NCAA Budget Buster to Force Big Changes
There is an NCAA budget buster looming that will forever change the landscape for college athletics. An upcoming lawsuit called House vs NCAA is an antitrust lawsuit that accuses the NCAA of suppressing student athletes’ right to earn money.
NCAA BUDGET BUSTER
Now that Name, Image and Likeness, or NIL, is here to stay this lawsuit looks to undo many wrongs against student athletes across the country. Damages in this case could triple, therefore, the NCAA may be on the hook for 2.7 – 4.2 billion dollars! Such a ruling would be the end of the NCAA as we know it.
So, the NCAA is scrambling behind the scenes to come up with a settlement it can live with. Athletic directors at all major schools are being told to carve out 30 million dollars each, per year, for ten years, in their annual department budgets. That’s 300 million dollars per school! That is absolutely an NCAA budget buster! This money will be used for some sort of revenue share formula with student athletes.
This will not be an easy pill to swallow for any school. The major players in the Big Ten and SEC will handle it much easier than schools in the ACC for example. After all, the Big Ten and SEC receive 75-100 million dollars a year in media revenue. ACC schools get about a third of that amount so asking them to fork over 30 million dollars a year would be financially fatal.
This may create the final push toward the Super Conference(s) we’ve been talking about for so long. This is no longer something vague somewhere in the future. This is now. This is an NCAA budget buster. Get ready. We always love to jump into this topic on Craig Shemon and Company on ESPN Southwest Florida.