferences, establishes a new 10-year revenue sharing model in college sports, with athletic departments able to distribute roughly $20.5 million in name, image and likeness (NIL) revenue to athletes over the 2025-26 season. Previously, athletes could earn NIL compensation only with outside parties, including school-affiliated donor collectives.
The NCAA and the power conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC), as defendants in the settlement, also agree to pay nearly $2.8 billion in damages to Division I athletes who were not allowed to sign NIL deals, dating back to 2016. The damages will be paid out over 10 years, with most of the money expected to go to former power-conference football and men’s basketball players.
Universities can begin directly sharing revenue with their current college athletes starting July 1.
There are no stipulations for how schools must allocate payments to their athletes, only that they stay under the cap. However, it is expected that Power conference schools will allocate roughly 75 percent of the revenue figure to its football players, 15 percent to men's basketball, five percent to women's basketball and five percent to all remaining sports.
In addition to schools being allowed to share revenue with players, the new model requires all outside NIL deals of more than $600 to go through a clearinghouse that will determine whether the payments are for a valid business purpose and reflect fair market value. Also, schools will be penalized if they exceed the $20.5 million cap.
The new rules will be overseen by a newly established regulatory body, called the College Sports Commission. Bryan Seeley, a high-ranking executive at Major League Baseball and former assistant U.S. attorney, has been hired by the Power conferences to lead this enforcement body.
Seeley will be the commission’s chief executive officer, in charge of enforcing the rev-share cap schools must adhere to, running the clearinghouse for name, image and likeness deals athletes sign, and doling out punishment to rule violators.
Seeley will report to a board comprised of the commissioners of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC.
The NCAA will continue handling the enforcement of eligibility and academic rules.
The settlement also establishes roster limits for sports, rather than scholarship limits. The roster caps allow for every roster spot to receive a scholarship. Schools can offer a scholarship to a roster player as the school sees fit, either as a full or partial scholarship, or as no scholarship.
Changes in roster limits for 2025-26:
- Football: roster limit decreased to 105. That’s an increase from the 85-player scholarship limit that has existed for decades, but below the previous roster limit, which was 120 as of the start of the 2024-25 season.
- Men’s basketball: roster limit decreased to 15. The scholarship limit used to be 13.
- Women’s basketball: roster limit decreased to 15. The scholarship limit used to be 13.
- Baseball: roster limit decreased to 34. This is up from the 11.7 scholarship limit that has existed for decades. But the roster limit had been 40, so the freedom to hand out more scholarships will come with fewer overall roster spots.
- Women’s soccer: roster limit of 28.
- Men’s soccer: roster limit of 28.
- Cross Country: roster limit decreased to 17.
- Men’s golf: roster limit increased to nine.
- Women’s golf: roster limit increased to nine.
- Softball: roster limit of 25, up from a previous scholarship limit of 12.
- Men’s Volleyball: a roster limit of 18; its previous scholarship limit was 4.5.
- Women’s Volleyball: a roster limit of 18; its previous scholarship limit was 12.
Any athletes who lost or were in danger of losing a roster spot because of the new roster limits can receive legacied status for the remainder of their college eligibility, allowing those athletes to retain their spot and remain exempt from roster limits, whether at their current school or a new institution.
Schools now must figure out at what level they will participate within the new environment and how they will fund their participation. Funding and competing within the new environment is expected to be challenging for the smaller schools within the Power conferences and extremely challenging for schools that are not within a Power conference.
TCU has stated it intends to participate in the new competitive environment at the maximum level and continue competing for conference and national championships in all of the sports it sponsors.
No comments:
Post a Comment