It’s not exactly official yet and there are still a lot of details left to iron out, but barring something completely out of left field, the long-awaited day has arrived: schools can now directly pay college athletes.

I am going to dissect the Pete Thamel article from ESPN.com that broke the news Thursday evening. We’ll just go through it line-by-line and break it all down, then I’ll give my thoughts on the whole thing.

The NCAA and its five power conferences have agreed to allow schools to directly pay players for the first time in the 100-plus-year history of college sports.

The NCAA and its leagues are moving forward with a multibillion-dollar agreement to settle three pending federal antitrust cases. The NCAA will pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years to past and current athletes, sources told ESPN. Sources said the parties also have agreed to a revenue-sharing plan allowing each school to share up to roughly $20 million per year with its athletes.

So there’s two things here. The first is the settlement of the “House vs. NCAA” lawsuit which was initially field by, I believe, a swimmer from some Ivy League or Ivy League-adjacent school with the last name House, which was basically in response to the legalization of NIL a few years ago. Once NIL became legalized, almost immediately, past college athletes had mixed emotions. On the one hand, they were happy that the NCAA had finally gotten with the times and allowed NIL. But on the other hand, they were pissed because of all the potential money they missed out on. So it turned into a class-action lawsuit.

That’s what the House lawsuit was over. They basically said to the NCAA, “You prohibited us from getting money back when we were college athletes, and now you’ve reversed course on that entirely. Now we want the money that you prevented us from earning. You better pay up.” They’re seeking damages.

The settlement that was reached requires the NCAA–meaning both the actual organization the NCAA itself and its many member organizations, the schools–to pay out $2.7 billion over a 10 year period to these pre-NIL era athletes who were prohibited from earning their fair market value due to NCAA rules. So $270 million a year over the next 10 years. The reason the NCAA settled? Because if this lawsuit went the distance in court and the NCAA lost, it may well have bankrupted them.

Now, as to the other part, which legalizes revenue sharing with college athletes, I don’t understand why that was part of the lawsuit settlement. I am guessing it’s because the lawsuit also challenged the legality of the NCAA prohibiting revenue sharing, and the NCAA knew that if that question went the distance in court–meaning it was decided on by a judge’s ruling–it would likely cause a ton of problems for the NCAA and potentially upend its entire fundamental structure. So, in settling, the NCAA basically just said, “Fine, we’ll change our rules to allow revenue sharing,” as opposed to being forced to do so by a federal judge. Essentially the NCAA did it on their own terms as opposed to a judge’s terms.

“The five autonomy conferences and the NCAA agreeing to settlement terms is an important step in the continuing reform of college sports that will provide benefits to student-athletes and provide clarity in college athletics across all divisions for years to come,” NCAA president Charlie Baker and the five power conference commissioners said in a joint statement Thursday evening.

“This settlement is also a road map for college sports leaders and Congress to ensure this uniquely American institution can continue to provide unmatched opportunity for millions of students. All of Division I made today’s progress possible, and we all have work to do to implement the terms of the agreement as the legal process continues. We look forward to working with our various student-athlete leadership groups to write the next chapter of college sports.”

I am unsure what role the G5 conferences played in this settlement, or what role they will play going forward. So far the article has only mentioned the Power Five conferences. And even that’s funny because the Pac 12 is still being treated like it’s A. an actual conference, and B. still one of the five power conferences. But I guess since the lawsuit was filed before the Pac 12 broke apart, it makes sense in that light.

“All Division I athletes dating back to 2016 are eligible to receive a share as part of the settlement class. In exchange, athletes cannot sue the NCAA for other potential antitrust violations and must drop their complaints in three open cases: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.”

I’m guessing each of those three lawsuits dealt with a different issue: one regarding repayment of lost potential earnings, one about whether it’s even legal in the first place for the NCAA to prohibit college athletes from making money, etc.

It’s pretty obvious that what scares the NCAA the most is challenges to their antitrust exemption status, which I believe only the NCAA and Major League Baseball have among professional sports leagues. And yes, I think it’s pretty clear now the NCAA is at least partially a professional sports league. I’m murky on the details but I think if the NCAA’s antitrust exemption was ever challenged it would spell doom for the NCAA.

Now, to the first part of that paragraph, this settlement only covers D1 athletes from 2016 to basically 2020, as NIL was legalized in 2021. I would imagine that opens up a whole new can of worms because how do athletes from before 2016 feel about this? Why did they get excluded?

Well the obvious answer is that if the settlement number is already $2.7 billion for just 2016-2020, imagine what it would be if it stretched back further to say, 2012? Or 2010? Or 2000? It would be an astronomical sum of money and probably could never be paid out without bankrupting the NCAA and all of academia itself. So it had to be cut off somewhere. For what it’s worth, part of me says, “Fine, go ahead and bankrupt those bastards. They deserve it.” But then that creates a bunch of other problems.

