Financial Implications Of Revenue Sharing In College Athletics: MONEY… Changes The Game

The entire college athletic landscape is on the brink of complete modification… and it's all because of Money. And while money hasn’t completely correlated with sports throughout history, that ideology has completely changed, especially for the NCAA. 

The NCAA has been pocketing billions of dollars over the years on its product, profiting off of student athletes who receive zero financial compensation. A step in the right direction was made on July 1, 2021, when the NCAA approved a Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policy. Essentially, the policy allows athletes to make money on themselves whether it's doing local commercials, social media promotion, autograph signings, and more. NIL was the first piece to a bigger puzzle.

While raking in billions of dollars and not having to pay your superstars has a nice ring to it, the NCAA has officially agreed to a $2.78 antitrust settlement within the five power conferences, and college athletics will be changed forever. Where once paying college athletes seemed otherworldly, that time has passed and now we enter a new era of sports.

Getting A Piece Of The Pie

College athletes not only want to be paid, but should be getting compensated for their actions. The NCAA makes roughly $1.4 billion in revenue each year, and there is a sense of cruelty behind the organization. Dozens of lawsuits against the NCAA are piling up and you can sense a shift in the power of the athletic landscape.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban brings in an entrancing point of view to the controversy. Labeled as a players coach, Saban has been advocating for a revenue sharing proposition where the athletes are not labeled employees. The employee title is particularly important as a tax burden for students would infer with the quality life of a student athlete. Saban is just one of many powerful people in the industry who are sick of watching the NCAA win at all times and hopes to restore order for the athletes themselves.

Impact On Smaller Programs

If you take a look at the scale of college athletics, there is massive inconsistency in the level of competition throughout the country. The top conferences including the SEC and BIG TEN have a leg up on a smaller conference like conference USA or the MAC. This raises the question on how the revenue sharing would look for these institutions. While most people think there would be major advantages for the big time schools, the future of the sport actually says the opposite. There is going to be a cap on the amount of revenue allowed to use on players depending on each school. The cap will dissolve any major power shift within the NCAA.

What The Hell Is The Sports Going To Look Like?

The main question every fan wants to know is what is the NCAA getting themselves into. Will these games be the same as we once knew them? The answer to that is more or less, no.

We have already seen dramatic change over the past few years within the NIL aspect. Recruiting and transferring to schools is practically free agency, we got an NCAA video game as players got compensated, and conference realignment adds extra money through putting more games on the schedule.

A touchdown will always be worth six points and a 3-point will always put three more points on the board, but college sports are changing and in a few years, we may not recognize them.

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Murphy, D. (n.d.). Answering the 10 biggest questions about the NCAA antitrust settlement. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/40658452/ncaa-lawsuit-settlement-paying-players 

Press, A. (n.d.). Court ruling seeks test to decide if athletes are employees. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/40541501/court-ruling-seeks-test-decide-athletes-employees 

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Yahoo! (n.d.). NCAA settlement Q&A: How will schools distribute revenue, what is the future of nil collectives and more. Yahoo! Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/ncaa-settlement-qa-how-will-schools-distribute-revenue-what-is-the-future-of-nil-collectives-and-more-125519681.html