The House Settlement will bring many changes to college athletics and for West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker it is a significant step towards creating a sustainable system.
The old model was unregulated and under the changes there will be revenue sharing in place that won’t prohibit name, image and likeness but will provide some guardrails.
“What really is NIL versus NIL disguised as pay-for play but also allows for a substantial revenue share with student athletes,” Baker said during a special conversation with Tony Caridi. “And so it’s an exciting time for college athletics.”
Baker cautioned that while the Settlement doesn’t mean college athletics has necessarily arrived at a long-term solution it is a significant step towards building a sustainable system which had been an issue before with athletic programs operating in deficits and taking out loans.
“So this gives us a model that we can kind of build around and build a sustainable economic model. Build a model that hopefully allows us to continue to offer broad-based programs with many sports and a great experience across those sports,” Baker said. “And not only at WVU but across the country at institutions that matter in all 50-states.”
College programs will be able to fund over $20 million in the first year and there are a lot of different philosophies that can be followed but West Virginia had discussions not only with their general counsels on campus but outside campuses as well particularly around the issue of Title IX.
The settlement outlines the revenue streams in which schools can share and West Virginia took the approach of looking at what percentage the sports are contributing to those revenue streams that they will be sharing with student athletes.
“And we’re giving a correspondent revenue share out of the sports that are contributing to those so not all sports are contributing but all of our ticketed sports contribute at least something and so therefore they get a revenue share back out,” Baker said.
There are those that will argue the other side that the market should decide, but Baker says college athletics do not possess the same control mechanisms that normal markets have.
“There is no ownership. It’s a large bureaucratic higher education organization that’s heavily influenced by donors, by board members, by coaches, by student athletes, by their agents,” he said.
And with all of those influences it is difficult to make decisions and the settlement paves the way to prevent the unregulated, unrestricted free agencies at all times.
“It just doesn’t work and what would have happened eventually I believe would have been a collapse of the infrastructure around Olympic sports as people were pressured more and more to do wild things in the revenue sports. So I think this gives us a chance to keep broad-based programs. I think it gives us a chance to have a system that we can build three and five-year budget models around and really start to plan for the future,” Baker said.
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