“The settlement terms must be approved by Judge Claudia Wilken, who is presiding over all three cases. That process is expected to take several months, and sources said schools likely will begin sharing revenue in fall 2025.”

So it’s not yet official. The settlement still has to be approved by the presiding judge, but it seems like from all the reporting around the subject, that the judge’s approval is all but guaranteed. I mean think about it: if both sides of the lawsuit, the plaintiff and the defendant, both agree to the terms of the settlement, then what need is there for a judge to meddle with that? Civil lawsuits exist to settle a dispute between two parties, and a settlement means that dispute was, for lack of a better term, settled.

And the next part of that paragraph just makes clear that this is not something that will go into effect this year, but instead next year. So the 2025 season is when we will have college football players (and college basketball players) getting a cut of athletic department revenue.

“The NCAA’s board of governors and leaders from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12 voted to accept the general terms laid out in a 13-page document. Notre Dame also agreed to the settlement as a member of the ACC.

“The settlement, though undesirable in many respects and promising only temporary stability, is necessary to avoid what would be the bankruptcy of college athletics,” Notre Dame president John I. Jenkins said in a statement. “To save the great American institution of college sports, Congress must pass legislation that will preempt the current patchwork of state laws; establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees; and provide protection from further antitrust lawsuits that will allow colleges to make and enforce rules that will protect our student-athletes and help ensure competitive equity among our teams.”

Ever wonder why Notre Dame doesn’t join a conference? It’s because of shit like this: they’re a single school that’s treated like they have the weight of an entire conference. It’s like, the Big Ten releases a statement, the SEC releases a statement, the ACC releases a statement, Notre Dame releases a statement–huh? They’re their own conference now? They’re given equal weight as entire conferences?

Anyway, what the Notre Dame president statement reveals is what the NCAA side–the schools, the conferences, administration–views as the next necessary steps. They want federal nationwide legislation, they definitely don’t want college athletes to be deemed employees (I think this is the next major battle), and they want Congress to deem the NCAA exempt from any future antitrust challenges.

“The agreement does not resolve all the pending legal issues that have revolutionized the business of college sports and destabilized the multibillion-dollar industry. Athletes and their advocates are still fighting to become employees or find other ways to collectively bargain in the future, which could reshape a revenue-sharing agreement. This week’s agreement, though, potentially decreases the NCAA’s exposure to antitrust litigation, which has been the most powerful tool in pushing schools to provide more for athletes.”

So the “college athletes as employees” thing is the next major battle in this whole thing. I think the reason they want to become employees is because employees have rights. You become employees, then the next step is to unionize, which will enable collective bargaining to determine how much of the revenue the athletes actually get in the first place–like what the pro sports leagues have. Obviously the NCAA and the schools are very much against this.

“We recognize that we’re just on the front end of this entire process,” said Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman, who recently took over as the chair of the NCAA’s Division I Council. “There’s a lot to be sorted out as we try to really wrap our arms around some of the details that we’re putting in place now.”

Steve Berman, co-lead counsel for the athletes alongside veteran antirust attorney Jeffrey Kessler, said this week’s agreement feels like a “finish line” but that the cases won’t be officially closed for several more months. Other antitrust attorneys told ESPN that the deal could unravel if athletes opt out to join a separate and pending antitrust case or if Wilken rejects the settlement terms. Berman said he remains confident their deal will hold.

It seems that way, at least from the reporting. The overall tone of the reporting is that this is a done deal, finalized and official.

“I’m hugely proud,” Berman said. “This is a revolutionary change I never thought would happen when I started this. I’m thrilled for the student-athletes because this will be life-changing for all of them.”

By the end of this week, the parties plan to alert Wilken — who has presided over the most impactful antitrust cases of the past decade — that they will submit final details to the court in the next 30 days.

If Wilken approves those details in a preliminary hearing, which is likely to occur in July, Berman said the plaintiffs’ lawyers will publish a website and distribute a notice to all players explaining the potential benefits of remaining in the class and options for objecting or opting out.

Class members usually have a window of more than 30 days to raise objections or opt out of a settlement. If players opt out, they will give up any money they would receive from the damages but retain the right to sue the NCAA and its schools in the future for antitrust violations.

The vast majority will opt to remain as part of the lawsuit.

The next few paragraphs talk mostly about the settlement’s payouts, but truthfully, I don’t really give a shit about that, I care much more about the revenue sharing part of it. So I’ll skip ahead.

“Several athletic directors told ESPN that they are hopeful the settlement lays the groundwork for a system in which success on the field is less dependent on which schools can spend the most money. Sources said some of the challenges to solve include figuring out how to distribute the revenue-sharing money in a way that meets market needs while complying with Title IX laws and whether schools can regain control of the marketplace for college athletes, which has been outsourced during the past three years to booster collectives, which pay athletes via name, image and likeness endorsement deals.

