About five years after its filing, the seminal House v. NCAA lawsuit has reached a resolution. Its settlement received final approval from Judge Claudia Wilken Friday.

The agreement will provide $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes who could not profit off their name, image and likeness between 2016 and Sept. 15, 2024. It also does away with scholarship limits, instead imposing roster caps (with an optional grandfathering-in model to protect athletes in possession of spots from being cut), and establishes a revenue-sharing system in which athletics departments pay players directly. The projected revenue-sharing cap for 2025-26 is $20.5 million and will increase annually by 4%.

During a University of Louisville Athletics Association meeting in April, athletics director Josh Heird called the settlement “the most transformative shift this industry has ever seen.” In that same meeting, Heird outlined two main questions the department is considering when it comes to the settlement: 

“How we’re gonna implement it, and how we’re gonna fund it.”

Heird declined to share how Louisville will split the $20.5 million among its varsity sports when asked by The Courier Journal at ACC spring meetings. Front Office Sports reported that power conference schools are expected to dedicate 75% of the $20.5 million toward their football programs. Texas Tech’s reported breakdown gives 74% to football, 17% to 18% to men’s basketball, 2% to women’s basketball, 1.8% to baseball and the rest to other sports. That’s $15.17 million for football, $3.69 million for men’s basketball and $410,000 for women’s basketball.

Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart told The Courier Journal at SEC spring meetings that rather than establishing firm percentages for each program, UK will take a less rigid approach to meet each sport’s needs year in and year out.

“The beauty of the cap space is that it is relatively fluid,” Barnhart said. “There may be years where different programs need more than the other, so I think that the management of that will be really, really important through our compliance folks.”

Meanwhile, NIL agreements via collectives will still be in play. Many collectives will transition into more of a marketing agency structure to help negotiate contracts and expand athlete earning potential beyond revenue-sharing contracts. This is what Louisville will do with 502Circle, President Dan Furman told The Courier Journal. 

Furman said he will still be involved in roster construction and day-to-day negotiations between athletes, local businesses and U of L. Once an agreement is reached, Louisville’s legal team (counseled by former Green Bay Packers Vice President Andrew Brandt) will draw up a deal. Meanwhile, 502Circle will continue to lean into promotional content as it has over the last 18 months or so with Floyd Street Media to help grow athletes’ profiles and endear them to the local community.

“We’re built for longevity,” Furman told The Courier Journal. “We’re built for what’s next. We’re not just pay-for-play.”

The collective reportedly worked with a transfer portal budget of $8 million to $10 million for men’s basketball this offseason. That fund helped coach Pat Kelsey land one of the nation’s top portal classes. But starting June 11, all NIL deals exceeding $600 will have to be reported to and pass through a clearinghouse called “NIL go,” operated by Deloitte with the purpose of assessing athletes’ fair market value.

Officials from the clearinghouse have been sharing data about past deals with athletics directors and coaches over the last several weeks, including 

• 70% of agreements from collectives would not have passed through NIL go;
• 80% of NIL deals with public companies were valued at less than $10,000;
• And 99% of those deals were valued at less than $100,000

Those numbers are a far cry from the millions collectives have reportedly spent on athletes over the last four years or so. Constricting compensation in this way feels, to some, like a bit of a step backward.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey spoke about the clearinghouse at spring meetings. When asked directly if he had confidence in these guardrails, Sankey said yes.

“People are going to have opinions,” he continued. “Nothing ever worked when people sat around and said, ‘Well, this won’t work.’ We’re adults, we’re leaders, and I think I communicated this yesterday, we have a responsibility to make this work.”

Barnhart is one of 10 athletics directors on the House Settlement Implementation Committee, which helped come up with the idea for the clearinghouse. He is the second-longest-tenured Power Four athletics director, having worked at UK since 2002. Barnhart views his responsibility as follows:

“I think it’s real important that the decisions we make on the House Implementation Committee are what’s in the best interest of college athletics as a whole,” Barnhart told The Courier Journal. “… I would say, probably, there’s been 10 to 15 years worth of work that’s been done in eight to 12 months. So a lot of work has been channeled into a pipeline, and a lot of folks have worked awfully hard to get ready for this change in college athletics.”

Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: House vs NCAA settlement approval: Louisville, Kentucky next steps