Bernadette McGlade leads an Atlantic 10 Conference built around basketball and focused on getting multiple bids to the NCAA men’s tournament much more than anything tied to big-time football.
Yet her league is among dozens of conferences and scores of schools that will feel the impact of the NCAA and major college conferences approving a $2.8 billion settlement of federal antitrust claims that calls for paying athletes with a plan framed in a football-driven college sports landscape.
“We’ve got to move forward, we want to continue to preserve our rich history in basketball,” McGlade told The Associated Press. “So we have to get to the strategy table and start doing analysis.”
Schools that lean on basketball in leagues like the A-10, Big East — home to UConn, the two-time reigning men’s national champion — and the West Coast Conference face the prospect of directing millions to their athletes every year. But they have to figure out the best way to do that without streams of football money flowing in.
“With the opportunity that football brings, there’s a lot of (financial) obligation that football brings, too,” said Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford, whose WCC basketball program has gone from mid-major to national power over the past quarter-century. “So it cuts both ways. We don’t have the obligation of the operations and new expenses associated with the compensation of football players. But we don’t have the benefit of the revenues that come with it, particularly the TV revenues.”
The settlement includes the NCAA and conferences paying $2.77 billion over 10 years to more than 14,000 former and current college athletes who say now-defunct rules prevented them from earning money or endorsement deals dating to 2016. Under the plan, each school would be allowed to set aside up to around $21 million to pay athletes, a cap that could change. It could start as soon as the 2025 fall semester.
The lawsuit targeted the so-called Power 5 conferences — ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC — as well as Notre Dame. But, coming up with money to pay for the settlement will hit hundreds of other Division I member schools in the form of smaller annual payouts from the organization. That revenue flows largely from the NCAA’s lucrative TV contract for the men’s basketball tournament and its other championship events.
The NCAA has no role in the College Football Playoff or bowl games and TV deals for football are struck at the conference level….
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at FOX Sports Digital…