Berman said the settlement includes a “mechanism” that he believes will make it easier for schools to rein in the marketplace for third-party NIL deals. He declined to provide any further details. Several athletic directors told ESPN this week that they were optimistic but uncertain about whether the settlement would give them enough legal room to regain control.”

Yeah, this is the big can of worms now. Once NIL became legalized, it obviously did not legalize the schools themselves having anything to do with it. This settlement, however, does.

But over the past three years, these booster collectives have sprung up to pay the athletes. So are they just going to go away now? You can’t really have a system in which the athletic departments can pay their athletes, but also so can boosters. That doesn’t make a ton of sense unless it’s limited to strictly ACTUAL NIL–things like endorsement deals and product sponsorships. Just imagine if an NFL team was like, “Well, we don’t have enough to pay you under our salary cap, but this rich guy who lives in our city will agree to pay you $15 million a year if you join our team.”

There will have to be a balance struck here regarding what roles the NIL collectives play in this system. I don’t think they’re going to go away completely but they will definitely have to be scaled back big time. I think they’ll mainly exist to connect athletes with endorsement deals and sponsorships, brand partnerships, things of that nature. But who knows.

So that’s the Pete Thamel article.

I still have a ton of questions, though, and for that we will turn to Ross Dellenger on Twitter:

“A thread on the NCAA’s historic 10-year settlement agreement that will pay back-damages of $2.8 billion, at least $15 billion in rev-share & reshape the governance, enforcement & scholarship structure of major college athletics. 

Back Damages

– How much: $2.776 billion over 10 years

– From: NCAA national office (40%) & schools (60%)

– To: 15-25,000 DI athletes who played from 2016-2020ish

– Distribution: “Allocation formula” used, with estimated 90% to P5 FB/MBB players (~6K athletes)”

Okay, I know I said I wasn’t really interested in the back damages part, but I am interested in this part 90% of that $2.7 billion is going to Power Five football and basketball players, which comes out to about 6,000 former athletes. This kind of gives us an idea of how many college athletes are actually able to earn money, and I guess it’s about 1200 a year between football and basketball.

I’m also sure that among that ~1200, it’s a small percentage of them up at the top that will be getting the vast majority of that money as well. In other words, most of them aren’t making much. I would imagine it’s a 1% vs. 99% kind of thing.

On to the revenue sharing:

Rev Share

– How much: ~$20-22M annually (fluid; will escalate based on school rev figures)

– From: Schools

– To: Athletes

– Distribution: School discretion (Title IX applies)

– Implementation: Summer/Fall 2025

– Exceptions: $5M of Alston/new scholarships can count toward cap 

So the revenue sharing will be between $20 and $22 million a year. I think this only applies to “Power Five” schools, but I’m not certain of that. I mean, come on, we can’t expect UAB and North Texas to be paying out $20-22 million a year to their student athletes, right? I doubt their athletic departments even make that much in total on a yearly basis.

The real thing here is that, if we assume this is only for P5 level schools, it’s going to affect them all differently. The biggest athletic departments in the country–Ohio State, Texas, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, etc.–are going to be the best positioned here.

Ohio State, for example, ranks #1 in the country in athletic department revenues at $251 million last year. Their expenses were $225 million, which means they can easily afford the $22 million a year to athletes.

But then you look at, say, NC State with $102 million in athletic department revenues and $101 million in expenses, where are they going to find the money to pay $22 million to athletes? They’re going to have to move some stuff around, or cut expenses.

You look at the G5 programs, even one of the top G5 programs from last year, San Diego State, only had about $66 million in revenues to their athletic department. They can’t afford $22 million a year.

So I think it’s only the P5 programs that this revenue sharing applies to, but even there, it’s a much heavier lift for some schools than it is for others.

And what is the Title IX aspect to this? I don’t fully understand Title IX but I know it essentially requires you to offer the same thing to women’s sports as you offer to men’s sports. Does that mean the women’s basketball team at Ohio State gets the same cut of that $22 million as the football team does? That obviously is not going to work, nor does it make a lick of sense at all, so that’s a question for me.

And shit, even the men’s baseball team at Ohio State–there’s no way they should be on par with the football team in terms of share of the revenue.

There has to be a way to figure out fair and equitable distribution.

This next part I don’t really understand. “Cap enforcement” refers to which cap, exactly?

Cap Enforcement

– Court oversight/audits

– Athlete reporting mechanism of 3rd party NIL

– Must be “true NIL” based on developed “fair market value” data

– Enforced thru NCAA/outside entity w/Court backing

– Burden on school/athlete to prove “true NIL”

– No pay-4-play/booster pay 

So I guess the way NIL works is that an athlete must prove his “true NIL” value, based on legitimate offers, and then that’s how much they’re allowed to make in NIL money.

