It's coming up on a week since California judge Claudia Wilken approved the NCAA v. House settlement on June 6, a move that is expected to drastically change the future of college athletics.
The settlement approves a $2.8 billion payment in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college athletics over the last nine years and were not compensated by the university. This also paves the path for schools to now begin paying current athletes directly revenue-sharing.
Under the new agreement, schools will be able to share as much as $20.5 million annually with its athletes. FSU director of athletics Michael Alford released a statement shortly after the settlement was confirmed last week, but talked more extensively about this new era of college athletics on a virtual meeting with the FSU Board of Trustees on Thursday.
"It's a good thing for college athletics. We've been in favor of it, been working hard on it with the conference to get this passed," Alford said. "It allows us to use a percentage of our media revenue to disperse amongst our student-athletes, up to $20.5 million. $2.5 million of that can be used to increase scholarship opportunities, which really excites me because it allows more student-athletes to leave campus debt-free. I think it's so important that we allow these student-athletes to have that opportunity."
Schools being able to pay athletes is a groundbreaking shift in college athletics. There's also hope that long-term, it could provide some guardrails to help college athletics move past the Wild Wild West that the first few years of the name, image and likeness era became, where the NCAA was hesitant to punish overt payments of athletes through collectives.
Under this new settlement, all NIL deals in excess of $600 will have to be sent to Deloitte for an audit which is supposed to assess whether the compensation is fair for whatever the deal requires, anything from in-person appearances to commercials to autograph sessions or anything of the like. If the deal is deemed improperly excessive compensation, it will be denied by the firm.
"DeLoitte is the firm that is going to be measuring the range of compensation. That is open. We've already had people inserting agreements and agreements have already come back denied on that. It's a new process. I'm familiar with it, I'm in favor of it. I think it's going to work..." Alford said. "What I'm talking to the (ACC) commissioner about, even yesterday, is the enforcement. More information should be coming out on that real soon on the House update. We're real excited about it. It's a changing environment in collegiate athletics. We have elected to be a part of it. We are working on our budget to compensate our student-athletes at the highest, most elite level that we can do so we can continue to compete for championships."
During his speech on Thursday, Alford alluded to the fact that he's already heard from a few FSU coaches that other schools are already working through loopholes to ensure that the $20.5 million number isn't a finite salary cap for athletes. This has been a concern of Alford's throughout this process and has been something he's been working to make others aware of so that it doesn't escalate into a major problem that would make it tougher for FSU teams to compete.
"The system will work. We just have to allow it to work. I'm in full favor of the system and the audit that comes behind it. What I'm skeptical (of) and have let my feelings be known to our ACC legal counsel and our commissioner is the enforcement," Alford said. "If we're going to play by the rules -- because I'm hearing other things that people are doing out there and our coaches are informing me of this -- my response is, 'Well, that's not legal in the new system. They can't be promising kids this.' The enforcement is still what I'm talking to the conference mostly about. Everything they tell me, I'm in favor of, how strong it is going to be. I just want it implemented."
Alford didn't share specifics of how FSU's $20.5 million will be distributed amongst various athletic teams or even how many FSU teams will be the beneficiaries. Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione shared during a Thursday meeting that the Sooners will only be sharing this revenue with six different athletic teams: football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball and women's gymnastics. Ohio State AD Ross Bjork said the Buckeyes are starting with just four sports: football, men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball.
The FSU football team will certainly get the largest chunk of that remaining $18 million when removing additional scholarships. But it remains to be seen exactly how much of that goes to football. It was reported last week by The Athletic that some top football programs are expecting to receive as much as $15 million of the $20.5 million total in revenue-sharing money.
Alford shares construction updates
With FSU football season now less than three months away, it's getting to crunch time for both of FSU's major construction projects. Alford shared updates on Thursday about the status of FSU's Doak Campbell Stadium renovation as well as the construction of the FSU football operations facility.
Doak has permanent power turned on in late May and now has chilled water flowing to new equipment and air conditioning in the new sideline club so far in June. The timeline for final approval remains late July, about a month out from FSU's season opener vs. Alabama on Aug. 30.
"We expect to have a full certificate of occupancy for the stadium on July 29," Alford said to the FSU board. "Looking forward to having some events that y'all shortly will be getting invited to for a grand opening for the venue."
The football facility is on a slightly slower timeline, but the HVAC is expected to be started up this week and the player's lockers installed later this month before the facility is completed in early September and moved into during FSU's Week 3 bye week.
Other notes
The FSU football and baseball teams each achieved the highest multi-year Academic Progress Rate in their program history in the most recent update at 990 and 979, respectively.
