Ross Dellenger reveals Kentucky basketball led charge to scuttle SEC capping NIL spending by sport

On Saturday, Judge Claudia Wilken approved the House v. NCAA settlement, which officially ushered in the era of revenue sharing. Specifically, college will be allowed to directly pay their respective athletes $20.5 million per year.

It’s up to each college’s discretion on how they split up the money to each athletic program. However, some conferences have reportedly considered creating uniform percentages of the revenue for each program to receive from their respective school.

Per Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger, the SEC was one of the conferences examining this option. During an appearance on The Matt Jones Show, Dellenger revealed that Kentucky basketball, and several other programs, spoke out against the idea when it was proposed.

“The SEC had actually gone down the road on doing that,” Dellenger said. “I know football was at least $13.5 million. I can’t remember any of the other figures. Basketball may have been like $2.8 million, and the SEC had set some of those standards.

“But, Kentucky did not — and some others too — but Kentucky basketball, specifically, was a pretty big voice in the room to make sure that those standards weren’t set as a policy, because Kentucky obviously wants to spend more.”

While football still brings in the most revenue for Kentucky, the school’s basketball program reels in far more money than most competing SEC programs. Thus, it’s natural for members of the program to believe they deserve more of the $20.5 million available.

After all, programs like Kentucky basketball have to worry about competing against other blue-chip programs outside of the SEC such as Duke or Kansas that would likely not be facing the same cap. Kentucky basketball reportedly wasn’t the only program that disapproved of pre-arranged revenue percentages.

“It wasn’t just Kentucky that wanted to spend more in basketball,” Dellenger said. “Think about South Carolina women’s basketball, Arkansas baseball, LSU baseball… There were plenty of programs that wanted to spend more than the standards, sort of the maximum standards, that the SEC was talking about doing. So they kind of bailed on it for now.”

Of course, the SEC could circle back around on the idea. After all, college athletics is only in the earliest stages of this new era. New authorities such as the College Sports Commission could have a loud voice in discussions, such as the one Dellenger mentioned, moving forward.

To pile on, new issues will arise as schools and athletes bring forward further lawsuits that contest Wilken’s ruling. Additionally, schools are currently still unfamiliar with the new clearinghouse process that will approve of NIL deals that emerge from outside the school’s direct payments.