Benjamin Royer (LA Times)  —  College sports leaders and athletes were in limbo for months while waiting for a House settlement to be approved. An agreement would create clarity, better supporting college conferences and their respective universities that had been blindly preparing for the next academic year — unsure which name, image and likeness (NIL) rules they’d be playing by.

Late Friday, structure and stability arrived as the House settlement became approved and official.

“The decision on Friday is a significant step forward toward building long-term stability for college sports while protecting the system from bad actors seeking to exploit confusion and uncertainty,” Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey said during a news conference Monday morning that included commissioners of the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and the Pac 12 conferences.

The NCAA will pay close to $2.8 billion to former athletes — as many as 389,700 athletes who played between June 15, 2016, to Sept. 15, 2024 — across a 10-year period and will also implement a 10-year revenue sharing model that will allow universities to pay current athletes up to $20.5 million per year.

According to the settlement, the total is “22% of the Power Five schools’ average athletic revenues each year” and the revenue-sharing cap will incrementally increase every year.

The newly founded College Sports Commission, led by former MLB executive Bryan Seeley, was created to make sure all NIL deals comply with NCAA rules shaped by the settlement terms.

The commission “will investigate potential rules violations, make factual determinations, issue penalties where appropriate, and participate in the neutral arbitration process set forth in the settlement as necessary,” per a news release naming Seeley as the inaugural chief executive.

UCLA coach DeShaun Foster leads his players onto the field at the Rose Bowl before losing to USC in November. (Wally Skalij / LAT)

The College Sports Commission will work alongside a clearinghouse called “NIL Go,” created by accounting firm Deloitte, to approve or deny any third-party NIL agreements that exceed $600.

“NIL Go” is the technology platform athletes and schools will use to report NIL agreements.

All new third-party NIL deals must now be reported to the clearinghouse as of June 7 — the day after the settlement was approved — although the platform won’t launch online until June 11.

How will the rules be enforced?

The commission is still in the process of determining what punishment schools and athletes might face for violating NIL rules.

“We’re in the process of developing some of those rules and structure,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “Now that we have Brian [Seeley] on board, I think we’ll be able to move a little bit quicker, but we want to get this right. … Nothing to date right now that we’re ready to come forward with.”

The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC were the original parties targeted in lawsuits finally settled by Friday’s ruling.

The expectation is that about 90% of financial resources at their schools will go to revenue sports — football and men’s basketball — with the other 10% being scattered between traditional Olympic sports.

“The decision was made fairly early on that we’d be in a local decision-making [process] about how rev share would work, and then all the decisions that come off of that,” Petitti said of conversations with leaders of Big Ten’s schools. “So that’s where we are, giving our institutions the discretion [on how to allocate revenue-sharing funds] and they want that discretion.”

UCLA men’s basketball coach wears a Men of Westwood T-shirt while speaking to reporters on Oct. 6, 2023. (Courtesy of UCLA Athletics)

Most NIL collectives — such as USC’s House of Victory or UCLA’s Men of Westwood — are expected to focus on marketing and connecting athletes to NIL opportunities rather than brokering agreements and directly paying them. The new revenue-sharing model makes it much easier for schools to directly pay athletes, replacing a role collectives took on in the past when schools were banned from paying athletes.

Contracts may need to be restructured because many — but not all — NIL deals were completed through collectives, a process that would now need to receive approval from the Deloitte clearinghouse.

When determining the proper range for NIL deals, “NIL Go” references “market reach” and the “local market” — two factors among many that could work in favor of UCLA and USC because Los Angeles is the second-largest media market in the country and would naturally index high on market reach.

USC men’s basketball players stand during the national anthem before a game against ORE at Galen Center on Dec. 4. (Gina Ferazzi / LAT)

Roster limits will influence all sports. Football teams can now feature up to 105 players, up from 85. Men’s basketball rosters can feature 15 players instead of 13. Some Olympic sports, such as baseball, will see a roster-sizes decrease.

In all sports, schools can offer as many scholarships as their roster limit instead of the previous NCAA scholarship limits. Whereas teams could only offer 11.7 scholarships in baseball, now universities can offer a full scholarship to all 34 players. Softball teams can now offer 25 scholarships rather than 12 in previous seasons. Women’s gymnastics can offer a full 20.

This is not to say all teams will offer full rides to fill every roster spot. In all likelihood, for most Power 4 programs, there will still be walk-on players filling spots on the team. At UCLA, athletic director Martin Jarmond said he plans on keeping UCLA’s scholarship limits at where it was before the settlement — 85 for football and 13 for men’s basketball. The rationale, Jarmond said, is to allow UCLA to provide larger revenue-sharing totals to their athletes instead of splitting funds across full scholarship totals. USC has yet to publicly share its plans for athletic scholarships.

“We have to be bold and innovative in this new world,” Jarmond told The Times on Saturday.“UCLA has always been on the forefront and been a leader and that’s not going to change. We will embrace this new era and we will continue to support our student-athletes at a championship level.”

SEC schools also plan to stick with 85 football roster spots during the 2025 season, a conference spokesman told CBS Sports during the conference’s recent spring meetings.

Whereas the Power 4 conferences — and the Pac-12 — automatically opted into the House settlement to end litigation, universities outside the Power 4 will have to opt-in to the revenue-sharing agreement by a June 15 deadline. The list of schools that opt-in will become public after the deadline, according to the commission’s website. The commission claims that even if universities decide not to opt in to the revenue-sharing agreements, they’ll still have to report NIL agreements that go beyond the $600 threshold. It’s unclear how much money these schools will share with their athletes.

Schools such as Long Beach State — should it opt-in to revenue-sharing — could provide further resources to its athletes in sports where Power 4 schools may not. Men’s volleyball, for example, is a perennial national championship contender for Long Beach, winning a championship in 2025. Compared to Power 4 schools that may invest most of its funds into football and men’s basketball, Olympic sports could become crown jewels for smaller athletic departments.

UCLA’s Cooper Robinson (11) and Ethan Champlin (20) celebrate during a win over Long Beach State in the 2023 NCAA men’s volleyball tournament. Julia Nikhinson / AP)

With likely 90% of revenue-sharing funds headed toward football and men’s basketball, some athletes see the House settlement as the beginning of athletic department restructuring — with Olympic sports being placed on the sidelines in favor of spending more money on high-revenue sports.

Cooper Robinson, who won a men’s volleyball national championship with UCLA in 2024, commented on UCLA Athletics’ Instagram post about the settlement, asking, “So like is this only for Football and Basketball?”

This past year, Grand Canyon University announced the dismantling of its men’s volleyball program. The fear for athletes, especially for a university such as UCLA that had generated $219.5 million in debt over the last six fiscal years (an amount that has been covered by the university) is that smaller-revenue programs such as men’s and women’s volleyball could be cut to move finances elsewhere. Jarmond has committed to preserving Olympic sports at UCLA.

In the years ahead, with most financial resources likely headed to football and men’s basketball rather than its women’s sports programs, universities may have to defend their rationale in Title IX lawsuits. The settlement does not include any language providing direction to universities for how to deal with Title IX — explicitly stating “the Court cannot conclude that violations of Title IX will necessarily occur if and when schools choose to provide compensation and benefits to student-athletes pursuant to the Injunctive Relief Settlement.”

latimes.com

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