The SWAC sent a ripple across the college athletics landscape while raising a few eyebrows when the HBCU conference announced that all 12 members are opting into the revenue-sharing plan resulting from the House v NCAA settlement.
In this settlement, schools from major conferences such as the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Pac-12 agreed to settle a lawsuit with former student-athletes for $2.8 million. Each of the Power 5 conference institutions also agreed to share up to $20.5 million each year with their current student-athletes.
This seemed like a major Football Bowl Championship (FBS) issue—that is, until the SWAC decided this week to announce that all 12-member schools were officially opting in to the House v NCAA settlement. The smaller conference schools and the Football Championship Division (FCS)schools had the option of opting out and not being on the hook for the revenue sharing or paying any part of the lawsuit settlement.
But Prairie View athletic director Anton Goff said it makes sense for his institution and others like him to opt in. The Panthers had to opt in to stay relevant in the recruiting landscape.
While Prairie View and the rest of the SWAC won’t be able to pay their student-athletes out of a $20.5 million pot, this does give them the latitude to directly negotiate NIL and sponsorship deals for their student-athletes.
“Obviously, it doesn’t level the playing field with the Power 4,” Goff said to the Defender this week. “But what it does in this day and age of recruiting, you can actually take some of your budget and use it to pay student athletes or some of your revenue that you are generating – that your student athletes are generating – whether it be from corporate sponsorship, whether it be from ticket sales or whoever you generate revenue from you can now give a piece of that to your student athletes.”
The idea of sharing almost non-existent revenue for many SWAC athletic departments seems a stretch, but Goff says it makes sense to figure it out. Prairie View’s athletic department budget is about $15 million annually. At the same time, schools like the University of Texas, Texas A&M and Ohio State will set aside $20.5 million for their student-athletes beginning this upcoming academic school year.
“What it means is basically we are able to compensate our student athletes directly via NIL, whereas before we couldn’t do it. It had to be a third party. Now we are able to take revenues that we generate and develop NIL deals for our student athletes.”
Prairie View athletic director Anton Goff
The SWAC recently held its annual spring meetings in Destin, Fla, where the league administrators officially agreed to revenue sharing. But if you had listened to SWAC Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland since this past December, it was clear that once the lawsuit was settled, the recommended course of action was for the conference members to opt in.
The SWAC’s position became official after House v NCAA was settled recently. Both Prairie View and Texas Southern have opted into the settlement and revenue sharing.
“This is undoubtedly a significant moment for the Southwestern Athletic Conference and our twelve member institutions,” McClelland said in making this week’s announcement. “As we move forward into a new era of intercollegiate athletics, the Southwestern Athletic Conference remains steadfast in our commitment to provide our membership with the resources needed to positively impact our student-athletes academically and athletically.”
In addition to the revenue sharing, the SWAC schools also agreed to adopt the new scholarship limits language instead of the old scholarship limits. All schools can now fully fund scholarships in all sports across the board.
FCS schools in the past had 63 football scholarships, which included partial scholarships, spread over 85 players. But now, the roster can expand to 105 players. That may not be realistic for many FCS schools, but the option is now there.
“So now, if I had a windfall of money and I wanted to give 105 full scholarships to football, I could do that,” Goff said.
Will Prairie View do so across all sports, like its Division I baseball program, which had a 35-player roster limit, but coaches only had about 15 full scholarships to share with the entire roster?
“Now what everybody is trying to look at is, especially at our level, is what do you really want to invest in? What can you really invest in?” Goff said.
Another part of opting into revenue sharing is that each SWAC school has agreed to pay a portion of the $2.8 billion settlement to the former student-athletes. For the SWAC, that amounts to $30 million to be paid over the next 10 years. That amounts to about $2.5 million spread over 10 years for each SWAC school, coming to $250,000 each year.
The schools won’t have to pay the money directly toward the lawsuits, but instead have that much deducted from their annual distributions from the NCAA. But in athletic departments where magic is already necessary to make the budgets work, the loss of revenue will be felt.
“That’s why we are athletic directors. We have to figure it out,” Goff said. “This is a world that we are living in. The transfer portal, NIL, House settlement, roster limits. You are either going to embrace it and thrive in it. Pressure bursts pipes is what I always say.”
But there is still the question of how schools like Prairie View and Texas Southern will make this new landscape work. Increased ticket sales for football and basketball, as well as ticket sales for non-revenue sports that used to be free, could be coming. Alumni and supporters will also be asked to give more.
However, it has to work. Goff is certain that opting into House v NCAA is the best option. Now comes the work.
“What a lot of people looked at is, opting in or opting out … Opting in to me, it doesn’t make you do anything besides the roster limits,” Goff said. “You can’t revenue share something that you don’t have, so I don’t have the $20.9 or whatever that number is that the big boys are trying to figure out how to divvy it up and those issues.
“What I need to do is figure out our roster limits, and make sure our coaches are abiding by that and look at different revenue streams or increasing my revenue or doing some unique things to be able to get some revenue towards student athletes because every one of our students athletes, for the most part, are being recruited at a high level and so they are going to have that opportunity. So I have to make sure for us we are going to give a great Panther experience, so that we get the opportunity to be able to provide some type of NIL deal. Now, will we get outbid? Yeah, we will get outbid, but at least we are in the game.”
Texas Southern did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story. TSU’s athletic director Kevin Granger, who is believed to have represented his school in the discussions with the conference, is currently on leave because of ongoing sexual assault charges against him.
