The House v. NCAA settlement, which is a collection of three lawsuits against the NCAA and its power conferences, was approved by Judge Claudia Wilken on June 6. The historic settlement allows every United States university to pay student athletes up to $20.5 million. Athletes can still receive name, image and likeness payments from third parties.
Additionally, as part of the settlement, the NCAA will collectively pay $2.8 billion over the next 10 years to former athletes dating back to 2016. Most of this money will likely go to former power-conference football and men’s basketball players.
How the universities disperse the $20.5 million is entirely up to them. While Ole Miss Athletics officials have not announced how they plan on dividing up the money, the majority of the revenue will go to football, with men’s and women’s basketball trailing behind. After that, the non-revenue and Olympics sports will likely get what is left.
“We’re working internally on exactly what those percentages are. Obviously, football is going to get a large percentage. They are our highest revenue sport,” said Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter in an interview with The Daily Mississippian. “Men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball and maybe one or two of the Olympics sports might get some of the percentage as well, but we’re not quite ready to go public with the exact percentages yet.”
Once percentages for each sport are decided, it will be up to the coaches to choose which players get how much money. For the football team, head coach Lane Kiffin and general manager Billy Glasscock will decide how much money certain players receive.
“We, from athletics, will just cut a check to our student athletes based on the percentage that (we decide on). And there’s really no quid pro quo there,” Carter said. “That’s just a sharing of revenue. For true NIL, that’s going to have to be a deal that has a fair market value based on a deal that is between a true company and the student athlete.”
Athletic departments have a cap of $20.5 million in revenue share to give to student athletes. Departments do not have to meet that figure, but they cannot go over it. The $20.5 million in revenue sharing is not stagnant. Because revenues grow over time, so will the cap from the House settlement.
“So the way the settlement works is that it starts at $20.5 million, and then it goes up four percent every year for three years, and then after three years there’s a look into recalculating the revenue that’s out there,” Carter said. “Because obviously revenues are going to grow. The amount that we give student athletes is based on a percentage of our revenue. … Every three years, there’s a look in but every year there’s a four percent escalator on what the number is.”
While universities can share $20.5 million in revenue with players, third party NIL collectives can still pay athletes. However, the settlement will set national NIL guidelines. The NCAA has contracted the accounting firm Deloitte to monitor those transactions.
“It (the Grove Collective) will stay a third party. Obviously, we’ll continue to have a great relationship,” Carter said. “Because even though the revenue share is starting, the Grove Collective and a subsidiary of theirs, Magnolia Sports Group, will be a huge part of what we do with true NIL and finding deals for our student athletes and those types of things.”
Under the settlement, scholarship limits will be replaced by roster limits.
“In the House settlement, there’s going to be basically the ability to give unlimited scholarships,” Carter said. “And so as a part of that, there’s been some discussion around each sport putting a limit on the roster so that there’s not just a school that decides they want to give football 180 scholarships or something like that. And so I think that it just puts a cap on the roster limits.”
While this brings significant changes to the college rosters, the changes to roster limits will not eliminate partial scholarship athletes. The Athletic reported any athletes who would lose a roster spot because of the settlement can be “grandfathered” in through the remainder of their eligibility.
“There’s 105 (players) on the roster at the roster limit; 85 right in the SEC is what we’re doing as far as scholarships, at least in year one,” Carter said. “And so that leaves spots there for ‘walk-ons’. … In theory, a lot of those folks that were walk-ons could earn a scholarship. So I think that could be a good thing in the future, but the bottom line is we’re all still trying to figure out what this is going to look like.”
Despite this massive hit to the amateurism model of the NCAA, Carter believes that amateurism is still alive in college sports.
“We’re obviously moving forward with sharing some of the revenue. But I still think that what we do is tethered to education,” Carter said. “That’s why I got into the business of doing what I do. I think these young people certainly want to come here and play a sport that they love, but they also want to come here and get an education around that collegiate model.”
The settlement is not the end of the “universities paying athletes” conversation. More lawsuits will follow. This is likely just the beginning of the next era of college sports.
According to Brennan Berg, associate professor of sport and recreation at the University of Mississippi, these legal battles are far from over.
“Once this new system (dictated by the House settlement) gets put in place, it will get legally challenged. … I have a hard time imagining you have one lawsuit that is going to accommodate and represent tens of thousands of college athletes across the country,” Berg said in a November 2024 interview with The Daily Mississippian. “I imagine you’re going to have a lot of college athletes who just say, ‘Hey, I’m aware of the House settlement, but that did not represent me or my interests. I had no say in it.’”
