Brown discusses potential revenue sharing and roster sizes
Seismic changes are coming to college football with the potential House v. NCAA lawsuit settlement.
After the NCAA Board of Governors and every Power Four conference agreed to settlement terms it still must be formally agreed to and approved in district court but with that would come sweeping changes.
One of those would be the ability for schools to share a sizable percentage of revenue with their student-athletes. And while all of the details are still being sorted, it’s expected to be around $20-22 million.
For West Virginia head coach Neal Brown that decision has been a long time coming.
“I think we could have solved a lot of the issues we’ve been dealing with in college football if we shared revenue much sooner with the players,” he said.
But how that gets implemented and what it all looks like remains to be seen. Some have speculated that if approved it could be enacted for the fall of 2025 which seems like a long way away at this stage. But, for college coaches that deal with a rapid calendar that isn’t necessarily the case.
“We’re going to have 35 official visitors plus in June that are going to play their first games in fall of 2025 and they’re going to make decisions and NIL is a piece of that. In 2025 are you working with the collective system that you’ve been working with or are you dealing with revenue distribution? So, there’s some unknowns there so you’ve got to make some educated guess,” Brown said.
Now, if that does come to pass Brown believes that that revenue distribution will bring more competitive balance to college football. While it won’t be the same degree as the NFL with salary caps and the rules in place it will certainly help in that department.
“I do believe there will be more competitive balance than there is right now,” he said.
Another item that has been discussed is potential roster limits, but Brown doesn’t know how that could look like at this stage if it is put into place. Currently, teams can have around 120 players and while he isn’t sure if that would be the case if limits are put into place he doesn’t see it being around 85 either.
While Brown is certainly in favor of as many rules as possible that mirror the NFL, projecting that when it comes to roster sizes on the college level is a little different.
“The NFL is dealing with players that have been through college and they are 22-23 years old plus where we’re dealing with 17-22 so we’re very much developing where they’re getting a lot of physically finished players,” he said. “Now there’s a lot of football growth but there’s a lot of physically finished products. Our roster needs to be larger than theirs.”
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