FSU athletics had a collective spring GPA of 3.463 and 83% of FSU's athletes had a GPA of 3.0 or better.
The settlement approves a $2.8 billion payment in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college athletics over the last nine years and were not compensated by the university. This also paves the path for schools to now begin paying current athletes directly revenue-sharing.
Under the new agreement, schools will be able to share as much as $20.5 million annually with its athletes. FSU director of athletics Michael Alford released a statement shortly after the settlement was confirmed last week, but talked more extensively about this new era of college athletics on a virtual meeting with the FSU Board of Trustees on Thursday.
"It's a good thing for college athletics. We've been in favor of it, been working hard on it with the conference to get this passed," Alford said. "It allows us to use a percentage of our media revenue to disperse amongst our student-athletes, up to $20.5 million. $2.5 million of that can be used to increase scholarship opportunities, which really excites me because it allows more student-athletes to leave campus debt-free. I think it's so important that we allow these student-athletes to have that opportunity."
Schools being able to pay athletes is a groundbreaking shift in college athletics. There's also hope that long-term, it could provide some guardrails to help college athletics move past the Wild Wild West that the first few years of the name, image and likeness era became, where the NCAA was hesitant to punish overt payments of athletes through collectives.
Under this new settlement, all NIL deals in excess of $600 will have to be sent to Deloitte for an audit which is supposed to assess whether the compensation is fair for whatever the deal requires, anything from in-person appearances to commercials to autograph sessions or anything of the like. If the deal is deemed improperly excessive compensation, it will be denied by the firm.
"DeLoitte is the firm that is going to be measuring the range of compensation. That is open. We've already had people inserting agreements and agreements have already come back denied on that. It's a new process. I'm familiar with it, I'm in favor of it. I think it's going to work..." Alford said. "What I'm talking to the (ACC) commissioner about, even yesterday, is the enforcement. More information should be coming out on that real soon on the House update. We're real excited about it. It's a changing environment in collegiate athletics. We have elected to be a part of it. We are working on our budget to compensate our student-athletes at the highest, most elite level that we can do so we can continue to compete for championships."
During his speech on Thursday, Alford alluded to the fact that he's already heard from a few FSU coaches that other schools are already working through loopholes to ensure that the $20.5 million number isn't a finite salary cap for athletes. This has been a concern of Alford's throughout this process and has been something he's been working to make others aware of so that it doesn't escalate into a major problem that would make it tougher for FSU teams to compete.
"The system will work. We just have to allow it to work. I'm in full favor of the system and the audit that comes behind it. What I'm skeptical (of) and have let my feelings be known to our ACC legal counsel and our commissioner is the enforcement," Alford said. "If we're going to play by the rules -- because I'm hearing other things that people are doing out there and our coaches are informing me of this -- my response is, 'Well, that's not legal in the new system. They can't be promising kids this.' The enforcement is still what I'm talking to the conference mostly about. Everything they tell me, I'm in favor of, how strong it is going to be. I just want it implemented."
Alford didn't share specifics of how FSU's $20.5 million will be distributed amongst various athletic teams or even how many FSU teams will be the beneficiaries. Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione shared during a Thursday meeting that the Sooners will only be sharing this revenue with six different athletic teams: football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball and women's gymnastics. Ohio State AD Ross Bjork said the Buckeyes are starting with just four sports: football, men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball.
The FSU football team will certainly get the largest chunk of that remaining $18 million when removing additional scholarships. But it remains to be seen exactly how much of that goes to football. It was reported last week by The Athletic that some top football programs are expecting to receive as much as $15 million of the $20.5 million total in revenue-sharing money.
Alford shares construction updates
With FSU football season now less than three months away, it's getting to crunch time for both of FSU's major construction projects. Alford shared updates on Thursday about the status of FSU's Doak Campbell Stadium renovation as well as the construction of the FSU football operations facility.
Doak has permanent power turned on in late May and now has chilled water flowing to new equipment and air conditioning in the new sideline club so far in June. The timeline for final approval remains late July, about a month out from FSU's season opener vs. Alabama on Aug. 30.
"We expect to have a full certificate of occupancy for the stadium on July 29," Alford said to the FSU board. "Looking forward to having some events that y'all shortly will be getting invited to for a grand opening for the venue."
The football facility is on a slightly slower timeline, but the HVAC is expected to be started up this week and the player's lockers installed later this month before the facility is completed in early September and moved into during FSU's Week 3 bye week.
Other notes
The FSU football and baseball teams each achieved the highest multi-year Academic Progress Rate in their program history in the most recent update at 990 and 979, respectively.
FSU athletics had a collective spring GPA of 3.463 and 83% of FSU's athletes had a GPA of 3.0 or better.
