Bernadette McGlade leads an Atlantic 10 Conference built around basketball and focused on getting multiple bids to the NCAA men’s tournament, far more than anything tied to big-time football.
However, your league is among dozens of conferences and dozens of schools that will feel the impact of NCAA and major college conferences approve $2.8 billion deal of federal antitrust claims demanding payment from athletes with a plan framed in a football-driven college sports landscape.
“We have to move forward, we want to continue to preserve our rich basketball history,” McGlade told the Associated Press. “So we have to get to the strategy table and start doing analysis.”
Schools that invest in basketball in leagues such as A-10, Big East – home of UConn, two-time men’s national champion – and the West Coast Conference faces the prospect of directing millions to its athletes each year. But they need to figure out the best way to do this without football money flows coming in.
“With the opportunity that football brings, there are a lot of (financial) obligations that football also brings,” said Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford, whose WCC basketball program went from mid-major to national power in the last quarter of century. “So it works both ways. We have no obligation for operations and new expenses associated with the remuneration of football players. But we don’t have the benefit of the revenue that comes with it, especially the TV revenue.”
The settlement includes the NCAA and conferences paying $2.77 billion over 10 years to more than 14,000 former and current college athletes who say now-defunct rules prevented them from earning money or sponsorship deals dating back to 2016. From Under the plan, each school would be allowed to set aside about $21 million to pay athletes, a limit that could change. It could begin as early as the fall 2025 semester.
The lawsuit targeted the so-called Power Five conferences — Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern — as well as Notre Dame But finding money to pay the settlement will reach hundreds of other Division I member schools in the form of smaller annual payments from the organization. This revenue flows in large part of the NCAA’s lucrative TV contract for the men’s basketball tournament and its other championship events.
The NCAA has no role in the college football playoffs or bowl games, and football TV deals are struck at the conference level. .
“I think the really interesting angle here is: Why does men’s basketball pay all the overhead for college athletics and college football doesn’t contribute?” Standiford asked.
McGlade stepped forward, noting that projected CFP payments per school for the Big Ten and the SEC alone (about $22 million) It largely covers the estimated annual amount a school can pay athletes. McGlade estimated that focusing on basketball-oriented schools in his league could generate about $3 million to $5 million in annual payments, by comparison.
“We knew the deal was being discussed and I think everyone at DI has been supportive of it all year,” McGlade said. “We didn’t know the gory details of what the payment model would be. Disproportionality is a real concern, and it wouldn’t take much for this proportionality to become a little more balanced and for everyone to respect each other a little more.”
Jay Bilas, a former Duke player and attorney who is also an ESPN basketball broadcaster, said NCAA member schools put themselves in this position by voting “in lockstep to stop athletes from making money all these years.”
“Therefore, there is no difference in culpability from the University of Georgia to Marquette,” Bilas said. “Everyone is equally to blame for violating federal antitrust law. So for me, I shouldn’t get lost in all of this, that they all felt the same way in saying that athletes don’t get anything other than a scholarship or a stipend or whatever.
It will take a lot of work to find the best answer for each school within what amounts to a very different economic model.
At Gonzaga, for example, the men’s basketball program generated about $19.2 million in revenue for the 2022-23 season, according to Figures from the Department of Education. This represented nearly 45% of total athletics revenue that year ($42.9 million).
This was similar to the Atlantic 10’s Dayton, which was ranked 24th in the season finale AP Top 25. The Flyers men’s basketball program accounted for 44% of athletics revenue ($40.1 million). In the Big East, men’s basketball accounted for more than 48% of total revenues at football-free schools such as Marquette ($42.6 million) and Creighton ($35 million).
By comparison, blue-blood names like Duke and North Carolina (ACC), Kentucky (SEC), and Kansas (Big 12) from powerhouse football-oriented conferences had men’s basketball programs accounting for no more than 29% of total revenue that exceeded about US$138 million in each case.
In football-mad Alabama, a men’s basketball program that was No. 1 overall in the 2023 NCAA Tournament and reached this year’s Final Four accounted for just 10.8% of total revenue ($191.2 million) for the 2022-23 season.
“I think everyone would identify that Villanova’s investment in basketball is important to Villanova, or UConn, or whoever, and they will continue to do everything they can to compete at that level,” Standiford said. “And we will do the same. But where does this money come from?
“I don’t think it benefits us,” Standiford added. “But I also think we are a unique group of schools. I don’t know how you would achieve our status if you didn’t already have it. I think that’s what’s going to change.”
Bilas, however, remained confident that basketball-centered programs will “make it work,” noting that success in athletics can drive growth and improvements that change schools beyond sports.
“These revenue streams are growing and will continue to grow because live sports are so valuable,” Bilas said. “It’s not just valuable on the football side, it’s the most valuable. But basketball is really valuable. Women’s basketball, some of these other sports. So we’ll see how it goes.
“I see that all these different institutions continue to compete at a high level, but now they will have to compete for talent in the economic domain.”
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