As changes to the college sports model loom, ADs ponder what comes next

The churn of court cases, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proceedings and congressional hearings about the professionalization of college athletics rolled on into the new year unabated, as the college athletics enterprise creeps towards potentially massive changes to the amateur model.

Be it the House v. NCAA lawsuit, pending NLRB cases involving USC and Dartmouth, or the possibility of a federal law to entrench a newer model of amateurism – however unlikely that may be – the specter of athletic departments needing to pay athletes more, and directly, looms larger than ever.

But as the economics of college sports begin to shift, with the revenues potentially making it to the athletes, some athletic directors are approaching the changes with an air of patience bordering on caution.

On3 spoke with four athletic directors – three from the Group of 5 level and one from the Power 5 – over the last month about the potential changes on the horizon and how they are considering and preparing to address them. From then-Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork (who was announced as Ohio State’s new AD on Tuesday) to Tulane’s David Harris, James Madison’s Jeff Bourne and Louisiana-Monroe’s John Hartwell, none are rushing headlong into any sort of revenue sharing or drastic changes to the economic underpinnings of college sports.

Departmental cost-cutting to afford potential revenue sharing is not a popular idea

All four of the athletic directors that On3 spoke with recently oversaw the hiring of a new head football coach, from the high-profile Texas A&M search to lower-key affairs with the G5 schools. Contractions to head coaching or other departmental salaries or budgets were not a popular concept among the four, for obvious reasons.

Namely, in an already inflationary market for coaching salaries, negotiating a pay cut for those employees would be a difficult undertaking at best. While Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh – who might soon be drawing an NFL salary – suggested recently that those involved in college sports shave off 5 to 10% of their keep to pool to pay athletes, it’s not likely to be a popular proposition on a wide scale.

Athletic departments themselves have also grown in scope and scale, adding more personnel to various support roles over the last decade-plus to keep up with each other. When considering downsizing in this realm, ADs reminded of what is an accounting windfall on a spreadsheet might mean eliminating the jobs of some of their coworkers. It’s a thorny proposition.

“Anyone who’s simply saying, ‘Hey, you can cut this sport,’ or ‘You can cut these positions,’ or ‘You can decide not to do this or do that,’ hasn’t sat in the chair and hasn’t had the opportunity to understand that all of the sports programs are important opportunities that you provide to all student-athletes are important,” Harris said.

And, at present, whatever savings a school might derive from pulling back on salaries for staff and coaches can’t be directed to players, though the NCAA is considering proposals to move NIL in-house and allow schools to pay out to players directly.

From an accounting perspective, folding NIL into the athletic department’s role is attractive in a certain sense for ADs, as it allows the “buckets” of money for facilities, staff and so much more to remain untouched in regard to paying players.

That may not be the most sustainable path forward, though. Marc Isenberg, who teaches about NIL at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and works in wealth management, suggested that adopting NIL into athletic departments as a quasi-payroll for athletes could run dry over time as donors get fatigued.

“Because they’re going to boosters and with their hands out and saying pay our athletes if you want us to field a competitive team,” Isenberg said.

And in the event of some major revenue sharing becoming the norm, affording it could be an existential question for some of the smaller athletic departments – and would certainly cause difficult decisions for even the richest of athletic programs.

“It really would,” Hartwell said about revenue sharing and its potential impact at ULM. “And, and you know, I know we’re not alone in that situation. Most of the Group of 5 are in that category, I would say. And does anybody really have a crystal ball to know what it will be like five years out from now or 10 years out? No, not really. I mean, there’s a lot of, a lot of educated folks out there making guesses, but I, I would venture to say whatever it looks like is, is not, um, is not exactly what anyone is, is calling

ADs believe in importance of providing Olympic/non-revenue sports programs

One of the open secrets of college athletics is the revenue generated, namely by football (and some basketball) players, is used to subsidize the existence of other sports programs in the athletic department that operate at a loss.

And along with their desire to not have to eliminate jobs in their departments, the ADs On3 spoke with believe in the value of providing these opportunities that more closely resemble amateur athletics. If revenue sharing with football players became the norm, funding non-revenue sports becomes a different, more difficult proposition.

That’s not a popular outcome among a group that still sees value in the chance to participate in what is still, ostensibly, amateur athletics. It’s a feeling partially fueled by the connection to higher education.

“I think for all of us that are in the enterprise of college athletics,, we want to provide as many opportunities as we can,” Bjork said. “We wanna make sure that there’s some uniform standards to it and we want to compete, right? And the educational tether is not going away because we’re part of a higher education system.”

There are questions about the fairness of perpetuating a system that sees money generated by football fund other sports, a matter that players have never had a direct say in.

“You’re deciding for them that even though they’re helping to generate significant amounts of revenue for the institution, that they should take one for the team and help support country club sports,” Isenberg said.

Regardless, one of the major tensions facing college athletic administrators going forward is balancing the professionalization of certain sports while trying to maintain the other sporting opportunities they deem worthwhile for their institutions.

For now, it’s a bit of a wait-and-see approach from ADs

Given the vast ripples that revenue sharing and employment might have for college athletics, the people running various athletic programs are not keen to rush into anything that upsets the apple cart, even if it’s headed that way.

And planning for what comes next when it’s relatively ambiguous is easier said than done.

Bourne considers some stratification between what is currently the Power 5 (for now) and the Group of 5 that could be coming.

“I’m always gonna look at it from the standpoint of ‘What is a viable model that will stand the test of time and won’t have to constantly be changed every three to four years?’” Bourne said. “And we’re walking ourselves into a really, really challenging spot because I do think there are ceilings that institutions can afford with regard to intercollegiate athletics. And at what point do presidents look at it and go, ‘This is beyond the scope of what we can legitimately do and what would an environment look like with comparable institutions versus those that are markedly different?’”

It’s a sentiment that Hartwell echoed.

“I’m a whole lot more concerned with what’s happening in Boone, North Carolina, on the Appalachian State campus and more specifically in their athletic department than what’s happening in Columbus, Ohio at Ohio State,” Hartwell said.

Further, Bjork explained that any sort of new model that gets designed and adopted will need to withstand legal scrutiny. More and more frequently courts have ruled against the NCAA and colleges on matters of amateurism in recent years. Any new proposal that the NCAA puts in place would need to be able to survive any number of legal challenges – that’s a highly difficult needle to thread short of a federal law or collectively bargaining with the athletes.

And Bjork, like a lot of his colleagues, has come around to something of a universal realization in college sports at present: The current paradigm is crumbling and something new needs to take its place.

“We need to come up with a new model,” Bjork said. “We also need to get out of the legal threat world. And so how do you create a new model that’s sustainable for the college athletic ecosystem in higher education? And that’s really the crux of it: What does that model look like? How does it get determined? Who determines it? What are the parameters? What’s the economic model? And then what’s the ripple effect through the rest of the department?”