RANCHOS PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Palm trees, a Pacific Ocean view and courtyard dinners at the Terranea Resort provided the backdrop this week for one of the Big Ten’s most important group of meetings in the league’s 128-year history.
More than 100 administrators, university leaders, faculty representatives and head coaches from the Big Ten’s 18 members and league office gathered at this plush, picturesque location to discuss an upcoming legal settlement that fundamentally will change college athletics. Those officials were sequestered with security for every function, ranging from outdoor meals to friendly mixers.
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The topics weren’t limited to what’s known as the House v. NCAA case, which will cost the NCAA and its member schools $2.7 billion should it be approved. The league added a four-school West Coast wing starting this year, and the spring meetings were as much of a networking event as an opportunity to explore a path forward as a league and an industry.
“I think that we have a chance at this moment right now in college athletics to really reshape the model in the most meaningful way in our lifetimes and maybe the most meaningful way that has ever been,” said Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman, the new Division I Council chair. “How can we build this new model in a way that allows us to put more money directly into the pockets of our student-athletes, which I think is overdue, and do it in a way that does protect competitive fairness and allows for schools to have predictability and sustainability going forward around?”
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What’s at stake for college athletics is transformational in the short term and has the potential for long-lasting change. The hope, Whitman said, is to provide structure for a competitive sporting environment while ensuring continuity for fans and donors.
“It certainly comes with a set of really unique challenges,” Whitman said. “But for people in positions like mine, I hope we’re viewing it as a tremendous professional experience and just a remarkable opportunity to really be on the forefront of change and help craft a thoughtful solution to what the future could look like.”
But what does that future look like? How will it impact major conference programs like those in the Big Ten and universities without the billion-dollar media rights deals? How does it affect competitive balance, the transfer portal, name, image and likeness, educational opportunities and even legislation? Those questions remain more speculative than specific for nearly everyone in attendance.
The priority this week deals with the fallout of the House settlement, a subject on which everyone from college administrators to high-ranking Big Ten officials defers to commissioner Tony Petitti. As of Wednesday morning, no vote had taken place in the league’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors. The settlement cost for all NCAA conferences and schools is significant. But to lose that case in court could result in 11-figure damages and send the entire industry into bankruptcy.
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As part of a class-action lawsuit brought by former athlete Grant House, the settlement would provide back pay for Division I athletes who were barred from making money off their NIL before a 2021 Supreme Court ruling. It would allow schools to spend up to $20 million per year to pay current athletes. The NCAA’s Board of Governors is likely to vote on the settlement Thursday.
The NCAA would pay $1.1 billion up front from its reserves and set aside $1.6 billion for payment for a decade. In turn, the organization would withhold revenue distributions to conferences — that trickle down to schools — from the lucrative NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Around 60 percent of the money would come from non-power conferences, which has created frustration and anger from leagues that earn a fraction of the Big Ten’s annual revenue. The men’s basketball tournament provides a significant portion of non-power conference schools’ annual budgets, while for many Big Ten schools, it marks about 2.5 percent of their income.
But few schools, even in the Big Ten, could fund $20 million for their athletes. Then there are distribution questions related to Title IX and the future of collectives.
“Nobody just has tens of millions of dollars sitting around unallocated,” Whitman said. “Every school is going to have to do some in-depth analysis and figure out what is the right approach for them and what makes sense on their campus. And certainly, we recognize that we’re just on the front end of this entire process.”
“I think they’re going to be a lot more clear after the settlement,” said Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese, who won the 2006 NCAA women’s championship. “We all have to be patient. We kind of know what it’s going to look like moving forward, but I think more like details-specific and what numbers are going to look like and all of that, we’ll see how things unfold here. Then I think everyone will have a clearer understanding.”
The coaches’ world has changed in a seismic direction during the past three years. Before 2021, any talk of outside pay going toward athletes was an NCAA violation. Now, pay has become a key consideration in the recruitment and retention of athletes.
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“It’s a mess,” Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo said. “I don’t know what the right answers are. I know that what we’ve got going is out of control and insane and everybody’s trying to get their arms around it. But we’ve got a lot of moving parts right now with all this stuff, whether it’s the transfer portal or whether it’s the pay-for-play. It’s not NIL; it’s pay-for-play.”
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“The best thing we’ve been told is and what we’re working on is things are going to change,” Illinois football coach Bret Bielema said. “For us as football coaches, if there’s a time for transition to happen, there never is never an ideal time, but I think now is good.”
The winningest coach in Big Ten basketball history with one NCAA title and eight Final Four appearances, Izzo said unlimited transfers have harmed his sport immeasurably, from how he builds a team to how it devalues education. Few players claim lucrative NBA contracts so acquiring a degree can be essential to post-basketball lives. Yet when athletes transfer multiple times seeking more money, many of their credits don’t transfer. In addition, their attachment to the institution wanes significantly, Izzo argued.
The rules regarding non-scholarship athletes also are pivotal.
“When guys are at three different schools, are you ever going to have a relationship with those kids?” Izzo asked. “Are you going to welcome them back? Is the school going to welcome them back? Where do they go to get help later on? I mean, those are the unintended consequences of all this, that I don’t think anybody talks about.
“I think that’s our job to make their next 40 or 50 years better than when they came here.”
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Whitman and Izzo say they’re getting more clarity related to what comes next. But what that looks like beyond aspirational rhetoric remains undetermined. NIL will remain a major focus for schools, and institutional payments to athletes could limit collectives’ influence and perhaps level the competitive field.
“The objective is not to figure out who can spend the most; it’s to try and figure out who can spend it the best,” Whitman said. “So how can we create a system that allows for some level of competitive fairness? And I think that benchmarking against what we’ve had in the last couple of years probably isn’t the right view to take on analyzing whatever this new system may look like. I think we have to try and look at it through a fresh perspective with a fresh set of eyes.”
(Top photo: Scott Dochterman / The Athletic)