But this is ripe for fraud. Say a school wants to give a player or a recruit more outside money (i.e. outside of the athletic department revenues), and they communicate with a booster collective to pay that athlete, say, $1 million in NIL money. The athlete then has to prove he’s worth that much money in the open market. Well, can’t you just scam the system by having a booster who owns his own business say, “Yeah, we’ll offer him $1 million.” You can game the system that way, and the athlete can say to the NCAA, “Look, this is my open market value right here.”

This part is really going to have to be ironed out.

I think the way to solve it is simply don’t cap the amount of money athletic departments can pay the players. Just allow the boosters to donate directly to the athletic departments and that money can go towards player salary. It’s the simplest way, I think, although I don’t fully understand what Dellenger is talking about here and obviously we are working off of very few actual details of the plan here.

Here’s the remainder of what he posted:

Roster Change

– Eliminates scholarship caps

– Implements new roster limits (not finalized)

– Ability to provide scholarships to entire roster

– Potential football roster reduction to as few as 85 roster spots (on-going discussions)

– Title IX applies 

Governance/other

– Potential new DI subdivision for increased power conference rule-making

– Flexibility for leagues to set some own rules

– Rev-share model could be extended beyond 10 yrs

– Plaintiffs agreed to lobby on behalf of NCAA’s effort seeking Congressional protections 

I don’t know what really any of this means, so I’m going to quote from Dellenger’s full length article on Yahoo. First a little about the class attorney Steve Berman who led the suit against the NCAA: 

“Berman, a triathlete and cyclist who lives with his family in Seattle, is no stranger to big wins. He took down big tobacco. In fact, he has sued the NCAA more than a dozen times, the first a 2004 case on behalf of walk-ons.

But this one — a settlement of three consolidated antitrust cases: House, Carter and Hubbard — is different from them all. This agreement topples the NCAA’s long-standing rules around amateurism and, he says, protects the organization from future legal challenges.

Trust him on that, he says. If anyone would know, it’s him.

“I can’t imagine there’s another case out there. I’ve been the guy thinking about them all!” Berman laughed. “I’m now like ‘Oh my gosh, I may have no more NCAA litigation! What am I going to do with myself?!’

“We’ve totally revolutionized compensation for athletes,” he continued. “It’s been a 20-year battle. An amazing journey.”

Lately I have described college football–and really college athletics in general–as a sport in a state of flux. A series of massive but long-overdue changes are all hitting at once, and it has created a considerable amount of upheaval and chaos.

This has caused a lot of people to conclude that the sport is in a death spiral, failing, unraveling at the seams, but I’ve pushed back on that saying it will take time for all of these changes to be ironed out and for the sport to adapt. For example, once they legalized NIL, there were no rules or regulations around, it was the wild west. But anyone could tell that the status quo of booster-run collectives bankrolling the payrolls of these college football teams was unsustainable. Anyone could tell that half the sport entering the transfer portal on a yearly basis was completely unsustainable.

The sport could not go on like that, and I just had a feeling that eventually it would all get sorted out. The process wouldn’t be pretty, it would be messy, but eventually it would all get figured out.

College athletics are in the midst of a transition phase. College football is transforming from the sport it used to be to the sport it needs to be. Again, these are long-overdue changes. When you’re dealing with changes as sweeping and fundamental as what the sport is going through, it is never going to be a clean and spotless process. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

“The defendants, the NCAA and power conferences, and the plaintiffs, a bevy of former athletes, notified the court of an agreement of settlement terms Thursday. Such a move only closes one chapter and opens another: a lengthy settlement finalization process and then — of most importance — the creation and implementation of a new college model, including a potential new-look enforcement and scholarship structure.

Berman and Kessler, as well as others, spoke to Yahoo Sports at length this week to answer the most vexing questions regarding college athletics’ new model.”

Now let’s get into the Q&A.

How much revenue can schools share?

The short answer is 22% of their average athletic department revenue, or about $21-22 million annually.

The longer answer? Attorneys and commissioners agreed to use an average of power conference revenue streams as a sort-of formula to determine an annual revenue-sharing limit. They took three of the four most significant revenue streams in an athletic department — TV contracts, ticket sales and sponsorships (donations were not included) — to generate an average for the 69 power schools. That average, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Sports, is around $100 million.

What’s 22% of $100 million? That’s right, $22 million. But that figure has not been finalized for Fall 2025, when the revenue-sharing model takes effect.

That figure, once set, will fluctuate as it includes an escalator. While the 22% will remain the same through the 10-year agreement, the money figure will change. Over the first three years of the deal, the money figure will automatically increase by 4% each year.

In Year 4, the figure is likely to undergo a further reevaluation, especially if significant new monies flow into departments through new television deals, for instance. There are exceptions that can be counted toward the cap, including as much as $2.5 million in Alston-related money already going to athletes and $2.5 million in additional scholarships (we’ll get to that later).

The two plaintiff attorneys in the case, Berman and Kessler, will be heavily involved throughout the duration of the settlement, specifically as it relates to the cap figure.

