Questions continue to swirl after the NCAA and Power 5 conferences approved the landmark House v. NCAA settlement last month. From potential roster limits – including whether players can still walk on – and the proposed revenue-sharing model, the future of college sports could be looking at a new era if a judge certifies the agreement.
After changes to the recruiting calendar, coaches across college football are also looking at a dead period starting Monday. It’s currently a quiet period, meaning recruits can only have in-person contact with coaches on-campus.
As things slow down on the trail, Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said he’s looking at minimal – if any – contact with recruits until after the season. That makes it difficult for him to answer some of the key questions about the future of college football when they come up.
“These visits are important,” Rhule told HuskerOnline’s Sean Callahan and Steven Sipple on HuskerOnline Headlines. “Getting guys to come back in the season are important. We also – I don’t know what the roster numbers are gonna be. I don’t know, if all of a sudden they give me a hard cap of 85, I have to be careful about how many guys I commit to right now. I’m hoping by September, I know. So we don’t need to go commit a bunch of guys and all of a sudden, you’re sitting there in September and having to walk back on people saying, ‘Hey, we can’t take you now.’ It’s a really hard place to be.
“I can’t answer anything about revenue-sharing. I don’t know how much money’s in the revenue-sharing pot. There’s so many questions right now.”
Matt Rhule: ‘There’s a big financial repercussion, as well’
The revenue-sharing model is a central part of the House settlement. Schools would be able to opt-in and share up to $22 million with athletes – a number calculated as a portion of their annual revenue. But there are concerns about just how many schools would be able to afford opting in, and those financial issues also come up in the roster limits.
As part of the financial plan, schools would be able to offer scholarships to potentially a sport’s entire roster. For example, in baseball, current NCAA rules say schools can give a max of 11.7 scholarships for 32-player rosters. Under the proposed model, that number could go up to all 32 players if a school chooses to do so.
When it comes to bigger rosters such as football, though, there are more questions than answer about affording those spots. Football can have 85 scholarship players, but 125 on the roster with walk-ons. Between Title IX issues and the financial component, Rhule said he’ll continue speaking up about making sure the future of college sports benefits all athletes – not just some.
“My thing has been, we’re gonna need people to practice against. Just imagine, the movie ‘Rudy’ wouldn’t even exist anymore. That’s part of what’s amazing about football. I don’t know. I’m anxious to see how it ends up. I’m pretty vocal – at Big Ten meetings, I’m pretty vocal about some of these subjects – because I think there’s unintended consequences of everything. We passed some of these laws to make them student-athlete friendly, but we’re gonna see a bunch of schools drop sports, I bet. You’re gonna see people lose their opportunities to walk-on.
“It will benefit some student-athletes. But it won’t benefit the vast majority of them who no longer have an opportunity to play.”
‘It’s a really slippery slope right now’
When it comes to recruits’ concerns, Matt Rhule said he recently spoke with Nebraska women’s basketball coach Amy Williams about her approach. Their thoughts were similar in that they want to avoid a chance of misleading recruits with so much uncertainty about what’s next.
“I talked to Amy Williams the other day, my daughters were at her camp,” Rhule said. “And Amy’s such a wonderful person. She’s such a great, great person. We were talking about this world now and not wanting to make promises to players, but other schools are. They’re saying whatever because they know it’s all gonna get wiped away here soon. ‘Yeah, we’ll give you two boats and a house,’ because in six months, they might say, ‘Oh, there’s none of that anymore. Sorry. Our bad.’
“So just wanting to do things the ethical way, the right way, like Amy does. I don’t want to commit too many people and all of a sudden, hey, there’s a hard cap of 85 and that’s it, there’s no more walk-ons. It’s a really slippery slope right now we’re trying to deal with.”
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