INDIANAPOLIS – Decades of condescending greed from our country’s largest college sports programs, and arrogant incompetence from the organization meant to oversee them — the NCAA — have brought us here, to one of the most condescendingly greedy, arrogantly incompetent, utterly absurd decisions in the annals of NCAA nonsense.
You sitting down for this? There’s a lot here, numbers that will make your eyes glaze and dollar figures that will make your head spin, but don’t worry too much about that. Nobody told you there’d be math, and we’ll keep it to a minimum, but there’s an old saying: Math is logical.
The NCAA, sadly, is not.
The NCAA, a group started in good faith in 1906 to oversee college sports, lost its way along the way as the money grew and problems rose and doing the right thing, every time, became too damn difficult. For years the NCAA has done the right thing only when convenient, much like its largest college sports programs, who have too much money at stake — too many high-paying jobs in too many wood-paneled, brass-trimmed offices — to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing.
All that history, all that arrogant incompetence from the NCAA and condescending greed from the leaders in this Darwinian clubhouse — what we call the Power 5 conferences — has led us to the point of chaos and the brink of destruction of college sports. But the survival instinct is strong among schools in the SEC, Big Ten and Co., and the obeisance is disgusting in the NCAA offices staining the White River in Downtown Indianapolis, so here we are:
The NCAA is on the verge of settling the landmark House vs. NCAA anti-trust lawsuit — a lawsuit filed after decades of condescending greed and arrogant incompetence — with a final bill projected in the range of $2.8 billion, according to reporting from Yahoo! Sports.
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The class-action lawsuit has thousands of plaintiffs and three types of damages, with the overwhelming majority of damages tied to broadcast revenue attributable to Power 5 football and men’s basketball. Although two other categories of damages are involved (video game NIL and third-party NIL), reporting from Yahoo! Sports and ESPN show the damages are largely connected to revenue from media agreements. According to expert witness testimony in case filings, approximately 90% of the value of those media agreements is attributable to football and men’s basketball, which means an overwhelming majority (roughly 90%) of damages will be paid to Power 5 athletes.
Those athletes have asked for their fair share of the revenue long denied them — all that TV money, not to mention the Name, Image and Likeness revenue generated when someone like Tim Tebow or Joe Burrow or Bryce Young shows up in a video game but it’s Florida, LSU and Alabama who cashed the checks.
You can imagine the cost for the NCAA and its 60 or 70 largest sports programs to pay up to 90% of $2.8 billion. It would be fair but financially crushing, and if there’s one thing we know about the largest schools in college sports, it’s this: They’re not interested in being financially crushed.
Lucky for them, the NCAA isn’t interested in being fair.
So how to pay off 90% of $2.8 billion?
Send a bill or withhold significant future revenue distributions to the Mid-American Conference and the Horizon League. And the MEAC and Patriot League and all of the 27 conferences that make up the 32-league NCAA — the Power 5, and the Other 27 — and ask those 27 smaller leagues, whose former student-athletes account for a tiny fraction of the plaintiffs in the House class action, to pay nearly $1 billion of the total bill.
Math is hard, but logical. Find a calculator, or just trust me on this: The other 27 conferences are not responsible for 60% (or even half of that) of the damages; 10% of $2.8 billion is $280 million. That’s what the Other 27 ought to be asked to pay.
But the NCAA, along with the Power 5, want the Other 27 to pay closer to $990 million. And that’s not even the full amount due. More on that in a minute.
Just know this: If the NCAA and Power 5 aren’t stopped, that miscarriage of justice will happen in the next few days.
Settlement negotiated in secret
The math gets wonky. Let’s put a few more numbers here for history’s sake, for future generations searching the Internet for evidence that we tolerated something as self-serving as this version of the NCAA. And understand, these numbers aren’t guesswork or spin. They come straight from a communique from the NCAA to each of its 32 conferences, hard evidence that was followed by a conference call to drive home the point that, yes, that communique was real.
First, the background. That proposed settlement you read, where the Other 27 are being asked to pay nearly $1 billion, was negotiated over the past several months in private. In secret, even. The principal players at the negotiating table were representatives of the NCAA and the Power 5.
Guess who wasn’t included?
The Other 27.
Those smaller leagues — places like the Big Sky, Ohio Valley and SWAC — didn’t find out about the proposed settlement, and their nearly $1 billion contribution, until about two weeks ago. After the deed was all but done.
When does the deed become done? As early as this week. The NCAA’s Board of Directors meet Tuesday. The Board of Governors are expected to meet Wednesday. Unless you get angry enough, by Thursday morning the 27 most vulnerable leagues in the NCAA, servicing most of the country’s college athletes — but without the head-spinning greed of the Power 5 — will be on the hook for more than 35% of that $2.8 billion, when the equitable amount is closer to 10%.