“We are going to be monitoring it every year to make sure revenues are adequately distributed,” Berman said. “We are going to be auditing. We’ll be watching.”

The cap is the same for all schools despite wide variance in resources. Ohio State’s athletic department, for instance, led all programs with $250 million in revenue last year — $100 million more than the program that ranked 20th in the nation (Arkansas at about $150 million). A $20 million price tag for Ohio State is 8% of its budget. A $20 million price tag for Arkansas is 13% of its budget.

How officials landed on 22% is not completely clear, but a theory does exist. As explored in this story, scholarship costs — about $15 million on average for a power school — are in addition to the revenue-share cap. The two figures, as well as other costly athlete benefits, combine to account for a figure approaching 50% of athletic department revenues — the going rate for any collectively bargained revenue-sharing agreements at the professional level.

So basically we now have a Power Five Salary Cap model in place. It’s based on the average revenue figure for a P5 athletic department, so some schools (the blue bloods) will probably be frustrated that they are prohibited from spending even more on player salaries, while others who fall below the average revenue number will be frustrated that they are having to divert too much of their revenues to player salaries.

In theory, then, this should kind of level the playing field, I guess. Because if there was no cap on the amount that programs could spend on player salaries, then the blue bloods would probably spend more than $22 million a year (potentially much more). As it is now, everyone in Power Five is playing by the same rules as it pertains to paying players. It’s a salary-capped league.

Now, if you’re wondering how this affects the G5 programs, it affects them in a major way. The split between the P5 and G5 is now wider than it’s ever been, and it was already wide to begin with. Now it’s a Grand Canyon-sized gulf between the two.

In the past few years, a term has been thrown to describe this, “The Great Split.” Actually Ross Dellenger wrote about it in a previous article in the fall:

“Last Friday, a day before his university hosted Michigan in a Big Ten football game in College Park, Maryland athletic director Damon Evans sat before a group of college athletic stakeholders inside a conference room at the Marriott Marquis giving a direct, at times blunt, and sometimes jarring assessment of college sports and its future.

A sitting Big Ten AD vocalized publicly what’s been privately whispered for months: Within five years — and most say much sooner — the Power Five conference schools will operate from under a new governance structure that features an athlete revenue-sharing model, a shift often described by many within the industry as “The Great Split.”

Prior to this week’s settlement of the House class action suit, the idea of the Great Split referred to college athletics becoming divided into revenue-sharing programs and non-revenue-sharing programs.

That is now a reality. The P5 are now all revenue-sharing conferences, while the G5 are not.

This is why you’ve heard chatter lately about the idea of a G5 playoff. Because they’re not even playing the same sport as the P5 anymore. It makes no sense for us to continue to pretend Georgia and Akron are playing the same sport, so let’s just give the G5 their own playoff, essentially turning them into the FCS, and then turning the FCS into Division 2, Division 2 into Division 3, and so on.

The P5 conference programs have now completely and totally detached from the G5. It’s official now. We are now living in a world where P5 programs have a $22 million player salary cap, while G5 programs have nothing of the sort in place. You are talking about professionals vs. amateurs now, truly.

So how can you realistically continue having revenue-sharing programs and non-revenue-sharing programs playing for the same prize? It’s ridiculous.

This is why last week I wrote about how we should completely reorganize and reshape college football and institute a system of promotion and relegation, like the English Soccer Premier league.

The top league–the CFB Premier League–should be only revenue-sharing programs, and have its own TV contract for its games and the College Football Playoff. But, programs in the lower level can play their way into the Premier League, and Premier League teams can play their way out of it (this is where pro/rel comes into play). In my article, I didn’t address the money aspect of it because I had been seeing for a few weeks that the resolution of the House lawsuit was imminent and would figure all that out.

Anyway, let’s get back to the original Dellenger article:

“How will schools distribute revenue?

Short answer: It is at the discretion of each school. There are no constraints on the distribution of revenue.

However — and this is very important — Title IX is not addressed in the settlement terms. It still applies. Title IX is a federal law that requires education institutions to provide equal opportunities for women and men athletes. It’s why many schools offer similar or the same amount of women scholarships as men scholarships.

In a revenue-sharing model, how does Title IX apply? Will schools that reach the, let’s say, $22 million cap be required to share $11 million of that money with women athletes?”

LOL, yeah right. And don’t even bring up Caitlin Clark. She is one of one. The outlier among outliers. 

It depends on who you ask. In a previous interview, NCAA president Charlie Baker contended that Title IX only applies to opportunities and not monetary compensation, suggesting that more revenue could be shared with the athletes who generate most of it: football and men’s basketball players. But the Department of Education hasn’t weighed in on the issue.

Title IX is the single most pressing issue in this entire settlement, most administrators say.

“That’s the trump card,” said one power school athletic director.

“Campuses must weigh their risk toleration,” said another.

On one hand, an unequal split of revenue sharing puts a school at risk of a Title IX lawsuit.

