At Big Ten Media Days in 2022, Jim Harbaugh spoke in strong support of revenue-sharing with athletes. He doubled down on that stance last year, saying the status quo was “unacceptable” in late August 2023.
Now, revenue sharing is coming to college sports after the NCAA and Power 5 conferences agreed to a settlement in the landmark House case last week. It could be a long road since a judge still has to certify it, but there’s now a path toward athletes getting a slice of the pie.
As Harbaugh heads to the NFL with the Los Angeles Chargers, his successor at Michigan – Sherrone Moore – is picking up where he left off.
“I feel great about it,” Moore said Wednesday. “I always agreed with [Harbaugh] when he initially brought it up. It should’ve happened a while go. We’re super happy that it’s gonna happen.
“There’s obviously, a plan we have a process of going through. It’s got to go through courts and go through different things. We’re stoked for it.”
There are still plenty of questions after the NCAA and conferences approved the settlement, but the major components include back damages and what is soon to be the revenue-sharing era in college athletics.
Greg Sankey: ‘Clarity’ expected over next 12 months
The back damages total to $2.77 billion, and the NCAA is expected to be responsible for 40% of that payout. That final 60% will then come from a reduction in school distributions. Then, there’s the revenue-sharing portion. Schools would be able to disperse roughly $20 million annually to athletes, although they’d be able to opt-in or opt-out. It’s also unclear how Title IX would factor into payouts and how the distribution would be split.
The soonest this structure would begin is the 2025-26 academic year, depending on how smoothly things go over the coming weeks and months. As for when the picture will get clearer, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said he expects to learn more over the next year.
“As I understand – so, I’m not in charge of everything, despite what some people will say,” Sankey said on “SEC Now” during the conference baseball tournament. “Not in the next couple of months. The next couple of months will be that process – the ability to walk through the legal system, the court system, a longer-form agreement. Decisions that can be made, then, at the conference level about certain structural issues, some national policy changes that need to take place. And then, it goes through the legal process that takes months upon months.
“I look out, probably a year from now when we’ll have – we have a level of clarity now. But we’ll have more clarity as we walk through these next 12 months.”
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