UL’s athletic director details Cajuns’ plan to combat NCAA’s new “pay for play” provisions

The time for debating the merits of this new era in college athletics is long gone.

Support the new direction or not is essentially irrelevant to athletic departments across the country.

The new question is, are you willing to adjust to survive?

“If you don’t adapt, you will die,” UL’s director of athletics Dr. Bryan Maggard insists. “If we don’t embrace it, we won’t be successful.”

There’s been plenty of discussion over the new forces of the transfer portal and NIL in college sports, but it goes even deeper than that these days.

Many of the new methods for college departments to legally buy their athletes only include the Power Four conferences. Nevertheless, mid-major programs like UL still must develop plans to remain viable contenders in their respective leagues.

“Ultimately, what we want to do is we want to separate ourselves from the group of five for the Sun Belt Conference,” Maggard said.

So Maggard has led the charge to formulate a plan of combat.

Perhaps the most significant new issue is the NCAA going from scholarships to roster limits.

For example, college baseball programs will be able to hand out as many as 34 scholarships to fill out a roster as opposed to the 11.7 scholarship restrictions that governed all programs. For softball, programs can now have 25 scholarships instead of just 12.

So while power leagues will likely all fund 34 scholarships for baseball and 25 for softball, mid-major programs that plan to compete in those sports will be scratching and clawing to fund maybe 15 or 18 or 20 to stay as viable as possible.

“Currently working with campus leadership right now to see what we can do to go beyond that 11.7 for baseball and 12 for softball,” Maggard said. “Those talks are ongoing, but our campus leadership understands the importance and value of our diamond sports.”

At the center of UL’s new approach is an initiative called “Win with Ten” under the umbrella of the university’s Krewe Allons collective.

The concept is to get as many UL fans as possible to contribute $10 a month.

“What we’re asking our fans to do is to go the website (kreweallons.com), chose the sport you’d like to support and lock on the $10 monthly contribution,” Maggard said. “Put that on a recurring credit card and then forget about it – no different than we do with our ESPN-Plus accounts or Netflix or DisneyPlus.”

Maggard added there are one-time additional gift options on the site as well, but “it’s really important that we get the masses. This is a campaign for the masses – not the individuals, so we can grow our collective.”

The sports are the ticket-selling sports of football, men’s basketball, baseball and softball.

According to the department’s projections, the initial goals are to “get roughly 2,000 supporter for football and 1,000 supporters for the other three ticketed sports” to get the ball rolling.

“I always tell people, how do you eat an elephant?” he said. “One bite at a time.”

Maggard reiterated each sport will continue their individual fundraising events – such as golf tournaments – “but this is a base that each coach can count on.”

The purpose is for each sport to be able to recruit and retain athletes to remain contenders for Sun Belt titles.

“If we don’t, we won’t,” Maggard said. “Without this, we won’t compete for championships and the level we’re accustomed to at the University of Louisiana.

“Also, if we don’t embrace this, we will not be able to retain quality coaches. Quality coaches aren’t in the business to lose.”

The Cajuns clearly learned that lesson the hard way with softball coach Gerry Glasco recently left the program to take over Texas Tech, which immediately nabbed the top pitcher in the portal for $1.2 million a year.

Maggard suggested these funds will be more for recruiting for some sports and more about retaining the top players already in Lafayette for others.

“It might be more important for the sport of basketball on the recruiting front, so coach (Bob) Marlin can do out and get some good players,” Maggard said. “In football, with classes as big as they are and the talent to recruit in this state, it might be more about retaining. It’s just kind of a balance. It’s about both recruiting and retaining.”

In addition to the new ‘Win with Ten’ program, Maggard said continuing to upgrade facilities is another huge step in UL attempting to recruit well.

“We have a beautiful football stadium coming down the pike here soon,” he said. “We’re currently raising money for a baseball clubhouse and we’re raising money for a softball stadium renovations, because we know brick and mortar still matters. You have to have a nice place to recruit student-athletes to.”

There’s also a lesser-known program now supported by the NCAA called student-athlete academic enhancement funding where “it’s permissible to give student-athletes some additional funds – cash funds – to help offset some of the costs associated with their academics. We’re going to work a three or four-year plan to help our coaches to recruit a little bit better.”

Through all of these steps, though, Maggard said UL’s plans won’t include actual pay for play elements.

“Our student-athletes will absolutely have to perform deliverables to earn compensation for name, image and likeness” – ranging from social media endorsements to billboards to appearances at social functions.

The other new development mid-majors will soon be combating starting on Aug. 1, 2025 is athletic departments will be able to share up to $20 million with the athletes.

“That’s the one that make you wonder, ‘How do we compete?” Maggard said, referring to the need for new approaches. “That is absolutely pay for play. It’s intended to be that. Schools will have the opportunity to opt into that. We won’t. We don’t have an extra $20 million.

“I don’t know any other group of five problem that does, but we know the power 4 programs will. My counterparts in those programs, many of them are scratching their heads right now, because they don’t have an extra $20 million.”

Once that begins, high school and college athletes will now be signing complicated contracts just like pro players.

“I’ve seem templates from my colleagues at the Power Four level getting ready to be implemented,” Maggard said. “One was for a four-star defensive back and the offer was a two-year contract worth $175,000 per year for two years … and year two was incentive laden.”

For those wondering where it’ll all end, Maggard said the NCAA is developing a third party NIL oversight committee to “try to establish market value, so the athletes aren’t being paid these ridiculous amounts through the collectives.”

Maggard also said many fans don’t realize there’s a $2.7 billion backpay class-action lawsuit that was settled when former Arizona State swimmer Grant House and Oregon basketball player Sedona Price sued for barring them from NIL benefits prior to 2021.

As a result, athletes from 2016-19 who choose to opt in will receive settlements.

It’ll be $270 million dished out each year for 10 years. Maggard said the formula isn’t official yet but the most recent draft had 75% going to football, 15% to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s hops and all the remaining sports dividing the 5% left.