On the other hand, an equal split of revenue sharing puts a school at risk of a lawsuit from football players who believe that they are not receiving enough of the revenue they are generating.

“Don’t those generating the money need to get the most in distribution?” asked one university leader.

“The whole reason we are in this scenario is because we’ve been funneling money from football to pay for country club sports,” said an associate athletic administrator at a power conference.

The administrator was referring to a traditional structure of athletic department finances: Revenues often related to football and men’s basketball (TV contracts, ticket sales and donations) are used to fund Olympic sports that, at many schools, lose a combined $30 million or more annually.

Even one of the plaintiff attorneys in the settlement case believes that football players should keep the money football players generate. “(Football players) should not receive anything so that the money can go to the golf and tennis team?” Kessler said last month. “Think of the composition of those teams and think of the composition of the teams that are giving up the money. What is that about?”

Kessler expects the Title IX issue to end in a courtroom. That’s where, he says, it will eventually be “resolved.”

There is absolutely no way they can settle on a system where the LSU women’s basketball team is entitled to as much money as the LSU football team. 

“But there are perhaps ways to circumvent or, at the very least, attempt to bend the Title IX rules by skewing more cash to football and men’s basketball players.

The first involves the classification of the revenue-sharing deals that schools strike with athletes. Though left up to the schools’ discretion, many of the deals are expected to be classified as agreements to purchase the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). NIL deals are widely based on the value an athlete brings to a team or school. The more valuable, the more money.

This is a potential way for schools to defend a plan to pay male athletes more than female athletes. Some officials are even discussing the use of a “Q-Score,” which is a measurement of a person’s brand appeal. Others are seeking data on “fair market value.”

“What if you are buying NIL rights from players and those rights have different market values for men and women?” asked one power conference administrator.

This makes a lot of sense to me, because otherwise, how are player salaries even determined in the first place? There has to be some sort of marketplace where the services of these players are bid on–like free agency in professional sports. A free agent cornerback wants $20 million, but the best offer he has on the table is $14 million. Another team may offer $15 million, and he’ll take that because it’s the best offer, and now that is his salary. The value of his services on the open market is $15 million.

So what I’m saying is, some form of this will have to exist in college athletics as well. There has to be a mechanism for price discovery, it can’t just be pre-set salaries. You need that price discovery where we can actually determine the market rate for, say, a 5-star quarterback compared to a women’s college basketball player.

“There is, of course, a second way around Title IX: Have an outside third-party entity share revenues with your athletes.

Such as, a currently existing booster-backed NIL collective.

What is the future of collectives?

The second most unknown issue is the future role of booster collectives — third-party entities raising donor money on the school’s behalf to distribute to athletes under the guise of “NIL.”

Starting in Fall 2025, schools can directly pay athletes, so will collectives be shut down?

Not necessarily.

“Collectives aren’t going anywhere,” said Russell White, the president of The Collective Association, a trade association of collectives representing more than 25 different schools.

Many within the sport believe that schools will keep their collective around for two reasons: (1) circumvent the revenue-sharing cap by using the third-party entity to offer “bonuses,” said one person; and (2) bend Title IX rules as collectives aren’t under the umbrella of the university.

Remember when I was talking about how college football was in an unsustainable situation? This would still be an unsustainable situation.

This is classic college athletics: a needlessly complex, byzantine, and ass-backwards set of rules that everyone hates, even though a far more logical and simplified solution could exist.

Just fucking have it all go through the athletic departments! The athletic director determines how much of the $22 million salary cap goes to each sport, and then each sport has its own general manager that is responsible for determining how to allocate their sport’s budget.

The boosters, instead of donating to collectives, just donate to the athletic department. That would be the simple and logical solution. But we may not get it, at least not right away.

Why would we need collectives? Oh, because the government says that the women’s field hockey team, which loses money, has to make the same amount of money as the football team that plays in a 100,000+ seat stadium and is part of a conference with a multi-billion dollar TV deal, of course!

In other words, the NIL collectives may still be necessary because we may have to pretend, due to Title IX, that the captain of the women’s water polo team deserves the same salary as Quinn Ewers.

“Kessler also gave little confidence in the court assisting in monitoring rule-breaking associated with collectives, telling Yahoo Sports, “I fully expect devoted alumni will continue to support their institutions.”

Put simply, said one NCAA official: It’s up to the schools to bring their collectives in-house, thus eliminating the possibility of rule-breaking. (OK. Sure.)

This is where the NCAA needs help from Congress. They are expected to continue to lobby on Capitol Hill for legislation that codifies the settlement, offers them a limited antitrust protection and prevents an employment model, which, as one source said, “could wreck the whole thing.”

If I had to guess, this right here is the fatal flaw in the whole thing. How, exactly, do you bring it all in-house? College football has had a shadow system of boosters illegally funneling money to players for 100 years. You can’t just expect that to cease overnight. Not unless you provide a viable, legal and above-board alternative to it.

