After landmark settlement agreement, ADs have more questions than answers on the future of the NCAA

The landmark settlement agreed to last week in a class-action lawsuit will — if approved by a judge in California — usher in the latest major changes in the way college sports is operated in the United States.

Gone is any sense of amateurism. Here, most likely, is a revenue-sharing and salary-cap-like model for the future and the allotment of billions of dollars in back pay to college athletes who were denied the ability to earn money from name, image, and likeness deals dating to 2016.

But while some of the most sweeping changes in college sports history are on the horizon following the settlement agreement between the NCAA and its Power Five conferences and those represented in the class-action suit, officials have more questions than answers about what exactly it all looks like and what ramifications the settlement agreement will have in the near and distant future.

“I think we’re in for a really busy summer of analyzing all of that,” Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson said.

There’s a lot to analyze.

“There’s a world of uncertainty,” said Jill Bodensteiner, the AD at St. Joseph’s.

The uncertainty starts with the simple part: Will U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken, who has ruled against the NCAA in several high-profile antitrust cases in recent years, approve the deal? The uncertainty continues with the reality that another case, Fontenot v. NCAA, which is being heard in Colorado, could complicate matters.

“If those plaintiffs don’t agree, then we’re just going to face antitrust lawsuit after antitrust lawsuit,” said Bodensteiner, also a lawyer.

What will spending limits look like for basketball-only schools like St. Joe’s? What will it look like for those like Villanova, which has a flagship basketball program but sponsors FCS football? What is the future of NIL collectives?

The list of questions and uncertainties is lengthy. The list of answers is not.

Here’s a look at some key topics and questions following the settlement agreement.

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Paying for Power Five football

One part of the settlement case, the future-looking models, contains the most mysterious portions. The other, the back pay, is a little clearer.

It’s also the part that has been the most contentious.

Philadelphia’s Big 5 is home to zero teams that participate on college football’s big stage, in what’s known as the Power Five conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and the Southeastern Conference).

But all six of Philadelphia’s Big 5 schools will help pay the bill, likely starting in 2025-26 for those schools in the proposed settlement. Of the $2.8 billion in damages owed to athletes dating back to 2016, the NCAA would foot the bill for about 40% of the money owed ($1.1 billion), and the other 60% would fall on the NCAA’s conferences, which would pay out the money over a 10-year period. Here’s where it gets interesting, and why small-conference administrators aren’t pleased. Power Five conferences, which generate the majority of the revenue, would pay for about 40% of the remaining $1.65 billion owed, and the 27 non-Power Five conferences would be on the hook for the rest.

Big Sky Conference commissioner Tom Wistrcill might have summarized it best in an interview with Yahoo Sports.

“It’s both ironic and a gut punch,” Wistrcill said. “The SEC and the Big Ten are announcing record revenues and distributions to their members while I’m looking at a 10% operating budget cut so that money can go to their former student-athletes.”

The settlement would have non-Power Five football schools like those in Wistrcill’s conference and every Big 5 member withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year to direct to the back-pay damages portion of the settlement for the next 10 years.

“It requires immediate planning on where that lost revenue or other payments that we’re going to have to contribute to the settlement will come from,” Bodensteiner said. “I am not an expert on the numbers, but am I disappointed and angry at the funding for that back pay? Yes. I think it unfairly hurts schools like those in the Atlantic 10 and similar conferences.

“It’s really disproportionately hurting schools that don’t sponsor football because we’re funding football and I think it’s unfair. Patently unfair.”

Even those with football, like Temple, are feeling slighted.

“My biggest disappointment is that we’re taking part in something and paying part of it when we were not part of the suits and we didn’t have representation in the room,” Temple AD Arthur Johnson said. “So I’m with my colleagues around the country who are not really happy about that.”

Johnson was on his way Wednesday morning to the annual American Athletic Conference meetings in Dallas, where NCAA president Charlie Baker was scheduled to be in attendance, and where Johnson hoped to get more answers to his many questions.

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Will collectives persist?

Villanova forward Eric Dixon is returning to school for a fifth season of college basketball and a sixth year of college not because he loves class more than anyone else, but because of the money. Dixon, via Villanova’s Friends of Nova NIL collective, is going to get paid a lot more during the 2024-25 basketball season playing in the Big East than he would have had he decided to make the jump to pro hoops.

But what role will collectives like Friends of Nova — or the Hawk Hill Alliance at St. Joe’s that helped keep Erik Reynolds II around, or the TUFF Fund at Temple that helped pay for a transfer portal class — have in the future? That’s still being worked out.

Will schools seek money from donors to directly fund their rosters? Or will there be a lane for both?

“Some may become internalized,” Jackson said of collectives. “Some have said, ‘No it’s better to have them outside with more freedom and flexibility.’”

Jackson, like many of his peers, will examine those options.

There are Title IX implications to all of this, too. If a collective is operating outside of the institution, will it continue to pay women’s players less than it pays men’s? On the flip side, what will the internal revenue-sharing model look like? If it costs a few million dollars in salary funds to players on the men’s basketball team at places like St. Joe’s and La Salle, will it also cost the same in salary funds for the women’s teams, which in many cases bring in less money in television and ticket revenues?

Which leads to another question, and a pertinent one for many who have likely felt left behind in all of this …

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Will sports get cut?

Football and basketball dominate the headlines and revenues. But what about college rowers? What about athletes participating in track and field? Will they feel the brunt of the settlement by having their respective sports eliminated from their campus in order to fund back payments to athletes of the past and salaries for basketball teams of the future?

It’s a possibility that exists across the board at any school, Power Five or not.

“I’m seeing other commenters say there’s no way people will carry beyond the minimum [number of sports] required for Division I [16 sports for FBS, 14 for others],” Bodensteiner said. “People will look to go down to the minimum. We haven’t had those conversations at St. Joe’s yet.”

Said Johnson: “Obviously we have to have all scenarios but we’ve been prepping and working with members of our board to be prepared and be nimble for whatever is coming. We aren’t caught off-guard by this. We’ve been meeting, having discussions about it, and the leadership at the university has been involved with it as well.”

Said Jackson: “The idea of the elimination of sports has not come up. It’s not a concern of ours right now. Where college athletics goes and the idea of sports that generate revenue and those that don’t is the bigger question and how everybody looks at the distribution of revenues and how they may impact sports — those are real questions.”

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What’s next?

Administrators are eyeing the Fontenot case in Colorado and waiting for Judge Wilken’s ruling in the House v. NCAA case.

But planning around the settlement and the fallout has been ongoing and will continue into the future. Bodensteiner estimated it might take until midway through the 2024-25 academic year to have a full understanding of what the future looks like.

“I personally have a lot to learn. It will be fascinating,” she said. “I think the framework was a good one. I think the idea behind what they’re trying to do is to bring some certainty to a chaotic market and that I’m certainly in agreement with the effort.”

Still, so much remains unclear, even beyond the aforementioned.

Will the settlement result in student-athletes becoming employees at their given schools? Will there be larger unionization movements? Will this all lead to more conference realignment? Will the divide between the haves and have-nots grow even larger to the point of no return?

“We’re looking at every possible scenario and modeling out multiple platforms and how we’re going to navigate this,” Jackson said. “We want to be prepared for whatever happens next.”