TopFrog
Lifelong Frog
How Texas schools are handling the House settlement, preparing to pay players directly
Athletic directors from SMU, TCU and North Texas spoke with The Dallas Morning News about the NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement that will allow universities to...
www.dallasnews.com
How Texas schools are handling the House settlement, preparing to pay players directly
Athletic directors from SMU, TCU and North Texas spoke with The Dallas Morning News about the NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement.
By Lia Assimakopoulos
In this era of college athletics, there is no offseason.
Something is always changing, from realignment to the transfer portal to NIL.
But for athletic directors and departments across the nation, the start of the 2025 summer may have been their least relaxing yet.
Last month, Judge Claudia Wilken approved a $2.8 billion antitrust settlementthat will allow universities to directly pay their athletes for the first time.
It was a monumental decision that provided guardrails in the world of name, image and likeness, which had become the free-for-all system for the last four years.
“When it was signed, it was a sigh of relief for a little bit, and then we really got started on the work that needed to be done,” TCU athletic director Mike Buddiesaid.
Those payments from universities to their athletes begin Tuesday, and while many colleges across the state and country have spent years preparing for the possibility of this change, they were left with just weeks to read the language of the settlement and enact their new protocols that fundamentally change the way they’ve operated.
The House settlement changes the way players can be paid, the amount they can be paid, the scholarship limits of rosters, the purpose of NIL collectives and, frankly, the entire NIL system.
Related:What to know about the $2.8B settlement that allows colleges to directly pay athletes
Nearly all of Texas’ 13 FBS programs have indicated an intention to change with the times, opting into the new system either by choice or mandate. Many athletic directors say they’re operating in an era where they must adapt or be left behind.
“When change happens to you that you didn’t instigate, you have a simple choice,” Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts told reporters last week. “You either adjust and adapt and modernize to that approach, or you don’t. You never stay the same in college athletics. You’re either getting better, or you’re falling behind.
“I sense, in some respects, a sigh of relief. On the other [hand], is this really going to work?”
The good: Some much-needed guardrails
There’s not much everyone in college athletics can agree upon, but four years after NIL went into place, the consensus was that it got out of hand.On July 1, 2021, the NCAA adopted a policy that allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. What was intended to pave the way for third-party brand deals opened the door to collectives essentially buying rosters for their university’s athletic programs with six- and seven-figure offers, particularly in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball.
“I think, sadly, we got to a point where the only thing that seemed to matter was, ‘who’s going to give me the most money?’” Buddie said.
Some top football programs spent between $35 million and $40 million dollars to construct a roster, according to multiple reports. The desire to be the best led to, in some instances, a heated bidding war and tampering with other programs’ players.
But the House settlement provides some strict guidelines that prevent programs from running wild as they have for the last few seasons.
Programs that opt-in to revenue sharing with their athletes can spend a maximum of $20.5 million in the 2025-26 school year across all sports, according to the NCAA. That cap will increase by about 4% every year during the decade-long deal, ending at an estimated $32.9 million in 2034-35.
Those payments would be in addition to scholarships and other benefits athletes already receive, including their third-party NIL deals. However, any third-party deal worth more than $600 must be sent to a new clearinghouse called NIL Go, run by the consulting firm Deloitte, which will seek to regulate the market and prevent schools from circumventing the cap through external deals.
The goal is to level the playing field among all schools that choose to opt-in, while providing athletes with a share of the revenue that they’ve long been responsible for bringing in.
“If we’re successful with this new entity, coaches are going to go back to doing three things: recruiting, developing and coaching,” Alberts said. “What a novel concept. The last three years, they’ve been begging people for donor money to go buy, acquire and retain talent in their roster.”
Story continues below ...