In other words, if, because of Title IX, Alabama football can only spend $11 million a year on its football team, but you have the Bama booster network out there saying, “Well shit, that’s not going to get it done. We’ve got another $15 million ready to go to help the football team.” What are they going to do? They’re going to do the same thing they’ve always done: they’re going to slide that money to the players under the table. They’re going to just do it in the shadows.

And they’re going to do that because following the rules puts them at a disadvantage. If everyone followed the rules and there was no other money paid to the players other than from the athletic departments, and everyone existed under the same salary cap, then fine. It could work.

But that’s not how the world works. In a system like that, there’s simply too great an incentive to cheat. If you know that everyone else is operating within the rules and they are only spending $11 million on their football team, you can take advantage of that by just sliding money to the players under the table. “They’re only able to offer you $1 million, but if you sign with us, we’ll give you another $500,000 under the table.” Done deal.

So of course everyone is going to be doing that. The revenue sharing money from the athletic department is going to just be the starting point. Then, after that price is determined, that’s when the real bidding war begins among the NIL collectives.

And this is what I mean by the classic college football needlessly complicated and illogical system of getting things done.

We need to just allow every college athlete in the country to be paid the open market value for their services. This is literally Economics 101–allow price to be determined by supply and demand. But college athletics can never just do things the simple and logical way. They always have to do it the hard way.

Until you put a sustainable and logical solution in place, it’s never going to be a long-term solution, and people are going to keep breaking the rules.

Have you ever heard of the term “desire path”? It’s easier to explain it with a picture:

You see how there is this nice paved sidewalk, but then there’s that natural path through the grass that has been trode so many times it’s turned into its own dirt path?

That dirt path is the “desire path.” That’s where a paved sidewalk should be. People have figured out that that is the most efficient and direct route, rather than taking the long way on the sidewalk.

A desire path is the free market expressing its will. It’s people saying, “There should be a sidewalk here.”

The NCAA and the rule structure of college football is like basically telling people, “No, you cannot walk on the grass AT ALL, EVER! DO NOT EVEN FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT, BUCKO!!! YOU HAVE TO WALK ON THE PAVED SIDEWALK, DAMNIT!!!”

And people are like: “But we don’t want to, that’s stupid. Just build a path there instead, clearly a lot of people would use it.”

And the NCAA is like, “NOOOOOOOO!!!! You have to take the least efficient route!!! And we’re going to take your Heisman away and dock you scholarships and put you on probation if you don’t!!!!!”

At least now, there is at least some sort of “paved sidewalk” over the desire paths, so to speak, which enables college athletes to realize their open market values. It used to be all desire paths. So progress has been made.

But for fuck’s sake, if college football still needs booster collectives, then we’re still fucking doing it wrong.

I mean, this whole “Pay athletes for their services thing”–it ain’t exactly new! This is not uncharted territory.

It has been figured out before.

But with college football it’s like, “It’s just such a complicated question! What is the answer!?”

We have to sit here and pretend the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL don’t exist.

None of the pro leagues have NIL collectives and booster networks, you know? They have managed to get along just fine without them, haven’t they?

It’s real simple: football generates X amount of revenue. The football players are entitled to Y% of it.

All player payments should come from the athletic department only.

THERE SHOULD NOT BE A NEED FOR BOOSTER COLLECTIVES.

If these players want to sign endorsement deals to make additional money, let them. But if we find out you’re coming up with fake endorsement deals so your boosters can just slide extra money to the players and circumvent the salary cap, then we’re relegating your bitch asses down to C-USA.

And that’s another reason we need pro/rel in college football: because having the ability to penalize programs with relegation is massive. That’ll really get people to fall in line. They won’t fuck around.

But the best outcome is that they no longer have any incentive to fuck around. You have to make the salary cap number big enough so that boosters are not tempted to circumvent it. Ideally, boosters would only be giving their donations to the athletic departments. 

Rich boosters should not feel like they have to take matters into their own hands because the athletic department’s hands are tied.

Okay, I will relax now. But I just think the whole system is so stupid, and the answer is blindingly obvious. It just pisses me off that college football is such an ass-backwards sport. I would rather be talking about the teams and the games, but instead we have to talk about class action lawsuits and shit.

“There is, however, another incentive to drive donors to give to schools now that the universities can pay players directly: Their donations are subject to tax deductions, unlike those to a collective.

There are other ways the settlement could police this issue. The document includes:

• A reporting mechanism that will require athletes to report their third-party NIL deals — possibly a mandatory measure tied to a player’s revenue-share pay from the school and their eligibility.

• A requirement that third-party NIL deals must be what is termed “true NIL,” according to settlement documents.

• A definition of “True NIL” as based on to-be-developed “fair market value” data, said two people with knowledge of the concept. In the simplest terms, true NIL is real marketing NIL-based contracts with a corporation or business — not a booster.

