Earlier this Summer, Judge Claudia Wilken finally gave her approval on the landmark House Vs NCAA case settlement setting off massive changes in College Athletics. Once the settlement was approved, new issues in the sports landscape were always going to arise as roster limits and revenue sharing impacted each programs bottom line.
While revenue sharing is great for the athletes, it impacts the school more than anyone may have realized. These programs base their budgets off of athletic revenue and while most programs tried to plan ahead, it's hard to account for losing $20.5 million in revenue.
On his podcast "The Triple Option" with Mark Ingram and Rob Stone, Urban Meyer began to talk about the impacts of the House Settlement. Meyer brought up one of the latest topics which are student fees as the Colleges are going to end up adding fees to tuition to help cover the losses the school is going to suffer year over year by directly paying their athletes.
"You’re starting to hear about the student fees. There’s a couple school out there that are getting ready to slam the students with a big bill. I can guarantee you the staffs are being challenged, the ADs are being challenged. Creativity is gonna be the word of the day on how to raise revenue."Urban Meyer
As team's look to lessen the blow on their budgets, schools around the Country face staff cuts to help draw closer to breaking even. The Michigan Wolverines cut 10% of their athletic department staff last month, USC cut a dozen jobs while leaving unfilled positions open, and several programs will be next to follow suit.
Urban Meyer believes that one of the biggest brands in sports Michigan facing these issues prove that there are massive red flags with the House Settlement.
"One of the best brands and the biggest brands in college sports, the Wolverines, had a 10 percent cut in personnel and are expecting a $25 million loss of money on their budget at the end of the year. That to me, red flags are all over the place on that one."Urban Meyer
The Michigan Wolverines are just one of many programs to suffer due to these inflated costs on their budgets. Michigan will be forced to add 82 scholarships, which brings another $6.2 million in costs against their budget. Michigan will be one of the programs that allocates the full $20.5 million in revenue sharing to its athletes, which once again cuts into its budget.
When the House Settlement was approved, everyone knew there were going to be massive costs for each school but, there was also an expectation that the schools had enough time to prepare for these issues. Given that schools now need to handle paying their players the expectation was that staffs would only grow as each team would need a staff to oversee and handle paying its players.
At the end of the day, each school is going to need to find a way to help bridge the $20.5 million gap as it's only going to grow year over year. The Big 12 has already launched several strategic partnerships, LSU has discussed selling ads on their jerseys, and some schools now have a sponsor on their field. The next few years will be defined by which school best adapts but, in this early period, there's going to be a lot of setbacks to the Settlement.