IU eliminated 25 positions within the Athletics department ahead of NCAA revenue sharing settlement.
(Indiana University Athletics)
A new pay-for-play era would kick off in the 2025-26 school year if an NCAA revenue-sharing settlement is approved. The settlement is designed to provide college athletes with a slice of the revenue their athletic performances bring in for their schools.
Revenue sharing will allow schools to directly allocate a portion of sports profits to athletes, with an annual cap of $20.5 million per school. Revenue sharing will be optional, but if a university opts in, it will have to share funds with all athletes across all teams.
Each participating school will directly pay players a revenue share instead of relying on name, image and likeness (NIL) collectives. NIL deals will instead be considered outside money for athletes.
While most power conference schools have pledged to pay the entire $20.5 million cap, not all universities can afford it. While institutions such as Ohio State manage to meet this cap using roughly 10% of their sports income, smaller universities would need to allocate a significantly larger portion of their total revenue.
Dr. B. David Ridpath, professor of sports business at Ohio University, said his main worry is that schools might try to play at a level they cannot afford or sustain. Schools may start cutting sports or staff, even in areas where it's not necessary.
“Ohio State can afford this,” Ridpath said. “Let them go ahead and afford it, but other schools may not be able to, and they shouldn't try if they can't do that.”
IU Athletics approached the issue by eliminating 25 department positions in a move to make room in the budget for revenue sharing. While a dozen of the positions were unfilled, 13 employees were fired, some with decades of experience at IU.
“They're going to probably trim people before they start going after coaches,” Ridpath said. “I know that many schools are going to try to hang on and not cut sports if they can, but that might eventually happen.”
Ridpath emphasized that the student-athletes should not be blamed for the budget cuts, saying the system is at fault and it should have been changed decades ago.
“Night in, night out, people are coming to see the players,” Ridpath said. “They're the ones who are generating the revenue, and they've had their revenue unjustly capped and deprived for over a century. So it's not their fault, it's the system's fault, and this eventually was going to happen.”
