BYU coach, administrator see opportunities and challenges with revenue sharing

As university administrators and coaches continue figure out how to navigate college athletes’ ability to profit from the use of their name, image and likeness, an anticipated settlement in an antitrust case that would bring revenue sharing to collegiate sports will have even a more significant impact on an already complicated environment.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken will consider a proposed settlement between the NCAA and Power Five athletic conferences that would allow schools to directly pay players. Wilken declined to grant preliminary approval earlier this month and set a Sept. 26 deadline for lawyers from both sides to rework parts of the agreement and report back to her.

The initial settlement calls for the NCAA and its members to pay $2.78 billion in damages to past and current athletes, who are suing over various restrictions on compensation. It also creates a model in which schools could directly share revenue with athletes starting in the fall of 2025. The cap would be around $22 million and go up with increased revenue.

“Sports are going to look very different than they do now,” said Diljeet Taylor, the women’s cross-country coach and associate director of track and field at Brigham Young University.

“I can’t foresee the future and see exactly what that is going to be but you see the landscape’s already changed and this is going to be a more drastic change that is going to make some permanent changes to how we structure our recruiting, our teams and really just which sports at which institutions are going to compete like a P5 and which are going to turn into more of a club type of participation.”

Taylor spoke Tuesday at a webinar titled, “College Athletics in the Wake of the NCAA Settlement.” The event was part of BYU Law‘s Future of Antitrust Series, an initiative aimed at fostering collaboration and constructive debate among various perspectives in antitrust law and policy.

Liz Darger, senior associate athletic director and Title IX coordinator at BYU, and Jessica Beringer, a lawyer with Keller Postman in Austin, Texas, were also on the panel.

Lost in the shuffle

Darger and Taylor favor athletes being able to benefit from NIL and revenue sharing but said paying players comes with challenges and unintended consequences.

College athletic departments are viewing it as an opportunity to adapt and evolve, Darger said. There’s going to be a “reshuffling” of how schools allocate their resources, she said, “so it’ll be a couple years, I think, before you see things sort of settle again to what the new landscape looks like.”

University administrators around the country say revenue sharing could drastically reduce participation in nonrevenue sports or eliminate them altogether as schools won’t be able to afford them.

“There aren’t many athletic departments around the country that have extra money laying around,” Darger said.

Football and some men’s basketball ticket sales, media rights, NCAA basketball tournament distributions, corporate sponsorships, school fees and private donations fund all sports on college campuses. Sharing some of that revenue with players takes a bite out of the dollars schools typically pour back into the program.

“It’s a great opportunity but that means athletic departments around the country are looking for new revenue streams or how to maximize revenue streams in a way that they haven’t before and/or find ways to be more efficient with the way they’re currently funding things,” Darger said.

Tapping new revenue streams — fans

Some schools are already tapping other funding sources, specifically fans.

The University of Tennessee, for example, intends to add a 10% “talent fee” to season and single-game tickets for Volunteer football starting in 2025. The school also plans to raise ticket prices 4.5% along with the surcharge. The estimated $10 million in revenue would supplement the school’s direct payment fund for players. Oklahoma State tried putting QR codes on football player helmets linked to a fund for fans to donate money to the program’s NIL fund but the NCAA nixed the idea.

The proposed settlement also removes scholarship caps in favor of roster limits. That means rather than a set number of scholarships to award, schools would have a pool of money to distribute among players in the various sports. “It will be up to coaching staffs and institutions to decide how they spread that money around,” Darger said.

It also means that in some sports around the country there will be roster spots that will be cut, “which is unfortunate when this is all about helping support student-athletes,” she said.

Taylor said college administrators will have a “really big task” in front of them figuring out which sports they want to fully support.

‘Pay-to-protect’ model

“I want to protect that participation for student-athletes while understanding that there’s going to be really hard decisions that have to be made,” she said, adding some athletes will benefit from the direct payment model, while others will not. “I would love a pay-and-protect model. Let’s pay, let’s do revenue sharing. But let’s also protect the integrity of all sports.”

Taylor lamented how college sports have changed.

“Part of it saddens me, if I’m being honest as a coach. I think that the pureness of what used to exist in college athletics looks a little different. There’s more of a business mind that has to take place even as a coach,” she said. “There’s a business transactional piece to it which saddens me because I like to think of college sports as transformational.”

Title IX implications

The settlement also raises Title IX questions for which college administrators don’t yet have any answers. Beringer said Title IX issues would become “really, really muddy.”

“I feel for Liz and other administrators who are going to have to navigate this landscape,” she said.

Darger said if schools apply revenue sharing proportionally to the sports that are making money, there could be Title IX lawsuits brought by those feeling like there wasn’t an equitable distribution based on participation. On the other hand, if revenue sharing is based on participation, revenue-making sports might sue because they believe that they’re not getting a share proportional to what they bring in.

Darger said she wished the settlement would clarify how programs pay male and female athletes regardless of revenue generation.

“That’s probably pie in the sky but I would love that. That would be really helpful to us,” she said. “I think athletic departments across the country would welcome that.”