OXFORD – Buckle up, college sports fans. The next iteration of name, image and likeness is here and is once again changing the way schools do business.
Last week, a judge approved a settlement in the House vs. NCAA case that will allow schools to “directly pay players” a shared $20.5 million in NIL for the 2025-26 academic year, according to the Associated Press. NIL deals were previously brokered through third-party organizations like collectives and local businesses. That money can now come from the schools themselves. Former athletes from 2016-24 will also be eligible for “back pay” according to the AP.
An appeal to the settlement was filed Wednesday over alleged Title IX violations, according to ESPN, but the appeal is not expected to impact payments to “current athletes starting July 1.”
In an interview with the Daily Journal, Ole Miss athletics director Keith Carter said five Rebels sports will receive revenue sharing – football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. Each sport will receive a budget number and will be free to divide it how they see fit.
New revenue streams to pay for the $20.5 million are still being worked through, and cost-cutting measures are being put into place as well. But there are no plans to cut any sports, Carter said, stating it would be “our very last resort” and “we’re nowhere close to that right now.”
Below is the Daily Journal’s Q&A with Carter. The interview has been edited and cut for brevity.
Now that it’s official, what does this all mean?
I think it’s a great step forward to create a new model. We knew that rev share was inevitable. We knew that was coming. We had to come to some terms and figure out a way to move forward with that. And I think most people in our industry, on the administrative side, certainly are for rev sharing. We want to do that for our student-athletes. But this will allow us to have a little bit of structure around it, some guidelines around it, and we’ll be able to budget for it. We know what our numbers are, we know what our cap is. And obviously there’s still a lot to figure out. You still have Title IX implications, you have employment status implications … What happened Friday night, we were kind of anticipating that, hoping for a solution to that maybe more in early April. That’s what we had hoped. … It was a couple months later, but we finally got the settlement, and that’s what we were looking for.
Do you guys plan on using the entire $20.5 million? And have you guys decided on what sort of model you’re going to split it up?
We have, and we are going to do the $20.5 rev share. Don’t want to give out the exact percentages. I think if you look around college athletics and the Power 4, we’re going to be pretty close to the percentages you’re seeing in the major sports. And we will revenue share with five sports – football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball.
How did you decide on those five?
I think the first four are very common. You’re going to see that probably throughout the SEC. And then from there, it just kind of goes to at each individual institution and kind of what you know what they what they want to do. For us, we just felt like with the new softball stadium, we are actually starting to sell season tickets there. It’s our only Olympic sport that we sell season tickets for. We just felt like it made a lot of sense. We had a great opportunity there to try to grow that. And then what we did, with our other sports is that we went in and try to help them with new scholarships, we try to help them with different resourcing. We want to make sure that all of our sports feel like they can continue to compete and win at a high level. But it just didn’t work out where we could revenue share with every sport.
I know there’s still the third-party NIL, and I know it’s still sort of getting worked out. But is that where that sort of NIL comes into play, with maybe some of the other sports that aren’t the rev sharing?
Every school (in the SEC) is going to do the $20.5 million. Most schools are going to give a lot of new scholarships, several million dollars-worth of new scholarships. So you look at that and, that in a vacuum there, kind of levels the playing field. But obviously we’re competitive, and college athletics is a place where we’re going to always look for ways to find advantages. And so that’s where I think that the third-party, true NIL opportunities are going to be the place where we now try to get very creative and try to bring on more sponsors and corporate members and those type of things. We’ll continue to work with the Grove Collective and Magnolia Sports Group to create true, authentic, NIL fair-market value deals for these student-athletes. … I think you’re going to see over the next, probably, 12 to 24 months maybe some advantage or disadvantage on who handles that third-party, true NIL in the best way.
The $20.5 million is, like you said, sort of to level the playing field. But it still feels like there’s going to be haves and have-nots, right?
With the true third-party NIL, if you live in Austin, Texas you probably – just on numbers alone – you may have some more opportunity than in Oxford, Mississippi. But again, I think that’s where we have to be creative. We have to be first movers. We have to find new ways to think about things. And I think that’s what we did when NIL first came around. We were able to kind of be leaders in the space. … Other schools in our league had more resources than us then. They’re going to have more resources than us now in certain ways. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be competitive and win championships. So we’re going to continue to punch above our weight class and be creative in the space.
How do you feel about – and I know we’re not here yet – but the idea of student-athletes being employees?
I think that would be a big mistake. We have a settlement now. … We have to be the ones to try to make this work. And if we decide we want to try to make it work, then I think it has a great shot. Are there other iterations of this new model down the road? Absolutely. … Do student-athletes need a voice? Do they need some type of kind-of-short-of collective bargaining with some kind of seat at the table when we’re making these decisions? Maybe they do. And I think we’re for that. But right now, we feel like we have a strong settlement. We feel like there’s guardrails in place, there’s a structure in place, and now it’s our job to make it work.
Why specifically do you think the title of ‘employee’ would be a mistake?
We do want to hold onto what is great about college athletics. I think that we need something just short of that status. Because, again, it is being run more like a business now, it does have more of a professional feel. But at the same time, we’re dealing with 18 to 22 year olds. We want to treat them fairly, we want to give them the resources they need and the rev share that they deserve. But at the same time, we want to protect them from themselves a little bit too. Employment status brings on a lot of different things. And all of a sudden, the things that are kind of thrown in the scholarship package now, do we back those out? And all of a sudden you’ve got to pay for your nutrition, you’ve got to pay for your trainer, you’ve got to pay for those type of things. … I just think we’re not there yet. … I just think if we skip straight to employment status, we’re missing the boat.
Does this settlement fix everything? What’s next from your perspective as an administrator?
No, I don’t think it fixes everything. I think it’s a very good step, a large step. We needed this to happen. But I do … think there’s things we’re going to continue to work through. I mean, even just logistical things and technical things … There’s just some things that we’re going to have to work into, and I think just like with any new process there’s going to be probably some bumps in the road. But I think overall the structure is a good one. I think it’s well thought out. I think it has a chance. And again, we … as the practitioners, as the coaches, as the administrators we have to make sure that we want this to work. And I think if we work hard to do that, I think it can work.
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