What the NCAA antitrust settlement means for non-football conferences

Perhaps the most important week in the history of college athletics has arrived.

In three antitrust cases, the NCAA and its conferences are at odds over how to fund an estimated $2.8 billion in back wages owed to former student-athletes for use of their name, image and likeness. According to Yahoo Sports, the Division I Board of Directors approved a framework that requires the NCAA to fund $1.1 billion, or 41% of the total, while schools fund $1.65 billion over 10 years by capping school contributions.

If $2.8 billion seems like a high price, it’s actually the cheaper part of the deal — the NCAA would have to pay an estimated $20 billion in damages upfront if it didn’t agree to the settlement and lost in court, a likely event given its history governing body in the courtroom.

Cost isn’t that big of an issue. An issue that further deepens the divide between the power and non-football conferences is the attempt to agree on how to divide the bill. Under the approved framework, the power conferences will pay about $644 million in compensation, while the 27 non-power conferences will pay $990 million.

The NCAA determined the contribution of each of the 32 Division I conferences by creating a formula based on the amount of distribution the league earned over a nine-year period starting in 2016, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Sports. Here are where the non-football leagues that thrive in college basketball will be hit the hardest – most of the money the NCAA gives to schools comes from revenues from the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, which means back damage can prove to be a significant expense compared with the sports budget.

Because of this, Big East commissioner Val Ackerman and other non-football leagues went on the offensive. They argued that their share of the bill was too high and that the power conferences should pay a larger share of the settlement because most of the back wages go to former power conference student-athletes. Legal experts agreed – the economic report showed that 90% of NIL back wages would go to football players and the Power Five men’s teams (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12).

If true, it would mean that $2.5 billion of the $2.8 billion settlement would go to these demographics.

However, there was no news about the Big East and other non-football conferences. Their alternative solution of having the power conferences pay 60% of the compensation and the non-power leagues paying 40% was considered, but was ultimately not approved.

Now the Big East must pay up to $7 million a year, or as much as $70 million over 10 years. According to Yahoo Sports, that works out to about $600,000-$700,000 per school year. Looking at the breakdown, let’s take for example a school like UConn, which is reported to have a budget of $90 million, compared to the average conference school with a budget of around $130 million that is seeing a budget reduction of $1-2 million per year.

Schools like UConn, the only public school sponsoring Division I football in the Big East, face higher rates of having their budget taken away compared to power conference schools, even though most student-athletes who are scheduled to receive back pay after competing at one of the Power 5 leagues.

The division of compensation wasn’t the only issue non-power conference leagues had with the settlement.

In the settlement, a new NIL model, to be implemented in fall 2025, will allow schools to directly compensate athletes for their NIL under a revenue-sharing concept that includes a salary cap. The cap could start at $22 million per year per school, and while there is no requirement to meet that cap, power conference participants are expected to be aggressive in the NIL space for a long time.

When it comes to the Group of Five and non-soccer leagues, sharing revenue with student-athletes would not be as simple. Athletic departments at this level typically do not make much profit and often struggle to provide third-party benefits to athletes. Regardless of whether some of them are self-inflicted or not, such compensation would put many schools in serious financial difficulties.

Congress has yet to step in on NIL and the idea of ​​pay-to-play, but the idea of ​​schools directly compensating their athletes has long been considered the ultimate direction toward sanctioning student-athlete compensation. Athletic directors had hoped this wouldn’t happen, but it looks like it will soon become a reality.

The next frontier of college athletics will take shape this week as the Power 5 conferences vote to resolve antitrust cases. The ACC and Big 12 have already voted to settle. The three remaining power leagues and the NCAA Board of Governors will also vote on the matter.