The NCAA is settling House, rather than fighting, because the NCAA (and Power 5) hold a losing hand. Should this go to court, the NCAA has told its members, the final cost could be as large as $20 billion — payable immediately. The settlement of $2.8 billion would be paid out over 10 years. Punishing, yes, but otherwise the NCAA might have to file for bankruptcy. You think the era of NIL and the transfer portal have led to chaos in college sports? Hold my beer, says an NCAA mired in bankruptcy court.
Lots of numbers and legal gobbledygook, I know. Here’s just a little more of each from that settlement negotiated by the NCAA and Power 5, and that four-page communique distributed last week to the Other 27, that must be included for a more complete understanding:
>> The proposed settlement starts with the NCAA agreeing to pay 41% of the $2.8 billion — roughly $1.15 billion — from its general operational expenses. Sounds OK? It’s not. That 41% of this settlement, that $1.15 billion hit, taps deep into the NCAA reserves and would impact all NCAA members with cuts to national office programs and services, meaning the Other 27 being hammered right off the top for a class-action lawsuit where the biggest winners among the plaintiffs will come from the Power 5.
>> The other 59% of the $2.8 billion — roughly $1.65 billion — would come through withheld NCAA Division I revenue.
What the NCAA and Power 5 propose to do with that 41% of the settlement isn’t fair to the Other 27, but their plan for the rest of the settlement — the other 59%, or $1.65 billion — is diabolical. The NCAA and Power 5 are proposing a 60-40 split on that $1.65 billion, with the Other 27 footing the bill for 60% — $990 million — and the Power 5 responsible for the other 40% ($660 million).
The NCAA and Power 5 are hiding behind numbers, mainly this one: The Other 27 conferences, with close to 300 schools total, receive approximately 60% of total NCAA revenue distributions. The Power 5 receives the other 40%. Ergo, by the NCAA’s sense of fair play, the Other 27 should pay 60% of that $1.65 billion.
I know, lots of numbers. Just remember this one: 10%.
That’s how much of the proposed $2.8 billion settlement will likely be earmarked for athletes from Other 27 schools.
In sum: Other 27 conferences pay 60% of $1.65 billion, not to mention a share of the $1.15 billion mentioned in the first bullet-point, despite having athletes who stand to earn roughly 10% of the $2.8 billion settlement.
How could the NCAA ask that with a straight face? This is how: For years the NCAA has faced the existential threat of the schools from the Power 5 — the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and whatever’s left of the Pac-12 — breaking away, forming a quasi-NCAA of its own and pocketing all that TV revenue for itself.
With annual football and basketball coaching salaries soaring toward $10 million and athletes now earning huge sums of NIL funds — and most of those coaches and athletes coming from Power 5 schools — the pressure is on the Power 5 to keep as much of that TV revenue as possible.
Which means the pressure is on the NCAA — which employs lots of nice people in nice offices who drive nice cars to their nice homes — to appease the Power 5.
The Other 27?
Collateral damage.
Can IU Indianapolis, Indiana State survive this without cutting sports?
Schools in the Power 5 are all but printing money thanks to TV and other media contracts, to say nothing of the revenue coming from all those big-time football games. Schools from those leagues are making so much money, they’ve agreed since 2022 to pay 10 different (former) football coaches a combined $176 million just to get rid of them. Those buyouts are happening at football schools huge (Texas A&M is paying $76 million to Jimbo Elliott) and modest (IU football is paying $15.5 million to Tom Allen).
Power 5 schools can afford that, just as they’ll find a way to afford whatever hit is coming from House vs. NCAA.
The other 27? They’re lost. The proposed $2.8 billion settlement, with so much of it being asked of the Other 27, will come down to at least $2 million to $3 million a year across those conferences for the next 10 years. For the next decade, that would whittle $20-30 million from conferences and schools like IUPUI and Valparaiso, Evansville and Indiana State.
There’s no more fat to be cut from athletic programs like those, and very little muscle. Next to go will be bones — scholarships being eliminated for young men and women at most places, outright sports being cut at others.
All because the NCAA, and Power 5, want the Other 27 to subsidize a settlement weighted heavily — 90% to 10% — toward plaintiffs from Power 5 schools.
This is neither right nor fair. It’s the Power 5 making up the rules as they go along, and it’s the NCAA doing what the NCAA has done for decades — cowering to schools like Ohio State and Texas, and taking it out on the likes of Southern Indiana and Purdue Fort Wayne.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStaror atwww.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
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