It’s Monday morning, so it’s time for me to let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week.
I had a whole specific Mizzou football version of this written out, then the House Settlement passed late Friday night and I had to adjust.
So let’s talk about the House Settlement.
1. General information about the settlement.
We’ve talked about the settlement so much, but not everyone knows exactly what’s going on with all of it, so let’s go over some basics. If you know all about the settlement already, I’m not going to be upset if you skip to No. 2.
Starting July 1, universities that opt in to the settlement (which every power-conference team will and most other major Division I teams will), will have $20.5 million to pay directly to players in a revenue sharing agreement.
That money has to come out of the university’s athletic revenue, which is why Mizzou raised prices on tickets moving forward. That money can be paid out however each university chooses, but most schools have laid out a plan to spend about 75-80 percent on football, about 10-15 percent on men’s basketball, about 5 percent on women’s basketball and about 5 percent on all the other sports combined.
This was made as a way to try to curtail the runaway spending of Name, Image and Likeness deals and to somewhat even the playing field. We’ll talk about whether that’s realistically an outcome here in a minute.
Contracts with players started getting sent in Friday night right after the settlement passed. Teams, including Mizzou, had plans in place and were ready to go the second they were able to, now it’s just a waiting game until checks start getting sent out on July 1.
Along with the agreement came roster limits in each sport, which is what kept the settlement from being approved months ago. Football teams will be restricted to 105 players, basketball teams to 15, baseball teams to 34, soccer teams can have 28, softball can have 25 and volleyball can have 18.
There’s also an element of back pay for student athletes who competed from 2016-through-2024 who missed out on the coming NIL rules. That will total $2.776 billion in total payments.
2. Let’s get into some overall opinion.