• If an outside NIL deal is struck with a booster — a business owner, perhaps — the burden is on the school and/or athlete to prove that it is “true NIL,” with significant risks (eligibility maybe) if the deal is not.

Will this all work? There are plenty of doubts.

“That’s the big unknown,” said one administrator.”

Again: the only way this can actually work is if the system is set up so that there is no incentive for rich boosters to pay players on the side. If the legal mechanism for paying players is inadequate, then it will not only incentivize cheating but necessitate it. Because if you’re the only one following the rules and everyone else is cheating, you’re going to fall behind.

Or, of course, the NCAA can come up with penalties for cheating that are so severe that the fear of incurring those penalties acts as a strong enough disincentive to cheat. You know what I mean? If the incentive to cheat is still there, but a strong enough disincentive to cheat more than balances it out, then you’re okay.

For example, a poor person has a strong incentive to rob a bank: get a bunch of money. But the disincentive to rob a bank–going to jail–cancels out that incentive.

The punishment for being caught cheating has to far outweigh the benefits of getting away with cheating.

Either you take away the incentive to cheat, or you institute a punishment so severe it makes cheating simply not even worth it.

“Are changes coming to rosters and the portal?

Yes.

As part of the settlement, scholarship caps are eliminated and new roster limits will be implemented. Schools are now permitted to put on scholarship every member of a roster as long as they stay within a newly set roster limit.

More deeply explored in a story two weeks ago, this could mean an increase in scholarships for many sports — except football.

In a plan socialized with coaches and administrators this month, football rosters could be set as low as 85, which is the NCAA maximum for scholarship positions. Such a move would eliminate all walk-on spots. This was met with pushback, enough pushback that conversations are continuing about how to create either more spots (possibly 90 or 95?) or create a non-scholarship practice squad.”

They had better not get rid of walk-ons. What a stupid and perverse idea that was, I’m glad that got a ton of push-back.

“For many other sports, the scholarship expansion is good news. For instance, the NCAA maximum number of scholarships for a baseball team is 11.7 spread over 32 players. If baseball’s roster remains the same (32), then schools would be permitted to put all 32 players on scholarship.

Some power conference administrators say they plan to add as much as $5-10 million in additional scholarship costs as they work to compete on the recruiting trail and satisfy Title IX (if you add 20 baseball scholarships, for instance, 20 more need to be added in women’s sports).

Well, the bill is finally coming due.

And believe me, these athletic departments and schools have the money. These administrative staffs and salaries have gotten so bloated and out of control over the past few decades. That’s why college is so damn expensive now–so some useless administrator with a fake, made-up title and job can maintain an exorbitant salary while contributing virtually nothing of value to society.

Most of these college administrators are little more than grifters and scam-artists. They’re like mobsters with no-show jobs–they’re just collecting a paycheck for doing nothing. Hopefully this means the party is over for these parasites. They’d be nothing without college football players–and yet these are the same people saying, “We can’t pay the players, they’re amateurs!”

Last pull quote:

“The portal is not addressed in the settlement. However, the new revenue-sharing model gives schools the opportunity to sign athletes to potentially binding, multi-year contracts. Most athletic administrators who spoke to Yahoo Sports believe this will decrease player movement.

Officials are discussing a range of possibilities for athlete contracts, including implementing buyout clauses that are often found in coaching contracts. There is a possibility as well to tie academic performance to contracts.

As part of the settlement, a school is expected to have the ability to purchase a player’s exclusive NIL rights — a significant and possibly binding deal and one that would eliminate all third-party payment as well.”

So it seems like the portal will be sorted out as a byproduct of revenue-sharing. These schools aren’t going to be paying these players with no strings attached–they’re going to want some assurances guys aren’t going to take the bag and dip.

That’s good, I guess, but I actually think the portal was already starting to sort itself out naturally. I think repeat abusers of the transfer portal are already starting to develop bad reputations which follow them to the NFL draft, and that alone acts as a major disincentive to be a portal hopper.

If you’re a guy like Caleb Downs, that’s fine. He was between Ohio State and Alabama during his recruitment out of high school, he chose Alabama because he wanted to play for Nick Saban. Goes to Alabama a year, Saban retires, so then he decides to go to Ohio State. That’s not an issue, at least I wouldn’t think it is, and I don’t think NFL teams will think it is.

But if you’re a guy like Jaden Rashada, Kadyn Proctor, or Bear Alexander, where you’re a habitual portal hopper, never happy anywhere, I do think that’s going to be a stigma on them in the eyes of the NFL. And I think it’s going to hurt these guys’ draft stocks. 

The portal is a new way of weeding out the flakes and unreliable “me” guys long before they even get to the NFL. Just as NIL money is a way for the NFL to see how becoming rich will affect these guys long before they actually get to the league and get that rookie contract, the portal really can reveal character flaws–or positives–in players.